mental muscles

On mental fitness beliefs, lifestyles and new tools like apps, digital therapeutics, virtual reality, “brain age gaps” and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun cou­ple of math brain teasers.

#1. Study on the “ABCs of Men­tal Health” finds that sim­ply believ­ing you can improve men­tal well­be­ing helps actu­al­ly improve it

Beliefs mat­ter.

#2. “Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics” vs. “Men­tal health apps”: A grow­ing debate on stan­dards, reg­u­la­tion and efficacy

Def­i­n­i­tions matter.

#3. How ’sleep­ing on it’ can help the pre­frontal cor­tex reg­u­late emo­tion­al respons­es, mak­ing us feel bet­ter in the morning

Sleep mat­ters.

#4. NICE in the UK issues rec­om­men­da­tion for Sleepio app, the dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py for insom­nia by Big Health

Inno­va­tion mat­ters: “At a price of £45 per per­son, Sleepio is cost sav­ing com­pared with usu­al treat­ment in pri­ma­ry care. This is based on an analy­sis of pri­ma­ry care resource use data before and after Sleepio was intro­duced in 9 GP prac­tices. Health­care costs were low­er at 1 year, most­ly because of few­er GP appoint­ments and sleep­ing pills prescribed.”

#5. New book pro­vides prac­ti­cal guid­ance for women (and men) to rebal­ance our lifestyles and build Cog­ni­tive Reserve

Lifestyle mat­ters: “The more com­plex our lives are, the more we need sim­ple things that can ground us and help us to be more resilient – to rebal­ance and rebal­ance and rebal­ance again. Build­ing the men­tal mus­cles to find bal­ance when one gets off bal­ance is a crit­i­cal skill thrive and to build cog­ni­tive reserve in our fast-chang­ing times. As our month­ly gath­er­ings showed us over the years, prac­tic­ing rebal­ance in good com­pa­ny not only rein­forces neur­al path­ways and capa­bil­i­ties but also strength­ens the bonds of trust and con­fi­dence that are invalu­able to build a healthy envi­ron­ment to thrive in.”

#6. Study: Auto­mat­ed VR psy­chother­a­py can help reduce anx­i­ety and dis­tress, espe­cial­ly among those with psy­chosis and severe agoraphobia

One of the ben­e­fits of VR is that patients know they are in a sim­u­la­tion, which enables “psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tance from prob­lem­at­ic reac­tions,” the study authors wrote. “The process of find­ing the best uses and imple­men­ta­tion meth­ods of this immer­sive tech­nol­o­gy at scale in men­tal health is only beginning.”

#7. Fund­ing for dig­i­tal health start-ups, espe­cial­ly in men­tal health, fall sub­stan­tial­ly in Q1’22

“While all tech sec­tors received small­er fund­ing totals than the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, dig­i­tal health plunged much fur­ther than oth­ers did … investor inter­est in men­tal health tech wavered as the mar­ket and pub­lic com­pa­nies like Talk­space and Cere­bral come under scrutiny.”

#8. Deep learn­ing mod­el built on neu­roimag­ing data iden­ti­fies “Brain Age Gaps” as mark­ers of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD)

“The main find­ing of our study is that we could indeed find evi­dence that high brain age gap is behav­ing as an accel­er­at­ed brain aging bio­mark­er.” — Dr. David Jones, neu­rol­o­gist at Mayo Clinic

Final­ly, a cou­ple fun brain teasers to help you flex your math/ cog­ni­tive men­tal muscles:

#9. Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?

#10. Math brain teas­er requir­ing no math — just per­cep­tion and cognition

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing June!

A few brain teasers to flex those cognitive muscles over the weekend

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Look around you, wher­ev­er you are, and find three green things that may fit in your pock­ets, and three red objects that are clear­ly too big to fit.

Done?

OK, now you have six objects.

Go ahead and say their names in alpha­bet­i­cal order. 

Done?

Now name them in reverse alpha­bet­i­cal order.

Done?

Now count the total num­ber of syl­la­bles in those six words.

Not easy, right? 

All these men­tal oper­a­tions engage your work­ing mem­o­ry — think of work­ing mem­o­ry as your tem­po­rary men­tal work­space where you can hold and inte­grate sev­er­al units of infor­ma­tion at once.

Feel free to prac­tice in dif­fer­ent loca­tions … you can take these brain teasers with you, any­where you go 🙂

To explore more fun brain teaser games and puzzles:

Five quick brain teasers to flex those Attention and Working Memory mental muscles

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Look­ing for some fun cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion to kick­start the week?

Below you’ll find a few brain teasers to chal­lenge your atten­tion and your work­ing mem­ory–the abil­ity to keep infor­ma­tion in your mind while manip­u­lat­ing mul­ti­ple units of infor­ma­tion at the same time.

Give them a try … they are not as easy as they may sound 🙂 [Read more…] about Five quick brain teasers to flex those Atten­tion and Work­ing Mem­o­ry men­tal muscles

Trend: More healthcare and research facilities offer multipronged brain fitness programs

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BrainFitnessJigsaw_webCan an exer­cise rou­tine real­ly help keep your men­tal “mus­cles” in good shape? (Har­vard Health Letter):

“Fear of los­ing your mem­o­ry and think­ing skills is one of the great­est con­cerns of get­ting old­er. Maybe that’s behind the increas­ing num­ber of clin­ics offer­ing brain fit­ness pro­grams. “Brain train­ing” isn’t a typ­i­cal exer­cise pro­gram; it incor­po­rates a num­ber of activ­i­ties and lifestyle changes to help boost brain func­tion. “It makes very good sense to pro­mote cog­ni­tive health using a vari­ety of approach­es. I embrace it even as we await more data,” says Dr. Kirk Daffn­er, a neu­rol­o­gist and med­ical edi­tor of the Har­vard Spe­cial Health Report Improv­ing Memory…Hospitals and research facil­i­ties offer brain fit­ness pro­grams, and so do pri­vate prac­tices. “Ide­al­ly you want peo­ple who have done this for a long time and who offer a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach, with a neu­rol­o­gist, psy­chol­o­gist, social work­er, phys­i­cal ther­a­pist, and dietit­ian,” says Dr. Pascual-Leone.”

To learn more: