Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Neurotechnology

Eye-tracking pioneer Smart Eye acquires MIT spin-off Affectiva to augment driver monitoring systems and more

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Emo­tion-detec­tion soft­ware start-up Affec­ti­va acquired for $73.5M (TechCrunch):

Smart Eye, the pub­licly trad­ed Swedish com­pa­ny that sup­plies dri­ver mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems for a dozen automak­ers, has acquired emo­tion-detec­tion soft­ware start­up Affec­ti­va for $73.5 mil­lion in a cash-and-stock deal. [Read more…] about Eye-track­ing pio­neer Smart Eye acquires MIT spin-off Affec­ti­va to aug­ment dri­ver mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems and more

Reading Our Minds: New book issues strong call to action to modernize psychiatry

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The Rise of Big Data Psy­chi­a­try (The Wall Street Journal):

As a physi­cian, I need to fig­ure out three things when a new patient walks into my office: what their life is typ­i­cal­ly like, what has changed that made them seek treat­ment and what I can do to help them. It’s a com­plex prob­lem, and most fields of med­i­cine approach it by tak­ing mea­sure­ments. If I were a car­di­ol­o­gist eval­u­at­ing a patient’s chest pain, for instance, I would speak with the patient, but then I would lis­ten to their heart and mea­sure their pulse and blood pres­sure. I might order an elec­tro­car­dio­gram or a car­diac stress test, tools that weren’t avail­able a cen­tu­ry ago.

Because I’m a psy­chi­a­trist, how­ev­er, I eval­u­ate patients in pre­cise­ly the same way that my pre­de­ces­sors did in 1920: I ask them to tell me what’s wrong, and while they’re talk­ing I care­ful­ly observe their speech and behav­ior. But psy­chi­a­try has remained large­ly immune to mea­sure­ment. At no point in the exam­i­na­tion do I gath­er numer­i­cal data about the patient’s life or behav­ior, even though tools for tak­ing such mea­sure­ments already exist. In fact, you like­ly are car­ry­ing one around in your pock­et right now. Keep read­ing essay HERE, adapt­ed from the new book Read­ing Our Minds: The Rise of Big Data Psy­chi­a­try by psy­chi­a­trist Daniel Bar­ron. [Read more…] about Read­ing Our Minds: New book issues strong call to action to mod­ern­ize psychiatry

Let’s welcome Mental Health Month (May) by appreciating our beautiful brains

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Self Reflect­ed was cre­at­ed over two years by a team that includ­ed neu­ro­sci­en­tists, engi­neers, physi­cists, and stu­dents, and is a hyper­de­tailed rep­re­sen­ta­tion of 500,000 neu­rons in a sagit­tal slice. Cred­it: Greg Dunn and Bri­an Edwards.

Between Thought and Expres­sion (Cere­brum):

Greg Dunn was on his way to a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia when he real­ized that bring­ing the brain’s beau­ty to life was a more suit­able role for him than lab work. He start­ed in ink, inspired by Chi­nese, Japan­ese, and Kore­an paint­ings and the sim­i­lar­i­ties he found in the micro­scop­ic world of neu­rons and the macro­scop­ic world of trees, flow­ers, and oth­er land­scape images. [Read more…] about Let’s wel­come Men­tal Health Month (May) by appre­ci­at­ing our beau­ti­ful brains

Consumer Reports finds unclear, questionable privacy practices and policies among popular mental health apps

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Men­tal Health Apps Aren’t All As Pri­vate As You May Think (Con­sumer Reports):

Type “men­tal health” or a con­di­tion such as anx­i­ety or depres­sion into an app store search bar, and you can end up scrolling through end­less screens of options. As a recent Con­sumer Reports inves­ti­ga­tion has found, these apps take wide­ly var­ied approach­es to help­ing peo­ple han­dle psy­cho­log­i­cal challenges—and they are just as var­ied in how they han­dle the pri­va­cy of their users. [Read more…] about Con­sumer Reports finds unclear, ques­tion­able pri­va­cy prac­tices and poli­cies among pop­u­lar men­tal health apps

The latest on brain health, neurotechnology, artificial intelligence and “never stop wondering”

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a life well lived, the lat­est news on brain health and inno­va­tion, and some brain teasers in hon­or of Inter­na­tion­al Brain Teas­er Month.

#1. Thank you, Sharon. We won’t. “Nev­er stop won­der­ing” — Sharon Beg­ley, sci­ence jour­nal­ist, RIP

#2. Write injuries in sand, kind­ness­es in ____________.
Milk the cow, but do not pull off the ___________.

Enjoy these 5 US and 7 inter­na­tion­al proverbs to test your cog­ni­tive skills.

#3. Beware the snakes as you tease your mind with this opti­cal illusion.

#4. The blood-brain bar­ri­er is hope­ful­ly hard at work: Can COVID-19 coro­n­avirus “invade” human brain tis­sue? (Quick answer: evi­dence so far is mixed)

#5. Yes, a bit circular…but that’s the point: To man­age stress, sleep bet­ter. To sleep bet­ter, keep a good rou­tine and man­age stress.

#6. Excel­lent arti­cle for those inter­est­ed in state-of-the-art neu­rotech. The Promise of Big Data Imag­ing for Men­tal Health

#7. We’d much rather see the NIH or a fit­ness or nutri­tion com­pa­ny spon­sor such a promis­ing study, rather than a phar­ma com­pa­ny, but this is great news any­way: The new fron­tier in neu­rocog­ni­tive mon­i­tor­ing and demen­tia screen­ing: the Apple Watch

#8. “I am encour­aged by Cognito’s inno­v­a­tive approach,” said Allan Lev­ey, M.D., Ph.D., Pro­fes­sor and Chair­man of the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty and Direc­tor of the Emory Goizue­ta Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Research Cen­ter. “This strat­e­gy trans­lat­ing recent advances in non-inva­sive mod­u­la­tion of brain activ­i­ty with sen­so­ry stim­u­la­tion with light and sound has the poten­tial to be an urgent­ly need­ed safe, non-inva­sive, and effec­tive treat­ment for mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als with Alzheimer’s dis­ease.” Neu­rostim­u­la­tion device Gam­maSense by Cog­ni­to Ther­a­peu­tics secures FDA Break­through Device Des­ig­na­tion to explore Alzheimer’s Dis­ease applications

#9. This can help a ton of peo­ple, giv­en that “Cur­rent­ly, video EEG is the gold stan­dard for seizure detec­tion, but it requires a hos­pi­tal stay, is often cost­ly, and can be stig­ma­tiz­ing.” Study: Wear­able sen­sors and machine learn­ing may well (one day) help detect a broad range of epilep­tic seizures

#10. “While 66% accu­ra­cy may not sound high, it is an improve­ment on cur­rent accu­ra­cy lev­els of diag­no­sis by human clin­i­cians, par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­er­al physi­cians who aren’t trained in psy­chi­a­try.” Machine learn­ing study finds stan­dard­ized brain scan bio­mark­er to detect depres­sion with 66% accuracy

#11. FDA releas­es first Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) reg­u­la­to­ry plan to pro­mote respon­si­ble dig­i­tal health inno­va­tion. Two of the pri­or­i­ties are the “issuance of draft guid­ance on a pre­de­ter­mined change con­trol plan (for software’s learn­ing over time)” and “Devel­op­ing meth­ods to eval­u­ate and improve machine learn­ing algo­rithms.” Both are cru­cial giv­en that data-dri­ven inno­va­tion is in flux by def­i­n­i­tion, unlike drug-dri­ven innovation.

#12. The law of aver­ages sug­gests 2021 will be a good year … Here’s a toast to a Healthy, Hap­py & Mean­ing­ful New Year.

Best regards,

The Sharp­Brains Team

 

Neurostimulation device GammaSense by Cognito Therapeutics secures FDA Breakthrough Device Designation to explore Alzheimer’s Disease applications

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Cred­it: The Picow­er Insti­tute @ MIT

Cog­ni­to Ther­a­peu­tics nets FDA break­through label for light, sound ther­a­py for Alzheimer’s dis­ease (Fierce Biotech):

Using spe­cif­ic fre­quen­cies of flash­ing lights and sounds to stim­u­late the brain’s elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty, Cog­ni­to Ther­a­peu­tics believes it can help treat Alzheimer’s dis­ease by ener­giz­ing neu­rons and reac­ti­vat­ing the immune system.

[Read more…] about Neu­rostim­u­la­tion device Gam­maSense by Cog­ni­to Ther­a­peu­tics secures FDA Break­through Device Des­ig­na­tion to explore Alzheimer’s Dis­ease applications