Ginger

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

Headspace Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of mental health: Meditation, text-based coaching, teletherapy, telepsychiatry, and community

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Q&A: How Head­space Health’s acqui­si­tions alter its men­tal health prod­uct (Mobi­Health­News):

Head­space Health has revealed two acqui­si­tions this year, the lat­est com­ing ear­li­er this month when the dig­i­tal men­tal health com­pa­ny announced the pur­chase of men­tal well­ness app Shine. [Read more…] about Head­space Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of men­tal health: Med­i­ta­tion, text-based coach­ing, telether­a­py, telepsy­chi­a­try, and community

Headspace Health acquires AI-driven digital mental health start-up Sayana

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JPM 2022: Head­space Health grabs start­up Sayana to build out AI-based men­tal health tools (Fierce Healthcare):

Six months after the $3 bil­lion merg­er with Gin­ger, Head­space Health acquired Sayana, an AI-dri­ven men­tal health and well­ness company.

Sayana will expand Head­space Health’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide per­son­al­ized self-care con­tent to its 100 mil­lion users, exec­u­tives said … Head­space lever­ages AI to pow­er a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the care the com­pa­ny deliv­ers, [Rus­sell Glass, CEO, Head­space Health] said dur­ing the JPM con­fer­ence, includ­ing using nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing to extract infor­ma­tion from the chats, to sum­ma­rize coach notes and care infor­ma­tion and to mon­i­tor for sui­ci­dal­i­ty … [Read more…] about Head­space Health acquires AI-dri­ven dig­i­tal men­tal health start-up Sayana

Update: Why MDMA-assisted psychotherapy may become an FDA-approved treatment for PTSD within 2 years

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, shar­ing impor­tant brain/ men­tal health news plus a few fun opti­cal illu­sions to tease and appre­ci­ate our unique human minds.

#1. Why MDMA-assist­ed psy­chother­a­py may become an FDA-approved treat­ment for PTSD with­in 2 years

“We are a phar­ma­cist and physi­cian team who inves­ti­gate the ben­e­fits and harms asso­ci­at­ed with sub­stances of abuse like bath salts, phenibut, cannabis and syn­thet­ic mar­i­jua­na. Through this work we have become intrigued about the ther­a­peu­tic poten­tial for some psy­che­del­ic drugs in the treat­ment of myr­i­ad psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, from PTSD to major depres­sion … It is impor­tant to state that using ecsta­sy or mol­ly prod­ucts from the street would not help PTSD symp­toms because the MDMA needs be used along with care­ful­ly craft­ed psy­chother­a­py in a safe, con­trolled envi­ron­ment. Ecsta­sy or mol­ly prod­ucts pur­chased illic­it­ly nev­er spec­i­fy the exact amount of MDMA they con­tain, so it is impos­si­ble to dose it prop­er­ly for PTSD. Tak­ing too much MDMA or exer­cis­ing while tak­ing MDMA can cause heart attacks, strokes, seizures and arrhyth­mias and can dam­age mus­cles and kidneys.”

#2. Ten insights on human well-being and poten­tial from two giants we sad­ly lost in 2021: Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi and Ed Diener

“Your well-being can change: One com­mon notion with­in psy­chol­o­gy before the pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy move­ment was that indi­vid­u­als had a set hap­pi­ness point, and that this point did not change dras­ti­cal­ly. So why both­er try­ing to improve it, right? Diener helped to change that nar­ra­tive by find­ing that cer­tain sig­nif­i­cant events did in fact change well-being per­ma­nent­ly. This sug­gests that inter­ven­tions can have a last­ing impact, and has paved the way for pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gists to focus on apply­ing their research to improve the human condition.”

#3. Com­plex occu­pa­tions help pro­tect our brains from aging-relat­ed cog­ni­tive decline

“ … dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tive decline have been often observed in asso­ci­a­tion with edu­ca­tion or oth­er relat­ed to qual­i­ty of life. From our analy­sis it emerges that the type of work activ­i­ty also con­tributes to the dif­fer­ences in nor­mal and patho­log­i­cal cog­ni­tive aging”

#4. On brain fold­ing and fit­ting 86 bil­lion neu­rons inside our 1400 cc crania

“Under­stand­ing the mech­a­nisms behind brain fold­ing and con­nec­tiv­i­ty will pro­vide researchers with the knowl­edge foun­da­tion to uncov­er their role in devel­op­men­tal brain dis­or­ders. In the long term, clar­i­fy­ing the con­nec­tion between brain struc­ture and func­tion may lead to ear­ly diag­nos­tic tools for brain dis­eases … researchers like us have our work cut out for us as we con­tin­ue try­ing to deci­pher the mys­tery of the most com­plex known struc­ture in the universe.”

#5. Pear Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $175M and goes pub­lic via SPAC deal rais­ing the pro­file of pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal therapeutics

The Times They Are a‑Changin’ …

#6. Sol­era Health includes Gin­ger and eMind­ful to expand dig­i­tal men­tal health­care platform

“eMind­ful and Gin­ger join Solera’s curat­ed Men­tal and Behav­ioral Health Net­work, which already includ­ed lead­ing med­i­ta­tion, mind­ful­ness, and men­tal train­ing app, Head­space. Sol­era con­tin­ues to expand its suite of whole-per­son health solu­tions to sup­port health jour­neys across acu­ity lev­els and clin­i­cal personas.”

And here are two old­er posts which have remained among our Most Read in 2021:

#7. Eight Tips To Remem­ber What You Read

“Despite tele­vi­sion, cell phones, and Twit­ter, tra­di­tion­al read­ing is still an impor­tant skill. Whether it is school text­books, mag­a­zines, or reg­u­lar books, peo­ple still read, though not as much as they used to. One rea­son that many peo­ple don’t read much is that they don’t read well. For them, it is slow, hard work and they don’t remem­ber as much as they should … I sum­ma­rize below what I think it takes to read with good speed and comprehension.”

#8. Test your Brain with these 10 Opti­cal Illusions

One way to learn more about our visu­al sys­tem is to look at how we can trick it … give these ten illu­sions a try!

Wish­ing you and yours a Healthy & Pros­per­ous 2022,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Solera Health includes Ginger and eMindful to expand digital mental healthcare platform

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Sol­era expands men­tal health net­work with new part­ners Gin­ger and eMind­ful (Fierce Healthcare):

Sol­era Health, a plat­form that links peo­ple with a curat­ed col­lec­tion of health solu­tions, is adding men­tal health com­pa­nies Gin­ger and eMind­ful to its net­work of partners.

Gin­ger, a provider of on-demand vir­tu­al men­tal health care, and eMind­ful, which offers evi­dence-based mind­ful­ness pro­grams, will join Solera’s men­tal and behav­ioral health net­work, where an algo­rithm will con­nect patients with the pro­grams best suit­ed to their needs. [Read more…] about Sol­era Health includes Gin­ger and eMind­ful to expand dig­i­tal men­tal health­care platform

On cognitive reframing and biases, stress, mental health tech, Aduhelm backlash, Britney Spears, and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time nine sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try devel­op­ments to help pro­mote life­long brain and men­tal health.

#1. To low­er stress lev­els and improve prob­lem-solv­ing, prac­tice cog­ni­tive refram­ing instead of venting

“… vent­ing like­ly doesn’t soothe anger as much as aug­ment it. That’s because encour­ag­ing peo­ple to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bod­ies, strength­en­ing the neur­al path­ways for anger and mak­ing it eas­i­er to get angry the next time around. Stud­ies on vent­ing anger (with­out effec­tive feed­back), whether online or ver­bal­ly, have also found it to be gen­er­al­ly unhelp­ful … To get out of that, you can ask the per­son to step back and help you reframe your expe­ri­ence by ask­ing, “How should I think about this dif­fer­ent­ly?” or “What should I do in this situation?”

#2. Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health

“The new com­pa­ny would find it push­ing well beyond its cur­rent mind­ful­ness focus to, “pro­vide the full spec­trum of proven, effec­tive vir­tu­al sup­port – from mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion, to text-based behav­ioral health coach­ing, to video-based ther­a­py and psy­chi­a­try – for all types of patient populations.”

Ambi­tious move!

#3. How to read, under­stand and write great med­ical research

12 good tips for stu­dents and every­one else

#4. Vet­er­ans Affairs won’t cov­er Biogen’s new “Alzheimer’s drug” giv­en con­cerns over safe­ty and lack of evidence

Their inde­pen­dent review con­cludes that “giv­en the lack of evi­dence of a robust and mean­ing­ful clin­i­cal ben­e­fit and the known safe­ty sig­nal, we rec­om­mend against offer­ing this agent to patients with Alzheimer’s demen­tia (mild or oth­er­wise) or mild cog­ni­tive impairment.”

#5. Alzheimer’s & Demen­tia researchers chal­lenge FDA’s approval of Aduhelm giv­en lack of evi­dence for beta-amy­loid as a marker

A strong call to “learn how this reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ure occurred and to ensure that it doesn’t occur again”

#6. Debunk­ing four myths about deci­sion-mak­ing capac­i­ty to keep Brit­ney Spears and oth­ers safe

Address­ing the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy about con­ser­va­tor­ships, a USC Pro­fes­sor of Law, Psy­chol­o­gy, and Psy­chi­a­try shares a great arti­cle to debunk these all-too-com­mon myths

#7. Study exam­ines com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es (have you tried this brain teas­er?) and ways to mit­i­gate them

If you have not encoun­tered the “Lin­da brain teas­er” before, please give it a try! If you have, you’ll enjoy the new paper titled Tver­sky and Kahneman’s Cog­ni­tive Illu­sions: Who Can Solve Them, and Why?

#8. Inte­grat­ing music, move­ment and stroke reha­bil­i­ta­tion, MedRhythms rais­es $25M to devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize dig­i­tal therapeutic

Fas­ci­nat­ing approach to gait training.

#9. Neu­rotech start-up Paradromics rais­es $20M to address brain-relat­ed dis­or­ders via next-gen brain-com­put­er interfaces

Neu­ralink vs. Paradromics vs. non-inva­sive plat­forms — quite a stim­u­lat­ing space to track

 

Wish­ing you and yours a hap­py and healthy back-to-school and month of September,

The Sharp­Brains Team