exercise

On cognitive training, muscle mass, neurostimulation, brain teasers, apps, and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & inno­va­tion news and a few fun teasers to test your work­ing memory.

#1. Study: Build­ing mus­cle mass helps delay cog­ni­tive decline beyond the val­ue of exer­cise itself

“Teas­ing out exact­ly how mus­cle helps the brain remains a chal­lenge. There are plen­ty of indi­rect links … But Dr. Chevalier’s results sug­gest there may be more direct mech­a­nisms too. One pos­si­bil­i­ty is the role of myokines, a set of hor­mone-like mol­e­cules pro­duced by mus­cle cells that can trav­el to the brain and influ­ence mood, learn­ing and oth­er cog­ni­tive func­tions. Greater mus­cle mass may also help keep blood glu­cose lev­els in check, pro­tect­ing the brain from damage.”

#2. Clin­i­cians and aca­d­e­mics should engage users when review­ing apps, study finds

“More than half of the app rat­ings showed dis­agree­ment between par­tic­i­pants and pro­fes­sion­als … Par­tic­i­pants par­tic­u­lar­ly val­ued cer­tain aspects of men­tal health apps, which appear to be over­looked by pro­fes­sion­al review­ers. These includ­ed func­tions such as the abil­i­ty to track and mea­sure men­tal health and pro­vid­ing gen­er­al men­tal health edu­ca­tion. The cost of apps was among the most impor­tant fac­tors for participants.”

#3. Com­bined tDCS neu­rostim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing found to improve work­ing mem­o­ry among old­er adults–especially those with low­er start­ing capacity

“… indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics influ­enced the out­come of com­bined cog­ni­tive train­ing and tDCS reg­i­mens, with the inter­ven­tion selec­tive­ly ben­e­fit­ing old-old adults with low­er work­ing mem­o­ry capac­i­ty. Future work should con­sid­er devel­op­ing indi­vid­u­al­ized treat­ments by con­sid­er­ing indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tive profiles.”

#4. Head­space Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of men­tal health

“I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe in the pow­er of mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion tools, but they can’t serve all men­tal health needs. And par­tic­u­lar­ly when someone’s in a state of acute anx­i­ety, acute depres­sion, they need access to pro­fes­sion­al, human services…We are build­ing out what I often call the mid­dle piece, the bridge that exists between the self-serve con­tent in the Head­space app and the text-based coach­ing, telether­a­py and telepsy­chi­a­try of the Gin­ger service.”

#5. Study: Prac­tic­ing grat­i­tude helps low­er phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress lev­els of the “express­er” AND the “receiv­er”

“The impli­ca­tion here is that you should let your grat­i­tude out when you feel it … That’s not to say that you should go around and make up grat­i­tude expres­sions for no rea­son. But, when you gen­uine­ly feel grat­i­tude, you should express it.” — Christo­pher Oveis, Direc­tor of the Empa­thy & Emo­tion Lab at UCSD

#6. Tak­ing your brain vitals: Sto­ries from a tech­no-opti­mist invent­ing the future of human performance

“My vision for DANA has always been that every time you go to the doc­tor, in addi­tion to tak­ing your height, weight, blood pres­sure, and tem­per­a­ture, they will take your DANA brain vital. When mea­sur­ing your brain health becomes sec­ond nature—as com­mon as check­ing your blood pressure—it will empow­er every­one, no mat­ter their age, to spot changes soon­er and take action.” — Cori Lath­an, CEO of Anthro­Tron­ix, in her great new book.

#7. UK agen­cies to review and update reg­u­la­tion of dig­i­tal men­tal health tools

Time­ly and impor­tant work to be done by the Med­i­cines and Health­care prod­ucts Reg­u­la­to­ry Agency (MHRA) and the Nation­al Insti­tute for Health and Care Excel­lence (NICE).

#8. Last but not least, let us share a few quick brain teasers to exer­cise your work­ing mem­o­ry … enjoy!

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and warm month of November

Study: Building muscle mass helps delay cognitive decline beyond the value of exercise itself

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A new rea­son to build mus­cle: brain health (The Globe and Mail):

… a recent study from researchers at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lished in the jour­nal JAMA Net­work Open, offers a new rea­son for con­tin­u­ing to work on build­ing mus­cle: It’s good for your brain, not just your biceps. Greater mus­cle mass, the results sug­gest, helps ward off cog­ni­tive decline in old­er adults beyond what you’d expect based on their exer­cise lev­els alone. [Read more…] about Study: Build­ing mus­cle mass helps delay cog­ni­tive decline beyond the val­ue of exer­cise itself

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

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The oth­er day, my friend Kristi­na told me that one evening she unin­ten­tion­al­ly locked her hus­band in a down­stairs part of their house. She had known he was down there, but while dis­tract­ed­ly lock­ing the door for the night, for­got com­plete­ly. She didn’t real­ize what she’d done until she saw a text from her hus­band the next morn­ing ask­ing her to please let him out.

“I couldn’t believe I did that to him,” she says. “I was stunned and alarmed that I had no aware­ness, in the moment or after­ward, of what I had done.” [Read more…] about Five ways to clear fog­gy brains and improve cog­ni­tive well-being

On physical activity, neuroplasticity, depression, screen time, neuromodulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time eight sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a few fun brain teasers.

#1. Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-mod­el­ing):

“Girls who spent less than an hour on screens and boys who spent less than 90 min­utes on screens were not neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by it. But at high­er amounts of screen time, their life sat­is­fac­tion dropped significantly—they were less hap­py with their lives, and it got worse the more time they spent … (the) study also found that teens who got more reg­u­lar exer­cise had greater life sat­is­fac­tion and few­er phys­i­cal com­plaints for both gen­ders. Not only that, the effects were large­ly unre­lat­ed to how much time a teen spent on screens, so that if teens exer­cised more, it could poten­tial­ly undo the dam­age to their well-being that went along with even six or eight hours of screen time.”

#2. Stud­ies find grow­ing evi­dence link­ing weight, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and depres­sion:

‘Obe­si­ty and depres­sion are both major glob­al health chal­lenges, and our study pro­vides the most robust evi­dence to date that high­er BMI caus­es depres­sion,’ said lead author Jess O’Loughlin. ‘Under­stand­ing whether phys­i­cal or social fac­tors are respon­si­ble for this rela­tion­ship can help inform effec­tive strate­gies to improve men­tal health and wellbeing.’

#3. Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and psy­chother­a­py:

Let’s hope! — “I think Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT) will con­tin­ue to be adapt­ed for more prob­lems, diag­noses, and con­di­tions. We will train many kinds of care­givers, teach­ers, front-line work­ers, police, and even politicians.”

#4. Ratio­nal­i­ty doesn’t equal effi­cien­cy: Cell­phone data shows how we nav­i­gate cities:

“We dis­cov­ered that the most pre­dic­tive mod­el – rep­re­sent­ing the most com­mon mode of city nav­i­ga­tion – was not the quick­est path, but instead one that tried to min­i­mize the angle between the direc­tion a per­son is mov­ing and the line from the per­son to their des­ti­na­tion … Evo­lu­tion is a sto­ry of trade-offs, not opti­miza­tions, and the cog­ni­tive load of cal­cu­lat­ing a per­fect path rather than rely­ing on the sim­pler point­ing method might not be worth a few saved min­utes. After all, ear­ly humans had to pre­serve brain pow­er for dodg­ing stam­ped­ing ele­phants, just like peo­ple today might need to focus on avoid­ing aggres­sive SUVs.”

#5. Trend: Har­ness­ing dig­i­tal tech to improve men­tal health and well­ness:

“Designed with the help of Dutch aca­d­e­m­ic Isabela Granic … the game is cen­tred around an avatar who stays in bed for the day and aims to relax play­ers by using sooth­ing music, mut­ed colours and self-care prac­tices. Think med­i­ta­tive tasks such as word games and guid­ed breath­ing exer­cis­es. There’s no way to win, com­pete or binge – in fact, it delib­er­ate­ly starts to feel bor­ing after a few min­utes of play, which dis­in­cen­tivizes mind­less scrolling. #Self­Care was an instant hit, gar­ner­ing half a mil­lion down­loads in its first six weeks with­out any advertising…”

#6. Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”:

“What made this proof-of-prin­ci­ple tri­al suc­cess­ful was the dis­cov­ery of a neur­al bio­mark­er – a spe­cif­ic pat­tern of brain activ­i­ty that indi­cates the onset of symp­toms – and the team’s abil­i­ty to cus­tomize a new DBS device to respond only when it rec­og­nizes that pat­tern. The device then stim­u­lates a dif­fer­ent area of the brain cir­cuit, cre­at­ing on-demand, imme­di­ate ther­a­py that is unique to both the patient’s brain and the neur­al cir­cuit caus­ing her illness.”

#7. Six guide­lines to nav­i­gate the Aduhelm con­tro­ver­sy and (hope­ful­ly) help patients with Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s Dis­ease:

“After ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ing that Aduhelm could be pre­scribed to any­one with demen­tia, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion now spec­i­fies that the pre­scrip­tion drug be giv­en to indi­vid­u­als with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment or ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s, the groups in which the med­ica­tion was studied.
Yet this nar­row­er rec­om­men­da­tion rais­es ques­tions. What does a diag­no­sis of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment mean? Is Aduhelm appro­pri­ate for all peo­ple with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, or only some? And who should decide which patients qual­i­fy for treat­ment: demen­tia spe­cial­ists or pri­ma­ry care physicians?”

#8. The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) hard­ens data secu­ri­ty rules for health apps and devices:

“With data breach­es on the rise, the FTC is look­ing to make health apps more account­able for telling patients when their data has been exposed.”

 

Wish­ing you and yours a sweet Hal­loween and a healthy month of November,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Study finds ultimate hack to protect teen brains from harmful screen time: Exercise (and good role-modeling)

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Recent­ly, the Wall Street Jour­nal ran an arti­cle about how Insta­gram was affect­ing teen men­tal health. In par­tic­u­lar, some inter­nal stud­ies at Face­book (which owns Insta­gram) appeared to con­firm that when teen girls used the site, they suf­fered poor­er body image and were at increased risk for depres­sion and eat­ing disorders.

But is social media use itself at fault for mak­ing teen men­tal health worse? While some stud­ies sug­gest it is, oth­ers paint a more nuanced pic­ture, find­ing it dif­fi­cult to pin­point prob­lems with screen time itself ver­sus oth­er fac­tors some­times asso­ci­at­ed with social media use that may reduce teen well-being—like cyber­bul­ly­ing or social iso­la­tion. Plus, cur­rent con­clu­sions are often based on data from a sin­gle point in time, which makes it hard to prove that extend­ed screen time actu­al­ly caus­es poor­er men­tal health.

Now, find­ings from an inter­na­tion­al study on teens (details below) add more to this debate and point toward poten­tial guide­lines for screen use. Focus­ing on over 577,000 ado­les­cents from 42 coun­tries across Europe and North Amer­i­ca, the study’s results sug­gest that we might not have to wor­ry about screen time in small­er dos­es, until it reach­es a cer­tain harm­ful lev­el, and that exer­cise can play a pro­tec­tive role no mat­ter how much time a teen spends on screens. [Read more…] about Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-modeling)

Promote brain plasticity and keep your mind at ease by taking your daily “exercise pill”

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As with many oth­er physi­cians, rec­om­mend­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty to patients was just a doc­tor chore for me – until a few years ago. That was because I myself was not very active. Over the years, as I picked up box­ing and became more active, I got first­hand expe­ri­ence of pos­i­tive impacts on my mind. I also start­ed research­ing the effects of dance and move­ment ther­a­pies on trau­ma and anx­i­ety in refugee chil­dren, and I learned a lot more about the neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy of exer­cise. [Read more…] about Pro­mote brain plas­tic­i­ty and keep your mind at ease by tak­ing your dai­ly “exer­cise pill”