iPhone

The new frontier in neurocognitive monitoring and dementia screening: the Apple Watch

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Bio­gen to Launch Pio­neer­ing Study to Devel­op Dig­i­tal Bio­mark­ers of Cog­ni­tive Health Using Apple Watch and iPhone (press release):

Bio­gen Inc. (Nas­daq: BIIB) today announced a new vir­tu­al research study, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Apple, to inves­ti­gate the role Apple Watch and iPhone could play in mon­i­tor­ing cog­ni­tive per­for­mance and screen­ing for decline in cog­ni­tive health includ­ing mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI). [Read more…] about The new fron­tier in neu­rocog­ni­tive mon­i­tor­ing and demen­tia screen­ing: the Apple Watch

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

Kaiser Permanente offers Calm mental fitness app at no cost to millions of members

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Med­i­ta­tion app Calm is now free for Kaiser Per­ma­nen­te’s mil­lions of mem­bers (CNBC):

Kaiser Per­ma­nente is try­ing to give its 12.4 mil­lion mem­bers a lit­tle bit of calm.

Start­ing Tues­day, the health-care provider is allow­ing patients to down­load the Calm med­i­ta­tion app for free as part of a way to help cus­tomers man­age anx­i­ety as they deal with the fall­out from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Calm is the most-pop­u­lar health and fit­ness app on Google-pow­ered devices and No. 2 on the iPhone, accord­ing to App Annie. Paid sub­scrip­tions nor­mal­ly cost $70 a year … Calm was see­ing surg­ing growth even before the coro­n­avirus forced Amer­i­cans to shel­ter in place and led to sky­rock­et­ing unem­ploy­ment. The San Fran­cis­co-based start-up was val­ued by investors last year at $1 bil­lion, two years after being named Apple’s app of the year back in 2017. The app has been down­loaded over 80 mil­lion times.

[Read more…] about Kaiser Per­ma­nente offers Calm men­tal fit­ness app at no cost to mil­lions of members

Update: Survey of scientific, technological & market trends revolutionizing Brain Health in our Digital Age

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—–

Time for a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter explor­ing the lat­est dig­i­tal brain health tech­nolo­gies, neu­ro­science find­ings and insights for  life­long brain health and men­tal health.

New tools:

New research:

New thinking:

 

Final­ly, here you are a fun brain teas­er to chal­lenge your frontal lobes.

 

We hope you enjoy all the neu­ro-stim­u­lat­ing reading 🙂

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Is your smartphone frying your brain? (Nope…but we better prevent constant distractions)

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brain-health-literacy—–

Is Your iPhone Real­ly Fry­ing Your Brain? Five Things You Need To Know (Forbes):

“…since the announce­ment of the first iPhone ten years ago this week, con­cerns about devices turn­ing their users into mind­less drones seem to have reached a fever pitch. So is the inter­net real­ly bad for your brain? Here’s what we know…“The aver­age IQ of the pop­u­la­tion at large has been increas­ing every 10 years,” says Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, who runs Sharp Brains, an applied neu­ro­science com­pa­ny. “IQ is not the only thing that mat­ters, but if some­thing was very, very harm­ful for our brains, we would have already noticed it there.”

(but)

“We have to be very care­ful with chil­dren,” Alvaro con­cedes. “[Smart devices] can cre­ate an addic­tion if they are exposed too ear­ly. Adults also have to pre­vent con­stant distractions.”

To learn more:

Combining Google Glass and mobile EEG headsets

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PND-With-Glass-Front-1Per­son­al Neu­ro Seeks to Com­bine Google Glass with EEG (Medgad­get):

“What do you get when you mix Google Glass and EEG? That’s the ques­tion that the peo­ple at Ottawa-based Per­son­al Neu­ro (Devices) are on their way to answer­ing… [Read more…] about Com­bin­ing Google Glass and mobile EEG headsets