depression

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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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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

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

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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!