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depression

Voice biomarker platform Sonde Health raises $19.25M to spread access to mental health monitoring and beyond

January 5, 2023 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

Voice analy­sis plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M (Mobi­Health­News):

AI-enabled voice tech­nol­o­gy plat­form Sonde Health announced it raised $19.25 mil­lion in a Series B fund­ing round led by Part­ners Invest­ment, bring­ing its total raise to $35.25 mil­lion … Sonde Health uses patent­ed voice tech­nol­o­gy to detect var­i­ous health con­di­tions from bio­mark­ers in a per­son­’s voice, includ­ing ana­lyz­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry fit­ness and detect­ing depres­sion and anx­i­ety. [Read more…] about Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, biomarkers, depression, health monitoring, mental-fitness, Sonde Health, vocal biomarkers

Study identifies cognitive benefits of ketamine in patients with treatment-resistant depression

December 8, 2022 by The Conversation

Ket­a­mine mol­e­cules attach them­selves to NMDA neu­ronal recep­tors, which play an impor­tant role in brain plas­tic­i­ty and pre­dic­tive pro­cess­ing. C22H31NO2, CC BY-SA

Which fac­tors deter­mine what we believe about our world, our­selves, our past, and our future? Cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science sug­gests that our beliefs are depen­dent on brain activ­i­ty, specif­i­cal­ly on the way our brains process sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion in order to make sense of our environment.

These beliefs (defined as prob­a­bil­i­ty esti­mates) are cen­tral to our brain’s pre­dic­tive pro­cess­ing func­tion, which enables it to pre­dict the prob­a­bilis­tic struc­ture of the world around us. These pre­dic­tions could even be the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks of men­tal states, such as per­cep­tions and emotions.

Many psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, such as depres­sion and schiz­o­phre­nia, are char­ac­terised by irreg­u­lar beliefs whose ori­gins we still don’t ful­ly under­stand. But if we can iden­ti­fy the cere­bral sys­tems gov­ern­ing them, we could tar­get those very areas in a bid to alle­vi­ate the pain asso­ci­at­ed to these ill­ness­es. [Read more…] about Study iden­ti­fies cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits of ket­a­mine in patients with treat­ment-resis­tant depression

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: affective bias, antidepressants, augmented psychotherapy, brain-activity, Brain-Plasticity, Cognitive Neuroscience, depression, depressive beliefs, ketamine, NMDA, pharmacological, psilocybin, psychedelic medicine, psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia

Thanksgiving works: Gratitude journaling seen to lower stress and negative cognitive processes

November 21, 2022 by Greater Good Science Center

Dur­ing the ear­ly days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, many peo­ple suf­fered extreme stress. Peo­ple couldn’t work and faced finan­cial anx­i­ety, they felt lone­ly and iso­lat­ed, they wor­ried about catch­ing a dead­ly dis­ease or giv­ing it to some­one they loved, and their men­tal health suffered.

For researcher Erin Fekete, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­anapo­lis, the unfold­ing pan­dem­ic was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to answer a long­stand­ing ques­tion about the best way to cope in moments of suf­fer­ing. Do we get more relief by reflect­ing on our thoughts and feel­ings about what we’re going through, or from turn­ing our minds to the pos­i­tive things in our lives? [Read more…] about Thanks­giv­ing works: Grat­i­tude jour­nal­ing seen to low­er stress and neg­a­tive cog­ni­tive processes

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: anxiety, Covid-19 pandemic, depression, expressive writing, extreme stress, Gratitude, gratitude journaling, journaling, negative feelings, positive-feelings, psychological distress, Stress

Debunking the “chemical imbalance” theory yet not throwing out the antidepressant baby with the bathwater

August 3, 2022 by The Conversation

A recent study found incon­sis­tent evi­dence link­ing the neu­ro­trans­mit­ter sero­tonin to depres­sion. In an arti­cle for The Con­ver­sa­tion, the authors of the study con­clud­ed that it is impos­si­ble to say that tak­ing SSRI anti­de­pres­sants is worth­while. But is it safe to con­clude that sero­tonin is not involved in depres­sion or that mod­ern anti­de­pres­sants aren’t help­ful in treat­ing the con­di­tion? [Read more…] about Debunk­ing the “chem­i­cal imbal­ance” the­o­ry yet not throw­ing out the anti­de­pres­sant baby with the bathwater

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: antidepressants, chemical-imbalance, cognitive behaviour therapy, depression, inflammation, neurotransmitter, noradrenaline, randomised controlled trials, risk factors, serotonin, SSRI

Digital mental health intervention by the World Health Organization (WHO) found to lower anxiety and depression, with improvements maintained at 3‑month follow-up

July 5, 2022 by SharpBrains

WHO dig­i­tal men­tal health inter­ven­tion effec­tive in reduc­ing depres­sion among Syr­i­an refugees in Lebanon (press release):

A new dig­i­tal men­tal health inter­ven­tion, Step-by-Step, devel­oped by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) with the Nation­al Men­tal Health Pro­gramme (NMHP) at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Health Lebanon and oth­er part­ners, was effec­tive in reduc­ing depres­sion among Syr­i­an refugees in Lebanon, accord­ing to a study pub­lished in PLOS Med­i­cine. [Read more…] about Dig­i­tal men­tal health inter­ven­tion by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) found to low­er anx­i­ety and depres­sion, with improve­ments main­tained at 3‑month follow-up

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, depression, digital mental health, gratitude exercise, mental-disorders, positive self-talk, post-traumatic stress, stress-management, well-being

Update: Playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial than other forms of screentime like social media, watching videos/ TV

June 30, 2022 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to put your tem­po­ral lobes to good use 🙂

#1. Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV)

“Here, we esti­mat­ed the impact of dif­fer­ent types of screen time (watch­ing, social­iz­ing, or gam­ing) on children’s intel­li­gence while con­trol­ling for the con­found­ing effects of genet­ic dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tion and socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus … Broad­ly, our results are in line with research on the mal­leabil­i­ty of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties from envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, such as cog­ni­tive train­ing and the Fly­nn effect.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing! Hav­ing said that…

#2. Large neu­roimag­ing study finds social iso­la­tion to be an ear­ly indi­ca­tor of increased demen­tia risk

“Social inter­ac­tion is huge­ly impor­tant. One study found that the size of our social group is actu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the vol­ume of the orbitofrontal cor­tex (involved in social cog­ni­tion and emo­tion). But how many friends do we need? … It is hard to argue with the fact that humans are social ani­mals and gain enjoy­ment from con­nect­ing with oth­ers, what­ev­er age we are. But, as we are increas­ing­ly uncov­er­ing, it also cru­cial for the health of our cognition.”

#3. UC study finds near-trans­fer of cog­ni­tive train­ing to be nec­es­sary (yet not suf­fi­cient) for far-trans­fer, broad­er benefits

“Some peo­ple do very well in train­ing, such as play­ing a video game, but they don’t show near trans­fer, per­haps because they are using high­ly spe­cif­ic strate­gies,” said first author Anja Pahor … “For these peo­ple, far trans­fer is unlike­ly. By bet­ter under­stand­ing why this type of mem­o­ry train­ing or ‘inter­ven­tion’ works for some peo­ple but not oth­ers, we can move for­ward with a new gen­er­a­tion of work­ing-mem­o­ry train­ing games or use approach­es that are more tai­lored to indi­vid­u­als’ needs”

#4. Please help us recruit 30,000 adults for a UC Cit­i­zen Sci­ence project on cog­ni­tive training

“In our ongo­ing large-scale study (note: the one right above) we aim to recruit 30,000 adults who are moti­vat­ed and will­ing to help us bet­ter under­stand the fac­tors that under­lie learn­ing out­comes using a vari­ety of train­ing par­a­digms and out­come mea­sures. Our endeav­or will ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to the per­son­al­iza­tion of cog­ni­tive train­ing so that, hope­ful­ly, any­one who would like to improve their cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing will be able to choose the approach that may fit them best.” — researchers Susanne Jaeg­gi, Anja Pahor, Aaron Seitz @ UC Irvine/ Riverside

#5. Trend: Esports teams har­ness cog­ni­tive tests to bet­ter match play­er to task and to iden­ti­fy train­ing opportunities

Esports are bor­row­ing a page from Pro Sports’ book … we would­n’t be sur­prised to see the inverse tak­ing place too in just a few years.

#6. Dos and Don’ts of Ther­a­py on the Go: Nav­i­gat­ing the use of apps for men­tal health care

“For those with­out severe men­tal ill­ness, app-based ther­a­py may be help­ful in match­ing clients with a pro­fes­sion­al famil­iar with a range of prob­lems and stres­sors. This makes apps attrac­tive to those with anx­i­ety and mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion. They also appeal to peo­ple who wouldn’t ordi­nar­i­ly seek out office-based ther­a­py, but who want help with life issues such as mar­i­tal prob­lems and work-relat­ed stress.”

#7. AI-enabled chat­bot Wysa receives FDA Break­through Device des­ig­na­tion for patients with chron­ic pain, depres­sion and anxiety

Let’s talk!

#8. And here’s the Brain Teas­er: Ready to stim­u­late those neu­rons in your tem­po­ral lobes?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and fun summer!

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, brain health, brain-teaser, chronic pain, cognition, cognitive, cognitive-functioning, Cognitive-tests, Cognitive-Training, depression, emotion, FDA, mental health, mental health care, neuroimaging, social isolation, videogames, work-related stress, working-memory-training, Wysa

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