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Although stim­u­lant med­ica­tions are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be a safe and effec­tive treat­ment for ADHD, not all chil­dren ben­e­fit from this approach. Many par­ents are reluc­tant to begin their child on med­ica­tion and some chil­dren expe­ri­ence unac­cept­able side affects.

For these rea­sons, devel­op­ing safe and effec­tive alter­na­tive treat­ments for ADHD remains a pri­or­i­ty. Trigem­i­nal nerve stim­u­la­tion (TNS) is an alter­na­tive approach that was recent­ly test­ed in a dou­ble-blind, sham-con­trolled study. Read the rest of this entry »

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Dear read­er,

Time for Sharp­Brains month­ly e‑newsletter, dis­cussing the lat­est inno­va­tions for brain health and men­tal health, and open­ing in this occa­sion with an impor­tant wake-up call.

New research:

• Only 5% of US chil­dren ages 8–11 fol­low screen time, sleep and exer­cise guide­lines rec­om­mend­ed for brain devel­op­ment
• Neu­ro­feed­back or med­ica­tion to treat ADHD?
• New study rein­forces need for proac­tive cog­ni­tive mon­i­tor­ing after heart surgery
• One-week brain train­ing can increase cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty and reduce OCD symp­toms

New tools:

• Tran­scra­nial Direct Cur­rent Stim­u­la­tion shows ear­ly promise to ame­lio­rate depres­sion, espe­cial­ly if com­bined with oth­er ther­a­pies and dosage opti­mized
• 10-minute cog­ni­tive test MoCA helps pre­dict long-term motor, cog­ni­tive and mor­tal­i­ty out­comes after stroke
• The Ontario Brain Insti­tute selects 6 neu­rotech start-ups for ONtre­pre­neurs pro­gram
• Antic­i­pat­ing eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of DARPA’s neu­rotech­nol­o­gy push

New thinking:

• Time to adopt Mind­ful­ness-Based Cog­ni­tive Ther­a­py (MBCT) as a pub­lic health inter­ven­tion to ease depres­sion?
• Towards a new cul­ture of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness
• Best pre­dic­tor of sus­tained weight-loss? Pre­frontal cor­tex acti­va­tion
• Helius Med­ical and HealthTech Con­nex part­ner to devel­op neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty clin­ics in Cana­da

Hap­py Hal­loween and have a great month of Novem­ber,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Neu­ro­feed­back (NF) is an approach for treat­ing ADHD in which indi­vid­u­als receive real-time feed­back on their brain­wave activ­i­ty and taught to alter their typ­i­cal EEG pat­tern to one that is con­sis­tent with a more focused and atten­tive state.

While con­sid­er­able research sup­ports the effec­tive­ness of neu­ro­feed­back for many chil­dren with ADHD, rel­a­tive­ly few stud­ies have direct­ly com­pared neu­ro­feed­back to ADHD med­ica­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

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Why tech­nol­o­gy — not med­ica­tion — is the future of treat­ing old­er adults with depres­sion (McK­night’s Long-term Care News):

“The go-to treat­ment for many cas­es of depres­sion is med­ica­tion.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this treat­ment option can cause as many issues as the prob­lem it is try­ing to solve. Anti­de­pres­sants can put res­i­dents at greater risk of falls, neg­a­tive health com­pli­ca­tions and oth­er poor con­di­tions. Some stud­ies indi­cate that anti­de­pres­sants may not be effec­tive for most old­er Amer­i­cans. Read the rest of this entry »

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Giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of exist­ing evi­dence-based ADHD treat­ments, i.e., stim­u­lant med­ica­tion and behav­ior ther­a­py — research on nov­el inter­ven­tion approach­es con­tin­ues to be impor­tant.

Cog­ni­tive train­ing is one such approach that has been sug­gest­ed as a poten­tial adjunct or even replace­ment for med­ica­tion treat­ment. While cog­ni­tive train­ing takes dif­fer­ent forms, e.g., com­put­er­ized atten­tion train­ing, work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing, the basic idea is that by repeat­ed­ly prac­tic­ing cog­ni­tive tasks relat­ed to atten­tion, one’s abil­i­ty to focus and attend will improve. In oth­er words, Read the rest of this entry »