Aggre­gate dis­tri­b­u­tion of cor­ti­cal brain-wave activ­i­ty, orga­nized by stan­dard fre­quen­cy bands, across a range of depths. Cred­it: U.S. Army

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Army devel­ops big data approach to neu­ro­science (press release):

“A big data approach to neu­ro­science promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve our under­stand­ing of the rela­tion­ship between brain activ­i­ty and per­for­mance.

To date, there have been rel­a­tive­ly few attempts to use a big-data approach with­in the emerg­ing field of neu­rotech­nol­o­gy. Read the rest of this entry »

NASA astro­naut Scott Kel­ly checks out the Microsoft HoloLens aboard a space sta­tion on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2016. (Pho­to by NASA via Get­ty Images)

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About the con­cern: Brain MRI scans may help NASA plan safer mis­sions to space (Health Imag­ing):

“Not a lot is known about cog­ni­tive impair­ment in humans dur­ing space­flight,” Don­na R. Roberts, MD, Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty of South Carolina’s Depart­ment of Radi­ol­o­gy, said in a state­ment Read the rest of this entry »

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The flight that brings space weight­less­ness to Earth (BBC Future):

“Five, four, three, two, one…”

Not many air­craft cap­tains give their pas­sen­gers a rock­et launch-style count­down before take-off, but this is no ordi­nary plane. For starters, every­one on board, apart from the crew, is a sci­en­tist and has passed a full med­ical check – includ­ing a heart assess­ment. This is not a trip for ner­vous fliers Read the rest of this entry »

Cour­tesy David Lee at The Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian

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UC Berke­ley study links cog­ni­tive longevi­ty to high­er edu­ca­tion (The Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian):

“A study led by cam­pus researchers found that high­er lev­els of edu­ca­tion are linked to lat­er ages of peak cog­ni­tive performance…The team was able to use anony­mous data gath­ered from almost 200,000 sub­scribers to Lumos­i­ty, an online cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram, whose users con­sent­ed that their results could be used for sci­en­tif­ic research. Read the rest of this entry »

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Time for Sharp­Brains’ May e‑newsletter, high­light­ing what’s new in brain health and men­tal per­for­mance, and fea­tur­ing a very rel­e­vant MIT ini­tia­tive and a thought-pro­vok­ing study on the “Cog­ni­tive Divide.”

New thinking

• MIT Solve launch­es Brain Health Chal­lenge: How can every per­son improve their brain health and men­tal resilience?
• Men­tal Health Inno­va­tion and Dr. Tom Insel: from the NIMH to Google/ Ver­i­ly Life Sci­ences to Start­up Mind­strong
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright (relat­ed slides here)
• Eight research teams work­ing with DARPA to dis­cov­er best ways to acti­vate neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and accel­er­ate learn­ing
• Researchers pro­pose four “neu­ror­ights” to har­ness neu­rotech­nol­o­gy for good: cog­ni­tive lib­er­ty, men­tal pri­va­cy, men­tal integri­ty, and psy­cho­log­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity

New research

• Is moder­ni­ty lead­ing to a grow­ing Cog­ni­tive Divide?
• Phys­i­cal­ly-active video games (‘exergames’) boost cog­ni­tion more than phys­i­cal activ­i­ty alone
• Com­mon med­ica­tion treat­ments for PTSD can increase the risk of devel­op­ing demen­tia
• Study iden­ti­fies brain cir­cuits enabling four-year-olds to “put them­selves in oth­er people’s shoes”

New tools

• Want a music sys­tem that lifts you up when you’re feel­ing down? Meet this audio head­set with bio-sig­nal sen­sors (Neu­roSky patent)
• Eval­u­at­ing neur­al respons­es via EEG brain data in vir­tu­al real­i­ty envi­ron­ments (Nielsen patent)
• Con­nect­ing car­di­o­log­i­cal and neu­ro­log­i­cal health (Medtron­ic patent)
• Start-up Aira rais­es $12M, show­ing the way for cog­ni­tive sci­ence and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) to improve the lives of blind and low vision indi­vid­u­als

Have a great month of June and, for those based in the US, a great Memo­r­i­al Day week­end,

The Sharp­Brains Team