Genetics

The way we approach Mental Health today is broken beyond repair. The question is, what comes next, and how fast can we get there?

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The hid­den links between men­tal dis­or­ders (Nature):

In 2018, psy­chi­a­trist Oleguer Plana-Ripoll was wrestling with a puz­zling fact about men­tal dis­or­ders. He knew that many indi­vid­u­als have mul­ti­ple con­di­tions — anx­i­ety and depres­sion, say, or schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar dis­or­der. He want­ed to know how com­mon it was to have more than one diag­no­sis, so he got his hands on a data­base con­tain­ing the med­ical details of around 5.9 mil­lion Dan­ish citizens.

He was tak­en aback by what he found. Every sin­gle men­tal dis­or­der pre­dis­posed the patient to every oth­er men­tal dis­or­der — no mat­ter how dis­tinct the symp­toms. “We knew that comor­bid­i­ty was impor­tant, but we didn’t expect to find asso­ci­a­tions for all pairs,” says Plana-Ripoll, who is based at Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty in Denmark.

[Read more…] about The way we approach Men­tal Health today is bro­ken beyond repair. The ques­tion is, what comes next, and how fast can we get there?

Large study with twins highlights the limited role of genetics in mental health and the importance of effective early interventions for ADHD

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Mul­ti­ple stud­ies have indi­cat­ed that, on aver­age, youth with ADHD have poor­er out­comes in young adult­hood in mul­ti­ple areas com­pared to their unaf­fect­ed peers.

A lim­i­ta­tion of these stud­ies, how­ev­er, is that they have not typ­i­cal­ly dis­tin­guished between indi­vid­u­als whose ADHD per­sists into adult­hood from those where the con­di­tion remits. [Read more…] about Large study with twins high­lights the lim­it­ed role of genet­ics in men­tal health and the impor­tance of effec­tive ear­ly inter­ven­tions for ADHD

Lifestyle and neurotechnology over genetics

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Dear col­league,

It’s remark­able how quick­ly things are chang­ing, final­ly, in brain health and men­tal health — see for exam­ple what’s new with Inter­ax­on, Akili, Neu­raMetrix, Apple, Calm, Halo Neu­ro­science, Mind­strong Health, Novar­tis, Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, and life­long neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, all in the last 6 months!

Please enjoy the May edi­tion of Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter below, and con­sid­er join­ing the Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit this Decem­ber to dis­cuss the lat­est and help shape the next 🙂

New research:

New tools:

New thinking:

 

Have a great month of June,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Question: Do genes determine the fate of our brains?

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Answer: No, not even close. Thanks to life­long neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, our lifestyles are as impor­tant as our genes–if not more–in how our brains grow and our minds evolve.

Keep read­ing 20 Must-Know Facts To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty And Improve Brain Health over at The Cre­ativ­i­ty Post.

Mental stimulation over genetics: How to hold off Alzheimer’s Disease 8+ Years (even APOE4 carriers)

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Alzheimers DiseaseFeed­ing the Brain’s Curios­i­ty Helps Delay Alzheimer’s, Study Says (Bloomberg):

“Peo­ple genet­i­cal­ly prone to Alzheimer’s who went to col­lege, worked in com­plex fields and stayed engaged intel­lec­tu­al­ly held off the dis­ease almost a decade longer than oth­ers, a study found. [Read more…] about Men­tal stim­u­la­tion over genet­ics: How to hold off Alzheimer’s Dis­ease 8+ Years (even APOE4 carriers)

Scanning healthy brains to understand and enhance our minds

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myelinbrainThe Brain, in Exquis­ite Detail (The New York Times):

  • “Each of the 1,200 sub­jects whose brain data will form the final data­base will spend a good 10 hours over two days being scanned and doing oth­er tests. The sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cians will then spend at least anoth­er 10 hours ana­lyz­ing and stor­ing each person’s data to build some­thing that neu­ro­science does not yet have: a base­line data­base for struc­ture and activ­i­ty in a healthy brain that can be cross-ref­er­enced with per­son­al­i­ty traits, cog­ni­tive skills and genet­ics. And it will be online, in an inter­ac­tive map avail­able to all…The data­base and brain map are a part of the Human Con­nec­tome Project, a rough­ly $40 mil­lion five-year effort sup­port­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health…She said the cen­tral ques­tion the data might help answer was, “How do dif­fer­ences between you and me, and how our brains are wired up, relate to dif­fer­ences in our behav­iors, our thoughts, our emo­tions, our feel­ings, our experiences?”

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