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Decod­ing the Brain Goes Glob­al With the Inter­na­tion­al Brain Ini­tia­tive (Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Hub):

“… it’s per­haps fit­ting that mankind is now unit­ing to under­stand the organ that fun­da­men­tal­ly makes us human: our brain. First envi­sioned in 2016 through a series of dis­cus­sions on the “grand chal­lenges” in neu­ro­science at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, the Inter­na­tion­al Brain Ini­tia­tive (IBI) “came out” this week in a for­ward-look­ing paper in Neu­ron.

Rather than each coun­try for­mu­lat­ing their own brain projects inde­pen­dent­ly, the project argues, it’s high time for the world to come togeth­er and share their find­ings, resources, and exper­tise across bor­ders. By unit­ing efforts, Read the rest of this entry »

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These 10 Euro­pean tech star­tups want to help you improve your men­tal fit­ness (Sil­i­con Canals):

“Accord­ing to a report by WHO Euro (World Health Organ­i­sa­tion Europe), in many west­ern coun­tries, men­tal health dis­or­ders are the major cause of dis­abil­i­ty, account­ing for 30% to 40% of chron­ic sick leaves, and cost­ing near­ly 3% of GDP. In addi­tion to this, Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Maryam Shanechi. Cred­it: USC Viter­bi

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Is This the Future of Men­tal Health? (USC Viter­bi School of Engi­neer­ing):

“Brain–machine inter­faces (BMIs) pro­vide a direct path­way to the brain to trans­late brain sig­nals into actions … Below, Shanechi (Note: Maryam Shanechi, PhD, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal and com­put­er engi­neer­ing) answers some ques­tions about her work and what the future might hold for our under­stand­ing and treat­ment of men­tal dis­or­ders.

What poten­tial does this hold for the future not just of men­tal health, but of under­stand­ing our brains as a whole?

Neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­or­ders are a major cause of dis­abil­i­ty world­wide with depres­sive dis­or­ders being the most dis­abling among them. About 30% of major depres­sion patients are treat­ment-resis­tant – that’s about 5 mil­lion peo­ple in the US alone. Read the rest of this entry »

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When: Novem­ber 15–16th, 2019

Where: Elks Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA 94306

What: The Trans­for­ma­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Con­fer­ence is an inspir­ing con­fer­ence focused on tech for men­tal health, emo­tion­al well­be­ing, and human flour­ish­ing, at the inter­sec­tion of neu­ro­science, psy­chol­o­gy, tech, entre­pre­neur­ship, and inno­va­tion. It fea­tures expo­nen­tial tech­nolo­gies like AI, AR/VR/XR, net­works and sen­sors, biotech, neu­ro­feed­back, robot­ics and more to build tech to enable human well­be­ing at scale. Read the rest of this entry »

Our newest #NAM­Per­spec­tives paper out­lines the eight key actions need­ed to scale the use of men­tal health tech­nol­o­gy in sup­port­ing men­tal health care pro­fes­sion­als world­wide. Read about this pro­posed path for­ward: https://t.co/vnKAQzrSaS pic.twitter.com/JRd8fKQP80

— Nation­al Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine (@theNAMedicine) Octo­ber 28, 2019

Tech­nol­o­gy has much to offer in terms of pro­vid­ing and improv­ing access to bet­ter men­tal health care. Why, then, has more not been done to take advan­tage of these tools?

The newest dis­cus­sion paper from #NAM­Per­spec­tives, Read the rest of this entry »