Helping young brains fight off anxiety by training and raising cognitive control

Anx­i­ety is one of the most com­mon child­hood men­tal dis­or­ders. About 7% of chil­dren suf­fer from it at any giv­en time, with near­ly 1 in 3 ado­les­cents expe­ri­enc­ing it some­time dur­ing their teen years. For an anx­ious child, seem­ing­ly nor­mal activ­i­ties can be hard. Wor­ried kids have trou­ble adjust­ing to school, mak­ing friends, and learn­ing. They…

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Given cognitive strengths and needs are diverse, what brain training may work best for each person and under which conditions?

Does ‘Brain Train­ing’ Actu­al­ly Work? (Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): If there were an app on your phone that could improve your mem­o­ry, would you try it? Who wouldn’t want a bet­ter mem­o­ry? After all, our rec­ol­lec­tions are frag­ile and can be impaired by dis­eases, injuries, men­tal health con­di­tions and, most acute­ly for all of us, aging.

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The NIH starts spending $1.5 billion in new Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neuro-technologies (BRAIN) projects

___ NIH Starts to Spend $4.8 Bil­lion in “Extra” Cures Drug Research Mon­ey (P&T Com­mu­ni­ty): “The Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) launched 110 new brain research projects in the fis­cal year end­ing last Sep­tem­ber (2017) with the first por­tion of the $1.5 bil­lion over 10 years it will hope­ful­ly receive from the 21st Cen­tu­ry Cures…

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News: Launch of Brain Start-up Challenge on August 1st

Dear Sharp­Brains com­mu­ni­ty, We have read Alvaro Fer­nan­dez’s pub­li­ca­tion regard­ing the BRAIN Ini­tia­tive in Ven­ture Beat and thought our first-of-a-kind Brain Start-up Chal­lenge would be of inter­est to many of you. To pro­vide some back­ground, the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, Cen­ter for Advanc­ing Inno­va­tion and the Her­itage Provider Net­work, have…

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(Some) New Yorker articles are bogus

I love read­ing the New York­er. I have writ­ten before about bogus brain games, and about bogus brain train­ing claims. We have pub­lished a 10-ques­­tion check­list to help con­sumers make informed deci­sions. All this is to say I was sur­prised to read a recent New York­er blog arti­cle titled “Brain games are bogus.” If you…

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