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Wow. Fas­ci­nat­ing three days last week. Some of our favorite moments and take-aways…

1. Dr. Tom Insel pro­vid­ed a spec­tac­u­lar overview of the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion in brain health and men­tal health. While we have his­tor­i­cal­ly failed to bend the curve as well as in oth­er areas of health, since “you can’t man­age what you can’t mea­sure”, new dig­i­tal and neu­ro­log­i­cal mon­i­tor­ing tech­nolo­gies are final­ly allow­ing us to rem­e­dy that fun­da­men­tal issue so we can iden­ti­fy prob­lems ear­ly and inter­vene ear­ly. Mul­ti­ple Speak­ers dur­ing the Sum­mit like Dr. Sri­jan Sen, Jan Samzelius and Louis Gagnon built upon Insel’s remarks with much research, tech and exam­ples.

2. Richard Han­bury won the 2019 Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test by pre­sent­ing a nov­el com­bi­na­tion of audio-visu­al stim­u­la­tion and neu­ro­feed­back train­ing to  alle­vi­ate chron­ic pain. Our “Sharp Tank” Judges were very impressed by Kate Sharadin work too, who came in as close sec­ond thanks to her dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics start­up.

3. Dr. Anna Wexler, Dr. Karen Rom­melfanger and Jacque­line Stud­er shared a fas­ci­nat­ing ses­sion on pri­va­cy and ethics, help­ing to bridge acad­e­mia and indus­try. We lack clear stan­dards and tax­onomies for neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, but they men­tioned sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to antic­i­pate and address the chal­lenges, and  encour­aged par­tic­i­pants to be aspi­ra­tional rather than “legal­is­tic” — by con­sid­er­ing diverse per­spec­tives, striv­ing for the widest ben­e­fit with the min­i­mum risks, and edu­cat­ing users, we can enable ben­e­fi­cial inno­va­tion in ways that reg­u­la­tion alone, as impor­tant as it is, prob­a­bly can­not.

4. Sev­er­al pre­sen­ters includ­ing Dr. Lew Lim, Ana Maiques and Nick­o­lai Vysokov dis­cussed the grow­ing field of adap­tive and per­son­al­ized neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion meth­ods. This emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy class deserves atten­tion and research, as it could mean a non-inva­sive, non-phar­ma­co­log­ic treat­ment for a vari­ety of con­di­tions. (For exam­ple, the FDA recent­ly cleared the use of the first non-drug treat­ment for ADHD thanks to the study dis­cussed here).

5. The theme of per­son­al­iza­tion was also dis­cussed by pre­sen­ters work­ing on an array of brain-based and cog­ni­tive ther­a­pies in schools, the work­place and con­sumer tech. Speak­ers like David Klein, Ariel Garten, and Dr. Gre­go­ry Rose dis­cussed emerg­ing find­ings and best prac­tices in the “real word” out­side of research labs and clin­i­cal set­tings.

6. Back to cut­ting-edge research, Dr. Nir Gross­man and Dr. Reza Zomor­ro­di unveiled excit­ing advances in non-inva­sive brain stim­u­la­tion while Dr. Peter White­house remind­ed us of the crit­i­cal impor­tance of soci­etal fac­tors which impact the indi­vid­ual brain and of com­mu­ni­ty-based inter­ven­tions that can help pro­mote brain health. Dr. Hag­it Alon dis­cussed fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to advance the “Neu­ro-Well­ness” field.

7. Dr. Dean­na Bel­sky, Dr. Tony Chang, Avery Bedows, Elan Tye and oth­er ven­ture investors through­out the Sum­mit dis­cussed the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges for a suc­cess­ful mar­riage of research and com­mer­cial­iza­tion,  nav­i­gat­ing the com­bi­na­tion of reli­able sci­ence and tech, fea­si­bil­i­ty, and mar­ket need.

8. We had an “Oprah moment” when Mar­cel Legrand at Total Brain promised to give away licens­es for all Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants to try out their cor­po­rate well­ness plat­form to bet­ter assess, under­stand and improve brain capac­i­ties.

9. Dr. Margie Mor­ris pre­sent­ed Left to Our Own Devices (MIT Press; 2018), a great book pro­vid­ing mul­ti­ple sto­ries and exam­ples on how to out­smart our smart­phones,  and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez pre­sent­ed his lat­est book El Cere­bro Que Cura (“The Brain That Heals;” Platafor­ma Edi­to­r­i­al; 2019), co-authored with Dr. Alvaro Pas­cual-Leone, which pro­pos­es a sim­ple but rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea — a healthy mind/brain is both the prod­uct and the dri­ver of over­all phys­i­cal health.

10. All this, and much more, hap­pened dur­ing 3-days and engag­ing up to 174 par­tic­i­pants in 18 coun­tries…and yet not even one per­son out­side the orga­niz­ing team had to jump on a flight and gen­er­ate tons of trav­el-relat­ed CO2 emis­sions…

Time to pro­tect those pre­cious nat­ur­al resources out­side AND inside our skulls 🙂

– Alvaro Fer­nan­dez is the CEO & Edi­tor-in-Chief of Sharp­Brains, and Bran­don Frank is a PhD can­di­date at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty with a con­cen­tra­tion in Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy.

Excit­ed to announce the three ground­break­ing star­tups that will get to pitch their idea and solu­tions at the Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test on May 8th, dur­ing Day 2 of the 2019 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (May 7–9th).

These are the select­ed Final­ists, togeth­er with their sum­ma­ry ele­va­tor pitch. Please join us in cel­e­brat­ing their work so far and in wish­ing them all the best at the pitch con­test!

Final­ist: eQui­l­i­ty

• Ele­va­tor pitch: Our vision is to devel­op dig­i­tal ther­a­pies heal­ing mind and body, lever­ag­ing inno­va­tion in con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er advanced, non-drug clin­i­cal inter­ven­tions for a wide range of con­di­tions in CNS and Inflam­ma­tion. We will com­bine con­sumer-fac­ing bio­elec­tron­ic devices with proven dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics in a mobile plat­form.
• Pre­sen­ter: Kate Sharadin, Founder & CEO

Final­ist: Brain­Patch

• Ele­va­tor pitch: We are devel­op­ing a brain-com­put­er com­put­er-brain inter­face that utilis­es lat­est tech­nolo­gies for deliv­er­ing safe, effec­tive and trust­wor­thy non-inva­sive brain stim­u­la­tion for appli­ca­tions rang­ing from focus and con­cen­tra­tion to med­i­ta­tion and beyond.
• Pre­sen­ter: Nick­o­lai Vysokov,  Co-Founder & CEO

Final­ist: Sana Health

• Ele­va­tor pitch: Sana is a neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion device for pain, addic­tion and anx­i­ety. The device uses puls­es of light and sound to guide the user into a deep state of relax­ation, and increase neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty. We have com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful tri­als in Opi­oid use dis­or­der and fibromyal­gia, and aim to pass FDA in Sep­tem­ber.
• Pre­sen­ter: Richard Han­bury, Founder & CEO

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Sanofi Backs Click Ther­a­peu­tics as Dig­i­tal Med­i­cines Gain Momen­tum (Xcon­o­my):

“Drug mak­ers are mak­ing more bets on the nascent field of dig­i­tal med­i­cine. The lat­est exam­ple: Click Ther­a­peu­tics announced Mon­day that it grabbed a $17 mil­lion invest­ment led by Sanofi Ven­tures, the Cam­bridge, MA-based ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of the French phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant. Read the rest of this entry »

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Time for Sharp­Brains’ eNewslet­ter, bring­ing you lat­est news around med­ica­tion, brain train­ing, sup­ple­ments, mind-wan­der­ing, dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics, wear­ables, and more — and also a few quick brain teasers to wrap-up.

New research:

• Con­sis­tent use of ADHD med­ica­tion may stunt growth by 2 inch­es, large study finds
• Mind-wan­der­ing may help enhance cre­ativ­i­ty, job per­for­mance and gen­er­al well-being, stud­ies show
• The ulti­mate in trans­fer from brain train­ing to real-world out­comes: Reduc­ing the risk of at-fault acci­dents by almost 50%

New thinking:

• AARP, TINA.org and the Nation­al Con­sumers League join forces to chal­lenge Pre­vagen mem­o­ry improve­ment claims
• Rein­vent­ing Brain Med­i­cine, phar­ma adopts dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics: Evi­dence-based videogames, smart­phone apps, and sen­sors
• For­get the Oscars — the Greater Good­ies hon­or ten films that high­light the growth mind­set, resilience, and more

New tools:

• Next in clin­i­cal prac­tice: Auto­mat­ed real-time detec­tion of seizures via wear­able EMG devices
• DARPA invests in non­sur­gi­cal neu­rotech­nolo­gies for even­tu­al use in healthy human sub­jects

Final­ly, we have a cou­ple of fun, quick brain teasers for you, and also a selec­tion of arti­cles to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week 2018.

Have a great spring,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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From app store to drug store, dig­i­tal health is redefin­ing pharma’s pipeline (STAT):

“The pitch­es always sound­ed promis­ing: A new soft­ware app could track glu­cose lev­els for peo­ple with dia­betes or soothe the brains of insom­ni­acs. Most phar­ma exec­u­tives would polite­ly smile and nod, but then park their mon­ey some­where else.

Not any­more. Read the rest of this entry »