National-Institute-of-Mental-Health

The way we approach Mental Health today is broken beyond repair. The question is, what comes next, and how fast can we get there?

by

The hid­den links between men­tal dis­or­ders (Nature):

In 2018, psy­chi­a­trist Oleguer Plana-Ripoll was wrestling with a puz­zling fact about men­tal dis­or­ders. He knew that many indi­vid­u­als have mul­ti­ple con­di­tions — anx­i­ety and depres­sion, say, or schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar dis­or­der. He want­ed to know how com­mon it was to have more than one diag­no­sis, so he got his hands on a data­base con­tain­ing the med­ical details of around 5.9 mil­lion Dan­ish citizens.

He was tak­en aback by what he found. Every sin­gle men­tal dis­or­der pre­dis­posed the patient to every oth­er men­tal dis­or­der — no mat­ter how dis­tinct the symp­toms. “We knew that comor­bid­i­ty was impor­tant, but we didn’t expect to find asso­ci­a­tions for all pairs,” says Plana-Ripoll, who is based at Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty in Denmark.

[Read more…] about The way we approach Men­tal Health today is bro­ken beyond repair. The ques­tion is, what comes next, and how fast can we get there?

Witnessing an explosion of consumer-facing neurotechnologies to (potentially) harness lifelong neuroplasticity

by

—

Last week I shared some key sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and invest­ment trends rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing Brain Health, based on my par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, and promised a sec­ond arti­cle more focused on the tech­nol­o­gy side of things.

Here it is 🙂

Just a few weeks after the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit I also attend­ed CES 2017. While I enjoyed the myr­i­ad emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies –autonomous vehi­cles, robot­ics, drones, aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets, voice acti­vat­ed every­thing– I was most­ly struck by a firm named Halo Neu­ro­science. They have a fas­ci­nat­ing wear­able prod­uct, Halo Sport, claim­ing to accel­er­ate gains in strength, explo­sive­ness, endurance, and mus­cle mem­o­ry, improv­ing the brain’s response to ath­let­ic train­ing. It uses tDCS (tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion), essen­tial­ly prim­ing move­ment-relat­ed cir­cuits of the brain to become more recep­tive to stim­uli, help­ing the brain wire in the prac­tice for improved future response.

The cutting edge of applied neuroplasticity

Both con­fer­ences allowed me to see the cut­ting edge of [Read more…] about Wit­ness­ing an explo­sion of con­sumer-fac­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies to (poten­tial­ly) har­ness life­long neuroplasticity

Best practices to fund, develop and commercialize evidence-based mental health innovation

by

In this ses­sion we dis­cuss key lessons learned for sci­en­tists and start-ups to suc­cess­ful­ly bring to mar­ket evi­dence-based inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. We will present non-dilu­tive fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and com­mer­cial­iza­tion resources offered through the US small busi­ness research pro­grams, and a sci­en­tist and inven­tor turned ser­i­al entre­pre­neur wrap-ups the day shar­ing insights from his pre­vi­ous venture–funded by the NIMH and sold to McKesson–and his cur­rent strat­e­gy and vision.

  • Chair: Dr. Ali­son Fen­ney, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Organization
  • Dr. Mar­garet Grabb, SBIR/STTR Pro­gram Direc­tor at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH)
  • Dr. Rex Jakobovits, Founder of Viva­l­og Tech­nolo­gies and Experiad

These pre­sen­ta­tions took place at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Rein­vent­ing Brain Health in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 6–8th, 2016).

Empowering communities with better brain health tools and literacy

by

brain-health-literacy—–

We are look­ing for­ward to the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit start­ing tomor­row, Tues­day Decem­ber 6th!

40 amaz­ing speak­ers, 10+ ses­sions includ­ing the crit­i­cal and often over­looked need to Empow­er com­mu­ni­ties with bet­ter brain health tools and lit­er­a­cy – What role should com­mu­ni­ty and care­givers play in brain health and men­tal health, and how can tech­nol­o­gy aid their efforts–for exam­ple in shar­ing rel­e­vant data with/ from doc­tors? How are we going to edu­cate and empow­er every­one with essen­tial knowl­edge and best practices?

  • Chair: Dr. Peter White­house, Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­o­gy at Case West­ern Reserve University
  • Dr. Eliz­a­beth Zelin­s­ki, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Aging at the Davis School of Gerontology
  • Michael Meagher, Pres­i­dent of Cogniciti
  • Dr. Jen­ni Pacheco, Sci­en­tif­ic Pro­gram Man­ag­er at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH)
  • Dr. Neal Cohen, clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist at The Synapse System

Learn more & Reg­is­ter Here (reg­is­tra­tion will close in just a few hours, so please hur­ry up if interested)

Announcement: 12 new world-class Speakers confirmed @ 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit (December 6–8th)

by

global_conversationWe’re hon­ored to announce 12 new world-class speak­ers at the upcom­ing 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Rein­vent­ing Brain Health in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 6–8th). More to come…this may well become the most diverse and stim­u­lat­ing brain­storm­ing on the present and future of brain health and enhancement!

We can’t wait to hear from:

  • Alexan­dra More­house, CMO at Ban­ner Health
  • Dr. Corey McCann, CEO of Pear Ther­a­peu­tics
  • Dr. Gahan Pan­d­i­na, Senior Direc­tor, Ven­ture Leader at Janssen Research & Development
  • Dr. Jud­son Brew­er, Founder & Research Lead of Clar­i­tas Mindsciences
  • Dr. Lara Boyd, Direc­tor of the Brain Behav­ior Lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Columbia
  • Dr. Mar­garet Grabb, Chief of SBIR/STTR pro­grams at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH)
  • Dr. Michael Merzenich, Win­ner of the 2016 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience
  • Nikhil Sri­ra­man, IP Ana­lyst at Sharp­Brains

    • 2016sharpbrainssummit_logo

  • Richard Varn, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Advanced Tech­nol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science at Edu­ca­tion­al Test­ing Ser­vice (ETS)
  • Ron Riesen­bach, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Cana­di­an Cen­tre for Aging and Brain Health Inno­va­tion (CC-ABHI)
  • Dr. San­dra Bond Chap­man, Founder and Direc­tor, Cen­ter for Brain­Health at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dallas
  • Tan Le, CEO of Emo­tiv

Dr. Thomas Insel, NIMH Director, to speak @ 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit

by

Tom InselWe are proud to share that Dr. Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health and neu­rotech­nol­o­gy vision­ary, will open the 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit on Tues­day, Octo­ber 28th.

Pri­or to this appoint­ment at NIMH, Dr. Insel was Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at Emory Uni­ver­sity, where he was found­ing direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science. He has pub­lished over 250 sci­en­tific arti­cles and four books, served on numer­ous aca­d­e­mic, sci­en­tific, and pro­fes­sional com­mit­tees and boards, and is a recip­i­ent of sev­eral awards, includ­ing the Out­stand­ing Ser­vice Award from the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice. Dr. Insel grad­u­ated from the com­bined B.A.-M.D. pro­gram at Boston Uni­ver­sity, did his intern­ship at Berk­shire Med­ical Cen­ter, Mass­a­chu­setts, and his res­i­dency at the Lan­g­ley Porter Neu­ropsy­chi­atric Insti­tute at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Francisco.

–> Explore the Agen­da at 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, and con­sid­er join­ing us Octo­ber 28–30th!