depression

Mapping ‘psychedelic trips’ in the brain to better direct their therapeutic effects

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Image cred­it: Shutterstock

For the past sev­er­al decades, psy­che­delics have been wide­ly stig­ma­tized as dan­ger­ous ille­gal drugs. But a recent surge of aca­d­e­m­ic research into their use to treat psy­chi­atric con­di­tions is spurring a recent shift in pub­lic opinion.

Psy­che­delics are psy­chotrop­ic drugs: sub­stances that affect your men­tal state. Oth­er types of psy­chotrop­ics include anti­de­pres­sants and anti-anx­i­ety med­ica­tions. Psy­che­delics and oth­er types of hal­lu­cino­gens, how­ev­er, are unique in their abil­i­ty to tem­porar­i­ly induce intense hal­lu­ci­na­tions, emo­tions and dis­rup­tions of self-aware­ness. [Read more…] about Map­ping ‘psy­che­del­ic trips’ in the brain to bet­ter direct their ther­a­peu­tic effects

Separating brain-healthy wheat from chaff is becoming more urgent by the day

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A) New video game com­pa­ny aims to devel­op ther­a­peu­tic games (The Verge):

Video game-based tools can help with con­di­tions like depres­sion and ADHD, research shows. Deep­Well Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics plans to build on those stud­ies. “There was an amaz­ing amount of sci­ence that had already been done,” Dou­glas says. “We start­ed to rec­og­nize exact­ly how ther­a­peu­tic these games already were.” [Read more…] about Sep­a­rat­ing brain-healthy wheat from chaff is becom­ing more urgent by the day

New DARPA initiative aims to harness cognitive science, sensors and machine learning to detect early brain signs of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation

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New Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence Tool to Shed Light on Men­tal Health (DARPA press release):

Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 30,000 active duty mem­bers and vet­er­ans have tak­en their own lives – four times as many as those killed in post-911 mil­i­tary oper­a­tions. Cur­rent meth­ods to detect ear­ly signs of behav­ioral and men­tal health risk fac­tors rely on self-report­ing and screen­ing ques­tion­naires, which can’t reli­ably pre­dict sui­ci­dal­i­ty. Effec­tive behav­ioral health assess­ment is a mis­sion-crit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ty requir­ing nov­el tools to iden­ti­fy and help those at risk.

Today, DARPA announced the Neur­al Evi­dence Aggre­ga­tion Tool (NEAT) pro­gram. NEAT aims to devel­op a new cog­ni­tive sci­ence tool that iden­ti­fies peo­ple at risk of sui­cide by using pre­con­scious brain sig­nals rather than ask­ing ques­tions and wait­ing for con­scious­ly fil­tered respons­es. [Read more…] about New DARPA ini­tia­tive aims to har­ness cog­ni­tive sci­ence, sen­sors and machine learn­ing to detect ear­ly brain signs of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and sui­ci­dal ideation

Computer-assisted cognitive behavior therapy (CCBT) may outperform Treatment as Usual (TAU) in helping patients reduce depression, improve 6‑month remission rates

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Study: Com­put­er-assist­ed cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CCBT) improved depres­sion for pri­ma­ry care patients (Mobi­Health News):

Researchers found patients who used CCBT in addi­tion to reg­u­lar treat­ment led to “sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ment” on the Patient Health Questionnaire–9, used to screen for and mea­sure depres­sive symp­toms. Those results also held up over time.

“Results of this study show that treat­ment for depres­sion in pri­ma­ry care can be enhanced by the addi­tion of CCBT to TAU [treat­ment as usu­al],” the study’s authors wrote. “After 12 weeks of acute treat­ment, CCBT sig­nif­i­cant­ly out­per­formed TAU in reduc­ing PHQ‑9 scores; these pos­i­tive results were main­tained over the 3- and 6‑month fol­low-up inter­vals. Remis­sion rates were more than dou­ble for CCBT com­pared with TAU at all time points.” [Read more…] about Com­put­er-assist­ed cog­ni­tive behav­ior ther­a­py (CCBT) may out­per­form Treat­ment as Usu­al (TAU) in help­ing patients reduce depres­sion, improve 6‑month remis­sion rates

APA: With digital mental health going mainstream, will/ should psychologists be able to “prescribe” interventions?

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Men­tal health, meet ven­ture cap­i­tal (APA):

Until recent­ly, men­tal health was a rel­a­tive blip on the radar of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists. But over the past few years, and par­tic­u­lar­ly since the onset of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, pri­vate investors have made a dra­mat­ic run for this space, pour­ing $3.1 bil­lion into men­tal health ven­tures by the third quar­ter of 2021 alone, accord­ing to Rock Health, a seed fund that sup­ports star­tups work­ing in dig­i­tal health. That rep­re­sents a third of all dig­i­tal health fund­ing for 2021, more than 7 times the amount of fund­ing placed in such ven­tures in 2015. [Read more…] about APA: With dig­i­tal men­tal health going main­stream, will/ should psy­chol­o­gists be able to “pre­scribe” interventions?

Could I be wrong? Exploring cognitive bias, curiosity, intellectual humility, and lifelong learning

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing eight time­ly sci­en­tif­ic and indus­try news plus a few fun teasers to appre­ci­ate our unique human brains.

#1. Could I be wrong? Explor­ing research on cog­ni­tive bias, curios­i­ty, intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty, and life­long learning

“None of us thinks that our beliefs and atti­tudes are incor­rect; if we did, we obvi­ous­ly wouldn’t hold those beliefs and atti­tudes. Yet, despite our sense that we are usu­al­ly cor­rect, we must accept that our views may some­times turn out to be wrong. This kind of humil­i­ty isn’t sim­ply virtuous—the research sug­gests that it results in bet­ter deci­sions, rela­tion­ships, and out­comes. So, the next time you feel cer­tain about some­thing, you might stop and ask your­self: Could I be wrong?”

#2. Great inter­view on bilin­gual­ism, sports, edu­ca­tion and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty — en español

#3. Should old­er politi­cians, and oth­er lead­ers, under­go cog­ni­tive test­ing? The debate con­tin­ues … here are some good com­ments from the online debate we had last summer:

  • PRO: “Def­i­nite­ly. We rou­tine­ly screen appli­cants for a wide range of jobs. Apply for the police, you will be test­ed. Join the mil­i­tary, you will be eval­u­at­ed. Should we not know if a can­di­date for the high­est posi­tion in the coun­try has a seri­ous emo­tion­al, intel­lec­tu­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal impairment?”
  • CON: “I dis­agree because these tests are very bad at pre­dict­ing how good some­one would be in lead­ing a coun­try. It doesn’t require the abil­i­ty to store a lot of infor­ma­tion in your work­ing mem­o­ry. Being a good leader requires only one essen­tial thing: hav­ing the right priorities.”
  • IT DEPENDS: “Who makes the test? What cog­ni­tive met­rics do we use? The bias­es in that design could lead to sig­nif­i­cant unex­pect­ed or even inten­tion­al­ly skewed results.”

#4. Click Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es fur­ther $52M to build up dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pipeline for depres­sion, insom­nia, smok­ing ces­sa­tion and more

What a year for Click and for dig­i­tal therapeutics!

#5. The Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Monitoring

The road to heav­en is paved with good decisions…

#6. FDA-approved, Cybin-spon­sored clin­i­cial tri­al to mea­sure ketamine’s impact on the brain via Ker­nel Flow neu­roimag­ing helmet

“The word psy­che­del­ic means ‘mind-man­i­fest­ing,’ but what has been miss­ing is use­ful ‘mind-imaging’—the abil­i­ty to dynam­i­cal­ly trace the neur­al cor­re­lates of human con­scious expe­ri­ence. Con­ven­tion­al neu­roimag­ing just isn’t dynam­ic enough to study the psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence in the brain as it hap­pens. This study of ketamine’s psy­che­del­ic effects while wear­ing head­gear equipped with sen­sors to record brain activ­i­ty could open up new fron­tiers of under­stand­ing” — Dr. Alex Belser, Cybin’s Chief Clin­i­cal Officer

#7. Bea­con Biosig­nals rais­es $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neu­ro­bio­mark­er dis­cov­ery platform

“ana­lyz­ing EEGs is labor inten­sive and inter­pre­ta­tion of these tests can vary from one clin­i­cian to another..…Beacon Biosig­nals has assem­bled what it claims is one of the world’s largest clin­i­cal EEG data­bas­es. By apply­ing its pro­pri­etary machine-learn­ing algo­rithms to the data­base, the com­pa­ny says it has iden­ti­fied neurobiomarkers—biological indi­ca­tors that are asso­ci­at­ed with cer­tain groups of patients, drug activ­i­ty, and ther­a­peu­tic efficacy.”

#8. Amy­loid-relat­ed imag­ing abnor­mal­i­ties (ARIA) found in approx­i­mate­ly 40% of patients tak­ing “Alzheimer’s drug” Aduhelm

Not good, yet com­plete­ly pre­dictable, and let’s remem­ber this is for a “treat­ment” cost­ing as much as $100,000/ year with exact­ly ZERO proven clin­i­cal ben­e­fit: “…The researchers found 425 cas­es in the com­bined adu­canum­ab group expe­ri­enced ARIA (41.3%), and ARIA-ede­ma was iden­ti­fied in 362 patients or 35.2%. Of them, 94 (26%) had symp­toms, such as headache, con­fu­sion, dizzi­ness and nau­sea. They found ARIA-micro­he­m­or­rhage and ARIA-super­fi­cial sidero­sis in 197 patients (19.1%) and 151 patients (14.7%), respectively.”

Final­ly, Let’s Thank our unique Human Brains and Minds with a few fam­i­ly-friend­ly riddles

Q: What does, “you must come and vis­it us some­time!” actu­al­ly mean?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a Hap­py & Healthy Hanukkah, Decem­ber and Christmas,

The Sharp­Brains Team