Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Neurotechnology

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

Studies identify key ethical concerns raised by invasive and non-invasive neurotechnologies

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Stud­ies out­line key eth­i­cal ques­tions sur­round­ing brain-com­put­er inter­face tech (NCSU release):

Brain-com­put­er inter­face (BCI) tech­nolo­gies are no longer hypo­thet­i­cal, yet there are fun­da­men­tal aspects of the tech­nol­o­gy that remain unad­dressed by both ethi­cists and pol­i­cy-mak­ers. Two new papers address these issues by out­lin­ing the out­stand­ing eth­i­cal issues, offer­ing guid­ance for address­ing those issues, and offer­ing par­tic­u­lar insight into the field of BCI tech for cog­ni­tive enhance­ment. [Read more…] about Stud­ies iden­ti­fy key eth­i­cal con­cerns raised by inva­sive and non-inva­sive neurotechnologies

Update: The placebo effect works even when people know they are taking a placebo

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing 14 research find­ings, resources and tips for brain health … and start­ing with this fas­ci­nat­ing study:

#1. Wow. The place­bo effect works even when peo­ple know they are tak­ing a placebo

#2. Beat­ing Alzheimer’s Dis­ease will require a com­bined physical/ men­tal approach: From the ten fac­tors found to increase AD risk in the most com­pre­hen­sive evi­dence review to date,

#3. “The health­i­est peo­ple are the ones who grow with age and expe­ri­ence; even in times of trou­ble like these.” — Dhar­ma Singh Khal­sa, MD, Pres­i­dent of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion. On Stress, Yoga Med­i­ta­tion, and The Evo­lu­tion Revolution

#4. “Accep­tance that Alzheimer’s dis­ease is a lifestyle dis­ease, lit­tle dif­fer­ent from oth­er age-relat­ed dis­eases, that is the sum of a life­time is the most impor­tant break­through of the decade.” — George Per­ry, PhD, Edi­tor-in-Chief of the Jour­nal of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. High­er body mass index (BMI) linked to low­er blood sup­ply to the brain in large neu­roimag­ing study

#5. “Atten­tion is a scarce resource. Think about your atten­tion­al focus as the beam of a light. If the light is on an object it can­not be on oth­er objects at the same time with the same inten­si­ty … Although we typ­i­cal­ly have the feel­ing that mul­ti­task­ing saves us time, it is often not the case.” Sim­ple, quick brain teas­er to test the lim­its of multitasking

#6. If it appears to rotate, RT ? Fun opti­cal illu­sion to tease your mind

#7. Every cloud has a sil­ver lin­ing: How and when will the telemed­i­cine surge reach men­tal healthcare?

#8. Not a minute too soon: Mag­el­lan Health is test­ing biofeed­back videogame Might­i­er to help chil­dren bet­ter self-reg­u­late stress

#9. “In a time when emo­tions like stress, anx­i­ety, bore­dom, and anger are hard to avoid, a new study sug­gests that a par­tic­u­lar med­i­ta­tion prac­tice can help us face them.” Study: Med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, both for­mal and infor­mal, helps devel­op equa­nim­i­ty over time

#10. Ever since dis­cov­er­ing Bar­bara Arrow­smith-Young’s life tra­jec­to­ry via Nor­main Doidge’s fan­tas­tic book The Brain That Changes Itself, we have been impressed by her cre­ativ­i­ty, sta­mi­na and courage. Com­ing soon: Vir­tu­al World Tour at the fron­tier of applied neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, edu­ca­tion and learn­ing difficulties

#11. “Neur­al sig­nals will be used to devel­op algo­rithms that will help researchers deter­mine the opti­mal brain state under which indi­vid­u­als can receive infor­ma­tion. From there, the team will deter­mine the most effec­tive means of enhanc­ing the sub­jects’ abil­i­ty to intake and process infor­ma­tion. This could range from non-inva­sive neuromodulation—or brain stimulation—techniques to the use of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty to alter per­ceived envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions.” Air Force announces research plat­form to har­ness closed-loop neu­rotech­nol­o­gy and accel­er­ate learn­ing “on the fly”

#12. Good to hear that “ensur­ing the pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty of study par­tic­i­pants’ data is a high pri­or­i­ty for both UCLA and Apple. UCLA will process and main­tain study data in a secure envi­ron­ment … UCLA and Apple will ana­lyze the data only after they are cod­ed and stripped of names and oth­er con­tact infor­ma­tion.” UCLA launch­es major men­tal health study col­lect­ing & ana­lyz­ing data from Apple wear­ables to bet­ter under­stand depres­sion and anxiety

#13. Flex­i­bil­i­ty is good except when it isn’t: Study finds how sci­en­tists can reach dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions ana­lyz­ing the same brain scans

#14. “I have so much to accom­plish today that I must med­i­tate for two hours instead of one” — Gand­hi, as quot­ed in Sev­en evi­dence-based rea­sons to start med­i­tat­ing yesterday

Wish­ing you a safe and healthy September,

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on behalf of the Sharp­Brains Team

Air Force announces research platform to harness closed-loop neurotechnology and accelerate learning “on the fly”

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U.S. Air Force illustration/Richard Eldridge

Air Force Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Part­ner­ship Aims to Accel­er­ate Learn­ing (Mil­i­tary Spot):

The Indi­vid­u­al­ized Neur­al Learn­ing Sys­tem, or iNeu­raLS, is a new aug­ment­ed learn­ing plat­form that will enable rapid learn­ing by closed-loop mod­u­la­tion of cog­ni­tive states dur­ing skill acqui­si­tion. Essen­tial­ly, the AFRL team seeks to devel­op a capa­bil­i­ty that will give Air­men the abil­i­ty to rapid­ly acquire knowl­edge and skills on the fly through direct brain inter­faces with the help of neurotechnologies…

[Read more…] about Air Force announces research plat­form to har­ness closed-loop neu­rotech­nol­o­gy and accel­er­ate learn­ing “on the fly”