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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 »

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Time for Sharp­Brains’ eNewslet­ter, bring­ing you lat­est news around med­ica­tion, brain train­ing, sup­ple­ments, mind-wan­der­ing, dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics, wear­ables, and more — and also a few quick brain teasers to wrap-up.

New research:

• Con­sis­tent use of ADHD med­ica­tion may stunt growth by 2 inch­es, large study finds
• Mind-wan­der­ing may help enhance cre­ativ­i­ty, job per­for­mance and gen­er­al well-being, stud­ies show
• The ulti­mate in trans­fer from brain train­ing to real-world out­comes: Reduc­ing the risk of at-fault acci­dents by almost 50%

New thinking:

• AARP, TINA.org and the Nation­al Con­sumers League join forces to chal­lenge Pre­vagen mem­o­ry improve­ment claims
• Rein­vent­ing Brain Med­i­cine, phar­ma adopts dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics: Evi­dence-based videogames, smart­phone apps, and sen­sors
• For­get the Oscars — the Greater Good­ies hon­or ten films that high­light the growth mind­set, resilience, and more

New tools:

• Next in clin­i­cal prac­tice: Auto­mat­ed real-time detec­tion of seizures via wear­able EMG devices
• DARPA invests in non­sur­gi­cal neu­rotech­nolo­gies for even­tu­al use in healthy human sub­jects

Final­ly, we have a cou­ple of fun, quick brain teasers for you, and also a selec­tion of arti­cles to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week 2018.

Have a great spring,

The Sharp­Brains Team

(A) The wear­able device placed on the brachial biceps mus­cles. (B, C) The wear­able device, which is con­nect­ed to the self-adhe­sive patch, con­tain­ing the record­ing elec­trodes and the ground elec­trode. (D) Remote con­trol of the device. (Epilep­tic seizure Detec­tor Devel­oped by Ictal­Care). Cred­it: Neu­rol­o­gy.

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Wear­able EMG Found to Detect Seizures (Neu­rol­o­gy Today):

“A new study demon­strates the fea­si­bil­i­ty of using a wear­able elec­tromyo­g­ra­phy device to detect ton­ic-clonic seizures…The Neu­rol­o­gy paper was among the first to demon­strate its results prospec­tive­ly, using a pre-spec­i­fied cut-off for deter­min­ing that a GTCS is occur­ring. And at nine sec­onds, its laten­cy in doing so (from the time of onset as mea­sured by an inde­pen­dent observ­er) is also among the fastest described so far, the study authors and inde­pen­dent experts not­ed… Read the rest of this entry »

Soft­ware engi­neer Kel­ly Cash­ion (right) adjusts a wire­less EEG head­set on research engi­neer Nilesh Powar. Cred­it: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton Research Insti­tute

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Bat­tling Addic­tion With Brain­pow­er (Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton press release):

“The Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton Research Insti­tute has won a $10,000 Ohio Opi­oid Tech­nol­o­gy Chal­lenge award for a pro­gram that will teach peo­ple with opi­oid addic­tions how to reduce their crav­ings by regain­ing con­trol of their brains.

“Using neu­ro­feed­back, we’ll work with our vol­un­teers to help them learn to reg­u­late activ­i­ty in the part of their brain asso­ci­at­ed with crav­ings and rewire some of those path­ways, allow­ing them to reduce their crav­ings and expe­ri­ence a more ‘nor­mal’ state even with­out opi­oids.” Read the rest of this entry »