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cognitive-enhancer

Update: Moderate lifetime drinking may lead to lower Alzheimer-related beta amyloid deposits in the brain

April 24, 2020 by SharpBrains

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Time for a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter.

#1. First of all, it’s not all bad news this month. Study finds that mod­er­ate life­time drink­ing may lead to low­er Alzheimer-relat­ed beta amy­loid deposits in the brain

#2. And, talk about per­son­al­ized med­i­cine! This fas­ci­nat­ing study show­ing how brain imag­ing (fMRI) + machine learn­ing + inten­sive, non-inva­sive neu­rostim­u­la­tion = tar­get­ed treat­ments that can max­i­mize effi­ca­cy and min­i­mize side effects: Rein­vent­ing depres­sion treat­ment via tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic brain stim­u­la­tion (TMS)

#3. Also, not a minute too soon … Med­i­ta­tion apps have gone main­stream in the covid-19 era and Dig­i­tal health start-ups raised a record $3.1 bil­lion in Q1; focus will like­ly evolve from providers to con­sumers and employers

#4. Fyi, a very time­ly vir­tu­al event com­ing Tues­day April 28th, online: Explore strate­gies and tools to boost men­tal well­be­ing dur­ing (and after) Covid-19

#5. Now, “While Pear has an advan­tage over the com­pe­ti­tion in that its prod­ucts are backed by ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­als, physi­cians and health plans are still work­ing out how to pre­scribe and pay for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics.” The FDA clears Som­ryst, Pear’s dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic to treat chron­ic insomnia

#6. Net net, now is the time for indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive action to shift to a health­i­er “new nor­mal” for all: 3 ways to pro­tect your men­tal health dur­ing –and after– COVID-19 (in Span­ish: Tres hábitos de higiene men­tal para vencer al COVID-19 y crear un futuro más salud­able). Want more? Enjoy these Three tips for wise minds to calm coro­n­avirus anxiety

#7. A small but impor­tant study for that hope­ful near future when uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges reopen their doors: Study finds mixed results of Adder­all as cog­ni­tive enhancer (seems to boost emo­tion more than cognition)

#8. But, first things first. “The Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive” reached #1 on the pop charts in 1977. Maybe it was the beat, maybe it was John Travolta’s danc­ing. Or maybe it’s that the Gibb broth­ers’ cen­tral lyric is quite lit­er­al­ly always play­ing in our head. Keep­ing us safe —that is, “stayin’ alive ”— is the pri­ma­ry mis­sion of the brain”

  • Explor­ing the human brain and how it responds to stress (1/3)
  • On World Health Day 2020, let’s dis­cuss the stress response and the Gen­er­al Adap­ta­tion Syn­drome (2/3)
  • The frontal lobes, the lit­tle brain down under and “Stayin’ Alive” (3/3)

Enough with coro­n­avirus out­break. Any­thing else going on? Yes!

#9. The Right to Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty. The Right to Free Will. The Right to Men­tal Pri­va­cy. The Right to Equal Access to Men­tal Aug­men­ta­tion. The Right to Pro­tec­tion from Algo­rith­mic Bias. Will these five Neu­roR­ights help har­ness emerg­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies for the com­mon good?

#10. “Today, the sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ences is, in my view, one of the most excit­ing fron­tiers in the sci­ence of well-being.” Tran­scend­ing Maslow’s famous “hier­ar­chy of needs” through Maslow’s own research on Peak Experiences

#11. You CAN have your cake and eat it too: Here’s a brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

#12. Ques­tion: My first thought after con­grat­u­lat­ing myself on being so clever about some­thing? Tease your brain with these eight fun rid­dles…

 

Wish­ing you and yours a great month of May,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Attention & ADD/ADHD, Brain Teasers, Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Adderall, Alzheimer-disease, Alzheimers-disease, beta-amyloid, brain, brain teaser for adults, Brain Teasers, Brain-Imaging, brain-teaser, cognitive-enhancer, depression, digital health, digital therapeutics, meditation apps, mental health, neurorights, neurostimulation, personalized-medicine, riddles, Stress, Transcend

Update: Think twice before taking Adderall as cognitive enhancer — it may worsen your working memory

September 28, 2018 by SharpBrains

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Dear read­er,

It’s time for Sharp­Brains month­ly e‑newsletter, start­ing in this occa­sion with an impor­tant arti­cle by Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Dr. David Rabin­er rais­ing con­cerns about the grow­ing non-med­ical use of ADHD drugs.

New research:

  • Do ADHD drugs real­ly help col­lege stu­dents with­out ADHD?
  • Mind­ful­ly debunk­ing four med­i­ta­tion myths
  • Cog­ni­tive train­ing & reme­di­a­tion works, espe­cial­ly in schiz­o­phre­nia and healthy aging

New tools:

  • Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy pio­neers, please design with the end-user in mind
  • FDA clears deep tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion device to treat obses­sive-com­pul­sive disorder
  • DARPA paving the way for a future brain-based Internet

New thinking:

  • Per­spec­tive: There’s no epi­dem­ic of anx­i­ety dis­or­ders among teenagers
  • New book explores nine lives impact­ed by rare brain disorders

 

Last but not least, as you prob­a­bly know Sep­tem­ber is World Alzheimer’s Month. We’d like to help improve pub­lic knowl­edge about brain health and Alzheimer’s risk fac­tors by mak­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize your Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age eas­i­er to access and read.

From tomor­row Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 29th, until Mon­day, Octo­ber 1st, we’ll be run­ning a Kin­dle Count­down Deal via Ama­zon in which you can order the book with dis­counts of up to 90%.

We hope you enjoy the book and it helps you pro­tect your most impor­tant asset: your amaz­ing human brain.

–> To order in the US, click Here

–> To order in the UK, click Here

–> To order in oth­er coun­tries, click Here

 

Have a great month of October,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

 

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain, cognition, cognitive-enhancer, enewsletter, Working-memory

Cognitive Enhancement via Pharmacology AND Neuropsychology, in The New Executive Brain

August 30, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

(Edi­tor’s Note: giv­en the grow­ing media atten­tion to three appar­ent­ly sep­a­rate worlds ‑cog­ni­tive enhance­ment via drugs, brain fit­ness train­ing soft­ware, com­put­er­ized neu­rocog­ni­tive assessments‑, I found it refresh­ing to see our co-founder Elkhonon Gold­berg intro­duce the top­ic of cog­notrop­ic drugs with an inte­gra­tive per­spec­tive in the much updat­ed new edi­tion of his clas­sic book, now titled The New Executive Brain - By Elkhonon Goldberg The New Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes In A Com­plex World. Below goes an excerpt).

For many neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, like myself, sci­ence is a labor of love, but see­ing patients is bread and but­ter. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the clin­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion of neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy has been most­ly diag­nos­tic, with pre­cious lit­tle to offer patients by way of treat­ment. Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy is not the only clin­i­cal dis­ci­pline for years con­signed to help­less voyeurism. Every dis­ci­pline con­cerned with cog­ni­tion shares this hum­bling predica­ment. A psy­chi­a­trist treat­ing a schiz­o­phrenic patient or a depressed patient finds him- or her­self in a sim­i­lar posi­tion. There are ample phar­ma­co­log­i­cal tools to treat the patient’s psy­chosis or mood, but very few to treat the patient’s cog­ni­tion. Even though psy­chi­a­trists increas­ing­ly rec­og­nize that cog­ni­tive impair­ment is often more debil­i­tat­ing in their patients than psy­chosis or mood dis­or­der, tra­di­tion­al­ly, very lit­tle direct effort has been aimed at improv­ing cognition.

A neu­rol­o­gist treat­ing a patient recov­er­ing from the effects of head injury does not fare much bet­ter. There are ade­quate means to con­trol the patient’s seizures but not his or her cog­ni­tive changes, despite the fact that cog­ni­tive impair­ment is usu­al­ly far more debil­i­tat­ing than an occa­sion­al seizure. Soci­ety has been so pre­oc­cu­pied with sav­ing lives, treat­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions, con­trol­ling seizures, and lift­ing depres­sion that cog­ni­tion (mem­o­ry, atten­tion, plan­ning, prob­lem solv­ing) has been large­ly ignored. Grant­ed, var­i­ous neu­rolep­tics, anti­con­vul­sants, anti­de­pres­sants, seda­tives, and stim­u­lants do have an effect on cog­ni­tion, but it is an ancil­lary effect of a drug designed to treat some­thing else.

Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er demen­tias have been society’s wake-up call. Here, in the most afflu­ent coun­try in the most afflu­ent of times, human minds were suc­cumb­ing to decay before human bod­ies, a sharp chal­lenge to the tac­it pop­u­lar belief that the “body is frail but soul is for­ev­er.” This pro­vid­ed an impe­tus for the devel­op­ment of an entire­ly new class of drugs, which can be termed famil­ial­ly as “cog­notrop­ic.” Their pri­ma­ry and explic­it pur­pose is to improve cognition.

Since med­ical and pub­lic pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with demen­tia focus­es on mem­o­ry, most of the phar­ma­co­log­i­cal efforts have been direct­ed at improv­ing mem­o­ry. At the time of this writ­ing, a hand­ful of drugs known as “Alzheimer’s drugs” or “mem­o­ry enhancers” have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA). In real­i­ty, both des­ig­na­tions are some­what mis­lead­ing. The drugs in ques­tion are [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment via Phar­ma­col­o­gy AND Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy, in The New Exec­u­tive Brain

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alzheimer’s-disease, Alzheimer’s-drugs, anticholinesterases, Aricept, attention, Cognex, cognition, cognitive-enhancer, Cognitive-impairment, cognitive-measures, cognotropic, cognotropic-drugs, dementia, dopamine, Elkhonon-Goldberg, executive-brain, FDA, head-injury, improve-cognition, Luria, memory, memory-enhancers, Mild-traumatic-brain-injury, mood-disorder, Namenda, neurocognitive, neurologist, neuropsychological-tests, Neuropsychology, Pharmacology, planning, prefrontal-cortex, problem-solving, psychosis, schizophrenia, spatial-working-memory, therapeutic, Working-memory

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