mental health

BrainHealth Week starts today! Plus: dancing, personalized mental health, brain stimulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, annouc­ing the kick-off of Brain­Health Week and fea­tur­ing some stim­u­lat­ing resources and teasers.

#1. Brain­Health Week (Feb­ru­ary 20–24th) starts today:

Explore many fun events includ­ing a dai­ly text chal­lenge, a talk with the always great Dr. Tom Insel, and more!

#2. With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

Impor­tant arti­cle giv­en that “It typ­i­cal­ly takes twen­ty to forty years or more for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies to mean­ing­ful­ly ben­e­fit human life. We can­not wait that long.” — Wise words!

#3. Sin Salud Cere­bral, Ust­ed no tiene Salud –same arti­cle, in Span­ish, for extra men­tal stim­u­la­tion and for sharing 🙂

“En los últi­mos diez años, los neu­ro­ci­en­tifi­cos hemos des­cu­bier­to mucho acer­ca de cómo fun­ciona el cere­bro, cómo mejo­rar la salud y el fun­cionamien­to del cere­bro y la mente a lo largo de la vida, y cómo esto con­tribuye a nues­tra salud y bien­es­tar en gen­er­al. Únase a nosotros y asegúrese de que los mejores años de su cere­bro están aún por venir, recor­dan­do que: Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud.”

#4. Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

“(Danc­ing) gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ments than tread­mill walk­ing on one mea­sure of exec­u­tive func­tion and on pro­cess­ing speed, which is the time it takes to respond to or process infor­ma­tion. Com­pared with walk­ing, danc­ing was also asso­ci­at­ed with reduced brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus – a brain region that is key to mem­o­ry func­tion­ing and is par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Alzheimer’s dis­ease … We think that social danc­ing may be more ben­e­fi­cial than walk­ing because it is phys­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing – and there­fore strength­ens a wide net­work of brain regions.”

#5. Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

“To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.”

#6. Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

“GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets.”

#7. The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

“To put this into per­spec­tive, the like­li­hood of a seizure from rTMS (0.003%) is low­er than that asso­ci­at­ed with the use of anti­de­pres­sants and antipsy­chotics (0.1–1, 5%) … More­over, when such seizures occur they do so most­ly out­side the clinician’s office, by con­trast with rTMS (Per­era et al., 2016). For low inten­si­ty tDCS, tACS, tRNS seizure risk is com­plete­ly absent … As an organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NIBS clin­i­cians and pro­fes­sion­als from across Europe, we, the ESBS, there­fore dis­agree with this EU deci­sion and in par­tic­u­lar with the fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of that deci­sion to reclas­si­fy TMS and TES as inva­sive technologies”

Final­ly, a cou­ple of brain teasers to help you test your men­tal rota­tion cog­ni­tive skills:

#8. Can you read a map?

#9. Brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

Have a great Brain­Health Week!

Headspace Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of mental health: Meditation, text-based coaching, teletherapy, telepsychiatry, and community

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Q&A: How Head­space Health’s acqui­si­tions alter its men­tal health prod­uct (Mobi­Health­News):

Head­space Health has revealed two acqui­si­tions this year, the lat­est com­ing ear­li­er this month when the dig­i­tal men­tal health com­pa­ny announced the pur­chase of men­tal well­ness app Shine. [Read more…] about Head­space Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of men­tal health: Med­i­ta­tion, text-based coach­ing, telether­a­py, telepsy­chi­a­try, and community

Q&A with researcher Robb Rutledge on mental health, expectations, decision-making and, yes, holiday planning!

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Have you ever looked for­ward to a con­cert, beach vaca­tion, or par­ty only to find your­self not enjoy­ing it as much as you thought you would?

You may be suf­fer­ing from over­ly high expec­ta­tions, says psy­chol­o­gist Robb Rut­ledge of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. Rut­ledge and his col­leagues have been using smart­phone-based data col­lec­tion (via a free app called Hap­pi­ness Quest, where any­one can play short games and con­tribute to research) to see how our expec­ta­tions affect our future hap­pi­ness. Some of their find­ings point to nov­el approach­es for increas­ing our enjoy­ment of every­day life. [Read more…] about Q&A with researcher Robb Rut­ledge on men­tal health, expec­ta­tions, deci­sion-mak­ing and, yes, hol­i­day planning!

How much should you trust BetterHelp, Talkspace, Cerebral and other mental health start-ups touted by celebrities?

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When Pat Paulson’s son told her he was feel­ing anx­ious and depressed at col­lege, Paul­son went through her Blue Cross Blue Shield provider direc­to­ry and start­ed call­ing men­tal health ther­a­pists. No providers in the Wis­con­sin city where her son’s uni­ver­si­ty is locat­ed had open­ings. So she bought a month­ly sub­scrip­tion to Bet­ter­Help, a Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia, com­pa­ny that links peo­ple to ther­a­pists online.

Her son felt uncom­fort­able with his first Bet­ter­Help ther­a­pist. After wait­ing sev­er­al weeks, he saw a sec­ond ther­a­pist, whom he liked. But she wasn’t avail­able the fol­low­ing week. [Read more…] about How much should you trust Bet­ter­Help, Talk­space, Cere­bral and oth­er men­tal health start-ups tout­ed by celebrities?

Update: Playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial than other forms of screentime like social media, watching videos/ TV

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to put your tem­po­ral lobes to good use 🙂

#1. Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV)

“Here, we esti­mat­ed the impact of dif­fer­ent types of screen time (watch­ing, social­iz­ing, or gam­ing) on children’s intel­li­gence while con­trol­ling for the con­found­ing effects of genet­ic dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tion and socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus … Broad­ly, our results are in line with research on the mal­leabil­i­ty of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties from envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, such as cog­ni­tive train­ing and the Fly­nn effect.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing! Hav­ing said that…

#2. Large neu­roimag­ing study finds social iso­la­tion to be an ear­ly indi­ca­tor of increased demen­tia risk

“Social inter­ac­tion is huge­ly impor­tant. One study found that the size of our social group is actu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the vol­ume of the orbitofrontal cor­tex (involved in social cog­ni­tion and emo­tion). But how many friends do we need? … It is hard to argue with the fact that humans are social ani­mals and gain enjoy­ment from con­nect­ing with oth­ers, what­ev­er age we are. But, as we are increas­ing­ly uncov­er­ing, it also cru­cial for the health of our cognition.”

#3. UC study finds near-trans­fer of cog­ni­tive train­ing to be nec­es­sary (yet not suf­fi­cient) for far-trans­fer, broad­er benefits

“Some peo­ple do very well in train­ing, such as play­ing a video game, but they don’t show near trans­fer, per­haps because they are using high­ly spe­cif­ic strate­gies,” said first author Anja Pahor … “For these peo­ple, far trans­fer is unlike­ly. By bet­ter under­stand­ing why this type of mem­o­ry train­ing or ‘inter­ven­tion’ works for some peo­ple but not oth­ers, we can move for­ward with a new gen­er­a­tion of work­ing-mem­o­ry train­ing games or use approach­es that are more tai­lored to indi­vid­u­als’ needs”

#4. Please help us recruit 30,000 adults for a UC Cit­i­zen Sci­ence project on cog­ni­tive training

“In our ongo­ing large-scale study (note: the one right above) we aim to recruit 30,000 adults who are moti­vat­ed and will­ing to help us bet­ter under­stand the fac­tors that under­lie learn­ing out­comes using a vari­ety of train­ing par­a­digms and out­come mea­sures. Our endeav­or will ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to the per­son­al­iza­tion of cog­ni­tive train­ing so that, hope­ful­ly, any­one who would like to improve their cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing will be able to choose the approach that may fit them best.” — researchers Susanne Jaeg­gi, Anja Pahor, Aaron Seitz @ UC Irvine/ Riverside

#5. Trend: Esports teams har­ness cog­ni­tive tests to bet­ter match play­er to task and to iden­ti­fy train­ing opportunities

Esports are bor­row­ing a page from Pro Sports’ book … we would­n’t be sur­prised to see the inverse tak­ing place too in just a few years.

#6. Dos and Don’ts of Ther­a­py on the Go: Nav­i­gat­ing the use of apps for men­tal health care

“For those with­out severe men­tal ill­ness, app-based ther­a­py may be help­ful in match­ing clients with a pro­fes­sion­al famil­iar with a range of prob­lems and stres­sors. This makes apps attrac­tive to those with anx­i­ety and mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion. They also appeal to peo­ple who wouldn’t ordi­nar­i­ly seek out office-based ther­a­py, but who want help with life issues such as mar­i­tal prob­lems and work-relat­ed stress.”

#7. AI-enabled chat­bot Wysa receives FDA Break­through Device des­ig­na­tion for patients with chron­ic pain, depres­sion and anxiety

Let’s talk!

#8. And here’s the Brain Teas­er: Ready to stim­u­late those neu­rons in your tem­po­ral lobes?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and fun summer!

Large neuroimaging study finds social isolation to be an early indicator of increased dementia risk

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Why do we get a buzz from being in large groups at fes­ti­vals, jubilees and oth­er pub­lic events? Accord­ing to the social brain hypoth­e­sis, it’s because the human brain specif­i­cal­ly evolved to sup­port social inter­ac­tions. Stud­ies have shown that belong­ing to a group can lead to improved well­be­ing and increased sat­is­fac­tion with life.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly though, many peo­ple are lone­ly or social­ly iso­lat­ed. [Read more…] about Large neu­roimag­ing study finds social iso­la­tion to be an ear­ly indi­ca­tor of increased demen­tia risk