Should doctors prescribe Leqembi (lecanemab) to women with early Alzheimer’s Disease? The evidence-based answer is probably No

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of inter­ven­tions for brain/ cognitive/ men­tal health plus a few brain teasers to test our per­cep­tion and cog­ni­tive skills. #1. Should doc­tors pre­scribe lecanemab (Leqem­bi) to women? The answer, giv­en avail­able evi­dence, is prob­a­bly No Huge (and most­ly over­looked) red flag regard­ing newly…

Read More

Smartphone-based cognitive behavioral therapy found to significantly decrease insomnia, substantially outperforming sleep education

Dig­i­tal Ther­a­py for Insom­nia More Effec­tive Than Sleep Edu­ca­tion, Study Finds (Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Man­aged Care): A smart­­phone-based, Chi­nese culture­–adapted dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py for insom­nia (DCBT‑I) appli­ca­tion improved insom­nia sever­i­ty com­pared with sleep edu­ca­tion, accord­ing to find­ings of a study pub­lished in JAMA Net­work Open. Researchers want­ed to study the effi­ca­cy of this DCBT‑I app compared…

Read More

APA: With digital mental health going mainstream, will/ should psychologists be able to “prescribe” interventions?

Men­tal health, meet ven­ture cap­i­tal (APA): Until recent­ly, men­tal health was a rel­a­tive blip on the radar of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists. But over the past few years, and par­tic­u­lar­ly since the onset of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, pri­vate investors have made a dra­mat­ic run for this space, pour­ing $3.1 bil­lion into men­tal health ven­tures by the third…

Read More

Could I be wrong? Exploring cognitive bias, curiosity, intellectual humility, and lifelong learning

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing eight time­ly sci­en­tif­ic and indus­try news plus a few fun teasers to appre­ci­ate our unique human brains. #1. Could I be wrong? Explor­ing research on cog­ni­tive bias, curios­i­ty, intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty, and life­long learn­ing “None of us thinks that our beliefs and atti­tudes are incor­rect; if we…

Read More

Click Therapeutics raises further $52M to build up digital therapeutics pipeline for depression, insomnia, smoking cessation and more

With Sanofi still on board, Click Ther­a­peu­tics clos­es $52M series B for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics in depres­sion, chron­ic pain and more (Fierce Biotech): Anoth­er medtech devel­op­er’s plans to cre­ate dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics to treat a wide range of ill­ness­es are click­ing into place, thanks to a third mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar invest­ment in Click Ther­a­peu­tics in bare­ly a year.

Read More

Study: Self-guided sleep app Sleepio, combined with standard care for depression and anxiety, delivers better outcomes than standard care alone

Study backs ben­e­fit of insom­nia DTx Sleepio on men­tal health (pharmapho­rum): The study – pub­lished in the jour­nal Behav­iour Research and Ther­a­py – test­ed the Sleepio app devel­oped by dig­i­tal health spe­cial­ist Big Health as an add-on to stan­dard NHS care for anx­i­ety and depres­sion under the improv­ing access to psy­cho­log­i­cal ther­a­pies (IAPT) pol­i­cy. Patients…

Read More