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digital therapeutics

Building cognitive reserve helps delay memory and thinking decline regardless of genetic or childhood markers

August 30, 2022 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain news and a few fun brain teasers to test your per­cep­tu­al and cog­ni­tive skills.

#1. Study: Build­ing cog­ni­tive reserve helps delay mem­o­ry and think­ing decline regard­less of genet­ic or child­hood markers

“While our child­hood can influ­ence our mem­o­ry and think­ing skills lat­er in life, this research under­lines the mes­sage that it’s nev­er too late to take action to sup­port cog­ni­tive health.” — Dr Sara Imari­sio, Head of Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives at Alzheimer’s Research UK

#2. Ful­ly-auto­mat­ed analy­sis of voice recordings–from neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests–found to help dif­fer­en­ti­ate nor­mal cog­ni­tion from demen­tia and mild cog­ni­tive impairment

As the researchers point out, “The pro­posed approach offers a ful­ly auto­mat­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of MCI and demen­tia based on a record­ed neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal test, pro­vid­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op a remote screen­ing tool that could be adapt­ed eas­i­ly to any language”

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

“Depres­sion is usu­al­ly man­aged effec­tive­ly with anti­de­pres­sants or by talk­ing treat­ments, such as cog­ni­tive behav­iour ther­a­py, despite an incom­plete under­stand­ing of the con­di­tion and how these treat­ments work. We can­not know if treat­ments address the under­ly­ing prob­lem because we haven’t yet iden­ti­fied what that is. To imply that SSRI anti­de­pres­sants may not be worth­while is to mis­un­der­stand an evi­dence base that says the very opposite.”

#4. Q&A with researcher Robb Rut­ledge on men­tal health, expec­ta­tions, deci­sion-mak­ing and hol­i­day planning

“Recent events have a big­ger impact on hap­pi­ness than ear­li­er events, so it can be a good strat­e­gy to save a cou­ple things that have a chance of a big pos­i­tive sur­prise for the last few days of your trip. It could be a nov­el expe­ri­ence that a lot of peo­ple like but you’re not sure what to expect … It prob­a­bly isn’t anoth­er muse­um. Just make sure it’s not some­thing that could get rained out”

#5. How much should you trust Bet­ter­Help, Talk­space, Cere­bral and oth­er men­tal health start-ups tout­ed by celebrities?

“Many U.S. adults aren’t able to find help because of a short­age of ther­a­pists. Near­ly 40% are strug­gling with men­tal health or sub­stance abuse issues, accord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Prevention.
So mil­lions of peo­ple are turn­ing to online companies…”

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

As acknowl­edged “The main lim­i­ta­tion of the cur­rent tri­al is the high dropout rate”, but con­text is key: “Most dis­placed peo­ple with men­tal dis­or­ders in low- and mid­dle-income coun­tries do not receive effec­tive care, and their access to care has dete­ri­o­rat­ed dur­ing the Coro­n­avirus Dis­ease 2019 (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic”. — Inno­va­tion does­n’t need to be per­fect, just better/ cheaper/ more acces­si­ble than alternatives.

#7. Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pio­neer Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs goes pub­lic, rais­ing $150M+; trades down 49% first day

Quite dif­fi­cult mar­ket envi­ron­ment for an impor­tant evi­dence-based inno­va­tion — good news is they raised enough funds to test approach in the real world over the next 12–24 months. Let’s see!

#8. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) meets Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT): Wysa rais­es $20M to scale up men­tal health chatbot

“Typ­i­cal­ly, access to a men­tal health ser­vice is gat­ed. It is restrict­ed by some kind of diag­no­sis — say­ing only if you are severe enough you will be able to get to speak to a ther­a­pist because obvi­ous­ly ther­a­py is expen­sive and somebody’s got to pay for it” … the app offers “ear­ly engage­ment and a safe space where peo­ple can come in and anony­mous­ly just talk about what’s both­er­ing them.”

Final­ly, here are three quick brain teas­er games to test your per­cep­tu­al and cog­ni­tive skills. Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing month of September!

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers, Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Akili Interactive Labs, antidepressants, cognitive behaviour therapy, cognitive-health, cognitive-reserve, dementia, digital mental health, digital therapeutics, mild-cognitive-impairment, neuropsychological-tests, normal cognition

Digital therapeutics pioneer Akili Interactive Labs goes public, raising $150M+; trades down 49% first day

August 23, 2022 by SharpBrains

Akili Inter­ac­tive is the lat­est com­pa­ny to go pub­lic via SPAC deal (Boston Busi­ness Journal):

Boston’s Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs Inc. is the lat­est Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny to go pub­lic after com­plet­ing a reverse merg­er — in a year of mar­ket tur­moil that saw few local firms pass­ing the thresh­old between pri­vate and pub­lic status.

Shares of Akili start­ed trad­ing on Mon­day on the Nas­daq Cap­i­tal Mar­ket under the new tick­er sym­bol “AKLI” after the com­pa­ny com­plet­ed its pre­vi­ous­ly announced reverse merg­er with Social Cap­i­tal Suvret­ta Hold­ings Corp. I (Nas­daq: DNAA), a spe­cial pur­pose acqui­si­tion com­pa­ny, or SPAC. [Read more…] about Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pio­neer Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs goes pub­lic, rais­ing $150M+; trades down 49% first day

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Akili Interactive Labs, AKLI, cognitive, Cognitive-impairment, digital medicine, digital therapeutics, DNAA, EndeavorRx, neuropsychiatric, neuropsychiatric diseases, SPAC

Artificial Intelligence (AI) meets Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Wysa raises $20M to scale up mental health chatbot

July 19, 2022 by SharpBrains

Wysa rais­es $20 mil­lion to expand its ther­a­pist chat­bot into a wider set of men­tal health ser­vices (TechCrunch):

Wysa, a pop­u­lar men­tal health app orig­i­nal­ly found­ed in India around an AI chat­bot that helps users talk through their feel­ings, has raised $20 mil­lion in a Series B fund­ing round to expand its busi­ness on the heels of hit­ting 4.5 mil­lion users in 65 countries.

The all-equi­ty round is led by India’s dig­i­tal health-focused ven­ture cap­i­tal fund HealthQuad, with par­tic­i­pa­tion also from British Inter­na­tion­al Invest­ment (BII), the U.K.’s devel­op­ment finance insti­tu­tion. The plan will be to use the mon­ey to dou­ble down on its home mar­ket as well as the U.S. and U.K, where it already has respec­tive­ly had approvals from the FDA and the Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) and is used by the lat­ter as part of its online men­tal health ser­vices. [Read more…] about Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) meets Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT): Wysa rais­es $20M to scale up men­tal health chatbot

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: AI chatbot, British International Investment, CBT, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, digital therapeutics, HealthQuad, mental health app, therapist, WhatsApp, Wysa

On mental fitness beliefs, lifestyles and new tools like apps, digital therapeutics, virtual reality, “brain age gaps” and more

May 31, 2022 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun cou­ple of math brain teasers.

#1. Study on the “ABCs of Men­tal Health” finds that sim­ply believ­ing you can improve men­tal well­be­ing helps actu­al­ly improve it

Beliefs mat­ter.

#2. “Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics” vs. “Men­tal health apps”: A grow­ing debate on stan­dards, reg­u­la­tion and efficacy

Def­i­n­i­tions matter.

#3. How ’sleep­ing on it’ can help the pre­frontal cor­tex reg­u­late emo­tion­al respons­es, mak­ing us feel bet­ter in the morning

Sleep mat­ters.

#4. NICE in the UK issues rec­om­men­da­tion for Sleepio app, the dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py for insom­nia by Big Health

Inno­va­tion mat­ters: “At a price of £45 per per­son, Sleepio is cost sav­ing com­pared with usu­al treat­ment in pri­ma­ry care. This is based on an analy­sis of pri­ma­ry care resource use data before and after Sleepio was intro­duced in 9 GP prac­tices. Health­care costs were low­er at 1 year, most­ly because of few­er GP appoint­ments and sleep­ing pills prescribed.”

#5. New book pro­vides prac­ti­cal guid­ance for women (and men) to rebal­ance our lifestyles and build Cog­ni­tive Reserve

Lifestyle mat­ters: “The more com­plex our lives are, the more we need sim­ple things that can ground us and help us to be more resilient – to rebal­ance and rebal­ance and rebal­ance again. Build­ing the men­tal mus­cles to find bal­ance when one gets off bal­ance is a crit­i­cal skill thrive and to build cog­ni­tive reserve in our fast-chang­ing times. As our month­ly gath­er­ings showed us over the years, prac­tic­ing rebal­ance in good com­pa­ny not only rein­forces neur­al path­ways and capa­bil­i­ties but also strength­ens the bonds of trust and con­fi­dence that are invalu­able to build a healthy envi­ron­ment to thrive in.”

#6. Study: Auto­mat­ed VR psy­chother­a­py can help reduce anx­i­ety and dis­tress, espe­cial­ly among those with psy­chosis and severe agoraphobia

One of the ben­e­fits of VR is that patients know they are in a sim­u­la­tion, which enables “psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tance from prob­lem­at­ic reac­tions,” the study authors wrote. “The process of find­ing the best uses and imple­men­ta­tion meth­ods of this immer­sive tech­nol­o­gy at scale in men­tal health is only beginning.”

#7. Fund­ing for dig­i­tal health start-ups, espe­cial­ly in men­tal health, fall sub­stan­tial­ly in Q1’22

“While all tech sec­tors received small­er fund­ing totals than the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, dig­i­tal health plunged much fur­ther than oth­ers did … investor inter­est in men­tal health tech wavered as the mar­ket and pub­lic com­pa­nies like Talk­space and Cere­bral come under scrutiny.”

#8. Deep learn­ing mod­el built on neu­roimag­ing data iden­ti­fies “Brain Age Gaps” as mark­ers of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD)

“The main find­ing of our study is that we could indeed find evi­dence that high brain age gap is behav­ing as an accel­er­at­ed brain aging bio­mark­er.” — Dr. David Jones, neu­rol­o­gist at Mayo Clinic

Final­ly, a cou­ple fun brain teasers to help you flex your math/ cog­ni­tive men­tal muscles:

#9. Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?

#10. Math brain teas­er requir­ing no math — just per­cep­tion and cognition

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing June!

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: apps, biomarker, brain age gaps, brain aging biomarker, Brain Teasers, brain-aging, cognitive, digital health, digital therapeutics, mental health, mental muscles, mental-fitness, sleep, virtual-reality

“Digital therapeutics” vs. “Mental health apps”: A growing debate on standards, regulation and efficacy

May 9, 2022 by SharpBrains

The effi­ca­cy of Men­tal Health Apps (phar­mafo­rum):

In Jan­u­ary, PLOS Dig­i­tal Health pub­lished a study which claimed that there’s “sparse” data to sup­port the effi­ca­cy of most men­tal health apps.

In their meta-analy­sis of pub­lished stud­ies, the authors found uni­ver­sal defi­cien­cies and con­clud­ed that there’s no con­vinc­ing evi­dence that app-based inter­ven­tions deliv­er mean­ing­ful out­comes. With­out dig­ging fur­ther, one might think the cur­rent case for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics is weak.

I reviewed all 14 meta-analy­ses includ­ed in the study and found the analy­sis to be accu­rate, but incom­plete. [Read more…] about “Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics” vs. “Men­tal health apps”: A grow­ing debate on stan­dards, reg­u­la­tion and efficacy

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Big Health, digital health, digital therapeutics, Digital Therapeutics Alliance, DTx, FDA, Happify Health, mental health apps, mental illness, meta-analysis, Orexo, PEAR, PLOS Digital Health

News on how the brain changes over time, how to clear foggy brains, how to multitask (or not), and more

April 28, 2022 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to test the lim­its of multi-tasking.

#1. Col­lab­o­ra­tive neu­roimag­ing ini­tia­tive Brain­Chart helps chart how brains change across the lifes­pan. Among the many fas­ci­nat­ing findings:

“The vol­ume of grey mat­ter (brain cells) increas­es rapid­ly from mid-ges­ta­tion onwards, peak­ing just before we are six years old. It then begins to decrease slowly.”
“The vol­ume of white mat­ter (brain con­nec­tions) also increased rapid­ly from mid-ges­ta­tion through ear­ly child­hood and peaks just before we are 29 years old.”
“The decline in white mat­ter vol­ume begins to accel­er­ate after 50 years.”

#2. Five ways to clear fog­gy brains and improve cog­ni­tive well-being

“Become more inten­tion­al about con­sum­ing news … news­pa­pers, TV news pro­grams, and many social media sites make their mon­ey by grab­bing your attention—and noth­ing grabs atten­tion bet­ter than neg­a­tive news. But repeat­ed expo­sure to crises wreaks hav­oc with our well-being and can lead to bad deci­sion making.”

#3. As announced in our pre­vi­ous e‑newsletter, the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at UT-Dal­las host­ed a talk titled Nav­i­gat­ing the Brain Health Mar­ket with Álvaro Fer­nán­dez Ibáñez on April 21st. We had over a thou­sand par­tic­i­pants, hun­dreds of com­ments and a superb Q&A at the end — you can enjoy the full ses­sion record­ing HERE, over at YouTube.

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

“Our study shows that it’s pos­si­ble to map the diverse and wild­ly sub­jec­tive psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ences to spe­cif­ic regions in the brain. These insights may lead to new ways to com­bine exist­ing or yet to be dis­cov­ered com­pounds to pro­duce desired treat­ment effects for a range of psy­chi­atric conditions.”

#5. Altoi­da rais­es fur­ther $14 mil­lion to “democ­ra­tize dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive assess­ment at scale” via aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) and AI

“Through an app down­loaded to a patient’s own smart­phone or tablet, Altoida’s tech first offers up a 10-minute test. A vari­ety of Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR)-powered exer­cis­es mea­sure 11 areas of the brain that have been linked to Alzheimer’s. The video-game-like activ­i­ties ask users to hide and relo­cate vir­tu­al objects around the room, sim­u­late a fire evac­u­a­tion and search for vir­tu­al items while a sound con­tin­u­ous­ly plays .. The result­ing report high­lights symp­toms of cog­ni­tive decline—such as hand and gait errors, eye track­ing, pupil dila­tion and more—and pro­vides a score of the like­li­hood that they’ll devel­op Alzheimer’s with­in the next year.”

#6. Geisinger and Eisai to test real-world valid­i­ty of AI-pow­ered Pas­sive Dig­i­tal Mark­er (PDM) in detect­ing ear­ly cog­ni­tive impair­ment and dementia

“As an imple­men­ta­tion sci­en­tist, it is always excit­ing to have oth­er sci­en­tists eval­u­ate the repro­ducibil­i­ty of the per­for­mance of our pas­sive dig­i­tal mark­er in very dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions,” said Malaz Bous­tani, M.D., Richard M. Fair­banks Pro­fes­sor of Aging Research at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty. “Repro­ducibil­i­ty is the cor­ner­stone of sci­en­tif­ic progress.”

#7. Debate: Will dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics gain the required lev­els of aware­ness, adop­tion, reim­burse­ment and ful­fill­ment to become sustainable?

“There’s still a lot of foun­da­tion­al work that needs to be done,” said Maya Desai, direc­tor of life sci­ences for Guide­house. “There’s a lot of behav­ioral change that needs to hap­pen across the stake­hold­ers and their mind­sets to think about dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics as a cat­e­go­ry of its own.”

#8. And, yes, here’s the quick brain teas­er to test the lim­its of multitasking

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing May … Sum­mer is Coming.

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Altoida, brain-cells, brain-health-market, BrainChart, cognitive well being, digital therapeutics, Eisai, foggy brains, Geisinger, grey-matter, neuroimaging, psychedelic, psychiatric conditions, white-matter

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