heart-rate

FDA grants clearance for NightWare app designed to reduce PTSD-related nightmares

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FDA grants De Novo clear­ance to pre­scrip­tion Apple Watch app for night­mare dis­or­der (Mobi­Health News):

The FDA grant­ed Min­neapo­lis-based Night­Ware a De Novo clear­ance on Fri­day for its Apple Watch and iPhone app designed to improve the sleep qual­i­ty of those expe­ri­enc­ing night­mare dis­or­der and night­mares relat­ed to PTSD. [Read more…] about FDA grants clear­ance for Night­Ware app designed to reduce PTSD-relat­ed nightmares

UCLA launches major mental health study collecting & analyzing data from Apple wearables to better understand depression and anxiety

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Apple and UCLA kick off a three-year depres­sion study (CNBC):

UCLA on Tues­day said it is launch­ing a three-year study to bet­ter under­stand how fac­tors such as sleep, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, heart rate and dai­ly rou­tines impact symp­toms of depres­sion and anxiety.

UCLA is work­ing with Apple to design the study, which will use data col­lect­ed by the iPhone, Apple Watch and Bed­dit sleep-track­er … involves 150 par­tic­i­pants recruit­ed from among UCLA Health patients. From there, the next phas­es of the research will expand out to 3,000 par­tic­i­pants from both the hos­pi­tal and the stu­dent body. Study par­tic­i­pants will down­load an app onto their iPhones, then receive a Bed­dit sleep mon­i­tor and an Apple Watch, which they can use through­out the study.

[Read more…] about UCLA launch­es major men­tal health study col­lect­ing & ana­lyz­ing data from Apple wear­ables to bet­ter under­stand depres­sion and anxiety

Managing information flow based on user’s mental state and cognitive load: Key Neurotech Patent #19

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control presentation
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,874,127

This is anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing 2005 patent assigned to Microsoft, help­ing man­age the pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion based on user’s men­tal and phys­i­cal state and cog­ni­tive load (and, yes, desired lev­el of privacy).

U.S. Patent No. 6,874,127: Method and sys­tem for con­trol­ling pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion to a user based on the user’s condition.

  • Assignee(s): Microsoft Corporation
  • Inventor(s): Dan Newell, Ken­neth H. Abbott
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Hybrid
  • Issue Date: March 29, 2005

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘127 patent applies brain tech­nol­o­gy to infor­ma­tion man­age­ment with user mod­els that con­sid­er cog­ni­tive load and men­tal state in order to deter­mine how and what infor­ma­tion is pre­sent­ed to the user. [Read more…] about Man­ag­ing infor­ma­tion flow based on user’s men­tal state and cog­ni­tive load: Key Neu­rotech Patent #19

Study: Wisdom requires both higher heart rate variability and adopting a third-person perspective

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wise reasoning——-

Many cul­tures con­sid­er the human heart to be the seat of wis­dom. Now sci­en­tists are find­ing some evi­dence for this, though the real­i­ty may be more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems.

Pre­vi­ous research has sug­gest­ed that high­er heart rate vari­abil­i­ty (HRV)—the vari­abil­i­ty in the time between our heart­beats [Read more…] about Study: Wis­dom requires both high­er heart rate vari­abil­i­ty and adopt­ing a third-per­son perspective

Can biofeedback-based videogames help kids regulate anger and emotions?

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Video Game With Biofeed­back Teach­es Chil­dren to Curb Their Anger (Sci­ence Daily):

“Chil­dren with seri­ous anger prob­lems can be helped by a sim­ple video game that hones their abil­i­ty to reg­u­late their emo­tions, finds a pilot study at Boston Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal. Results were pub­lished online Octo­ber 24 in the jour­nal Ado­les­cent Psy­chi­a­try [Read more…] about Can biofeed­back-based videogames help kids reg­u­late anger and emotions?

Stress and Neural Wreckage: Part of the Brain Plasticity Puzzle

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Victoria Crater MarsEdi­tor’s Note: Below you have a very insight­ful arti­cle on stress by Gre­go­ry Kel­let, a researcher at UCSF. Enjoy!

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“My brain is fried, toast, fraz­zled, burnt out. How many times have you said or heard one ver­sion or anoth­er of these state­ments. Most of us think we are being fig­u­ra­tive when we utter such phras­es, but research shows that the bio­log­i­cal con­se­quences of sus­tained high lev­els of stress may have us being more accu­rate than we would like to think.

Crash Course on Stress 

Our bod­ies are a com­plex bal­anc­ing act between sys­tems work­ing full time to keep us alive and well. This bal­anc­ing act is con­stant­ly adapt­ing to the myr­i­ad of changes occur­ring every sec­ond with­in our­selves and our envi­ron­ments. When it gets dark our pupils dilate, when we get hot we sweat, when we smell food we sali­vate, and so forth. This con­stant bal­anc­ing act main­tains a range of sta­bil­i­ty in the body via change; and is often referred to as allosta­sis. Any change which threat­ens this bal­ance can be referred to as allo­sta­t­ic load or stress.

Allo­sta­t­ic load/stress is part of being alive. For exam­ple just by get­ting up in the morn­ing, we all expe­ri­ence a very impor­tant need to increase our heart rate and blood pres­sure in order to feed our new­ly ele­vat­ed brain. Although usu­al­ly man­age­able, this is a change which the body needs to adapt to and, by our def­i­n­i­tion, a stressor.

Stress is only a prob­lem when this allo­sta­t­ic load becomes over­load. When change is exces­sive or [Read more…] about Stress and Neur­al Wreck­age: Part of the Brain Plas­tic­i­ty Puzzle