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It’s a crazy time. Here in the Cal­i­for­nia, we are shel­ter­ing-in-place, leav­ing the house only for essen­tials like gro­ceries and med­ical care. And while we’re all (appro­pri­ate­ly) focused on car­ing for the phys­i­cal health of our­selves, our fam­i­lies, our com­mu­ni­ties, and soci­ety at large, our men­tal, emo­tion­al, and social health needs are quick­ly emerg­ing as pro­found­ly impor­tant, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

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Time for a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time 14 time­ly news and resources for men­tal health and brain health inno­va­tion.

First of all, let’s remain safe, healthy, and cen­tered dur­ing the cur­rent health cri­sis by fol­low­ing these tips pro­vid­ed by the Greater Good Sci­ence Cen­ter at UC Berke­ley:

1. Stay calm and focused
2. Pay atten­tion to those doing the right thing
3. Show grat­i­tude
4. Remem­ber our com­mon bonds

1) “Of course, all of these guide­lines don’t sup­plant the impor­tance of prac­tic­ing good hygiene. We need to con­tin­ue to fre­quent­ly wash our hands and avoid touch­ing our faces, so that we can lessen the chance of infect­ing our­selves and oth­ers. But we also should remem­ber our men­tal hygiene—staying calm our­selves, being grate­ful espe­cial­ly to those doing the right thing, and remem­ber­ing our com­mon human­i­ty. In this way, we can help to make the world safer for all of us.” Four tips to prac­tice good men­tal hygiene dur­ing the coro­n­avirus out­break

2) “Before any­thing else, prepa­ra­tion is the key to suc­cess.”
–Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell

Thank­ful­ly, neu­rotech pio­neer Tan Le out­lines sev­er­al areas where we can take a prac­ti­cal approach to address changes already under­way and lay the ground­work for a more seam­less tran­si­tion to a new era. Fast For­ward to 2040: How to pre­pare for the new era in brain enhance­ment that will change the way we think, work, and heal

3) Here’s a beau­ti­ful way to explore the anato­my of brain regions and brain func­tions. The Vir­tu­al Brain Web Atlas: How the Mind emerges from the Brain

4) “Before stu­dents decide to slip in their ear­buds, though, they should care­ful­ly con­sid­er both their musi­cal selec­tion and the nature of the task” … because “We found that (1) music gen­er­al­ly impaired com­plex task per­for­mance, (2) com­plex music facil­i­tat­ed sim­ple task per­for­mance, and (3) pref­er­ence for exter­nal stim­u­la­tion mod­er­at­ed these effects. There­fore, the data sug­gest that music’s effects on task per­for­mance depend on the music, the task, and the per­former” Does music facil­i­tate or impair cog­ni­tive task per­for­mance? It depends…

5) Because learn­ing can­not, must not, ever stop: Meet the Top 50 final­ists for the Glob­al Teacher Prize 2020

6) Any plans for the sum­mer? Four ways hik­ing pro­motes cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al health

7) Har­ness­ing tech to pro­mote social con­nect­ed­ness: Every Wednes­day start­ing today we can join scientist/ entre­pre­neur Rana el Kaliou­by online to dis­cuss her new book! Vir­tu­al book tour to explore the fron­tier of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence and Tech­nol­o­gy

8) On-field or off-field, train­ing goes on: Sports teams find cre­ative ways to cross-train the brain off-field

9) “You Can’t Man­age What You Can’t Mea­sure” has­n’t yet reached pub­lic health … but it will. To screen, or not to screen (for demen­tia), that is still the ques­tion

10) Sum­ma­riz­ing a recent study, “children’s sleep should be eval­u­at­ed as part of an ADHD eval­u­a­tion as sleep dif­fi­cul­ties are more com­mon … address­ing sleep issues in chil­dren with ADHD is a fea­si­ble and rel­a­tive­ly low-cost approach that can be a valu­able treat­ment com­po­nent for many chil­dren.” Study: A brief sleep inter­ven­tion can bring mea­sur­able and sus­tained ben­e­fits to chil­dren with ADHD

11) Some may and will dis­agree, but net net this offers a major oppor­tu­ni­ty to har­ness smart­phone use data for good: Ver­i­ly and LivaNo­va accel­er­ate efforts to detect and treat depres­sion

12) Poten­tial big news in the neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion mar­ket; coro­n­avirus or not we all have awe­some brains and will expe­ri­ence brain/ men­tal health needs in the future: Medtron­ic might acquire LivaNova’s neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion busi­ness

13) What if “An employ­er wants to reduce the risk of on-the-job dis­abil­i­ty, so it screens appli­cants for neu­ro­log­i­cal mark­ers that they are pre­dis­posed to chron­ic pain and depres­sion…” Let’s antic­i­pate the poten­tial mis­use of neu­ro­log­i­cal data to min­i­mize the risks–and max­i­mize the ben­e­fits

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Every March, Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW) unites hun­dreds of orga­ni­za­tions world­wide in a cel­e­bra­tion of the brain for peo­ple of all ages. Activ­i­ties typ­i­cal­ly include open days at neu­ro­science labs, exhi­bi­tions about the brain, lec­tures on brain-relat­ed top­ics, dis­plays at libraries and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters, class­room work­shops, and more.

Brain Aware­ness Week 2020 starts today, Mon­day March 16th.

To con­tribute to such a glob­al edu­ca­tion­al cam­paign, espe­cial­ly now that many phys­i­cal events have been can­celled, we are offer­ing our best edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al resources at a 90% dis­count from today till Sun­day, March 22th.

–> To ben­e­fit from this oppor­tu­ni­ty, use this dis­count code: Brain­Week

Stay Healthy, Stay Warm, let’s Har­ness this oppor­tu­ni­ty to Sharp­en our Minds and Explore the lat­est on brain health and neu­rotech­nol­o­gy!

Our core edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al resources offered at a 90% dis­count this week: Read the rest of this entry »

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Time for a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a range of  research find­ings, resources, brain teasers and rid­dles to help trans­late emerg­ing neu­ro­science into real-world appli­ca­tions and improve our col­lec­tive brain & men­tal health.

New thinking:

• Neu­ro­science tips about grat­i­tude, aging, pain and the brain: An inter­view with Dr. Daniel Lev­itin
• What’s nor­mal? When it comes to the brain, it’s hard to say, and that’s why we need to study glob­al neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty
• Will self-dri­ving vehi­cles lead to a surge of brain train­ing?
• How to remem­ber what you read: Eight tips to improve read­ing speed and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty

New research:

• To boost your men­tal well-being, sim­ply recall, right now, an act of kind­ness
• Machine-learn­ing study finds EEG brain sig­na­tures that pre­dict response to anti­de­pres­sant treat­ments
• Study finds com­bined phar­ma + non-phar­ma treat­ment most ben­e­fi­cial to help youth with ADHD address long-term aca­d­e­m­ic dif­fi­cul­ties
• Ambi­tious Inter­na­tion­al Brain Ini­tia­tive (IBI) launched to advance glob­al neu­ro­science research

New tools:

• Large study finds pos­i­tive yet mixed results from Akili’s dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic for kids with ADHD
• U.S. Army devel­ops nov­el way to ana­lyze brain imag­ing data and shape emerg­ing non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy
• Med­i­ta­tion app Head­space rais­es $93 mil­lion to accel­er­ate clin­i­cal val­i­da­tion and geo­graph­ic expan­sion
• Dig­i­tal men­tal health tak­ing off in Europe

Fun brain teasers:

• Train your brain to think out­side the box with these fun rid­dles
• Three illu­sions to test your per­cep­tu­al and cog­ni­tive skills
• Math brain teas­er: Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?

Have a great month of March,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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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 »