neurocognitive

Altoida raises further $14 million to “democratize digital cognitive assessment at scale” via augmented reality (AR) and AI

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Altoi­da snags Mer­ck KGaA-led $14M fund­ing round for Alzheimer’s diag­nos­tic app (Fierce Biotech):

The $14 mil­lion top-up came from a mix of old and new investors, co-led by White­cap Ven­ture Part­ners and Mer­ck KGaA’s cor­po­rate VC arm, M Ven­tures, which also led the ini­tial tranche of series A financ­ing … The new­ly upsized fund­ing will help Altoi­da add to its work­force, pay for intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ings and con­tin­ue devel­op­ing its tech plat­form to assess neu­ro­log­i­cal func­tion. [Read more…] about Altoi­da rais­es fur­ther $14 mil­lion to “democ­ra­tize dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive assess­ment at scale” via aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) and AI

Study shows promising results of EEG-based brain training in helping adults with ADHD

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Man­ag­ing atten­tion deficit dis­or­der by train­ing the brain (Sci­enceDai­ly):

Atten­tion Deficit Hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty Dis­or­der (ADHD) affects about 7% of chil­dren, with a two out of three chance of per­sist­ing into adult­hood. This neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­der is char­ac­terised by con­cen­tra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, increased dis­tractibil­i­ty, impul­siv­i­ty and hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty. Today, ADHD is treat­ed with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs that may have unwant­ed side effects. This is why sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gene­va (UNIGE) and the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tals of Gene­va (HUG), Switzer­land, explored a new tech­nique called ‘neu­ro­feed­back’, which enables ADHD patients to train their atten­tion, based on instant feed­back from the lev­el of their brain activ­i­ty. [Read more…] about Study shows promis­ing results of EEG-based brain train­ing in help­ing adults with ADHD

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

 

The new frontier in neurocognitive monitoring and dementia screening: the Apple Watch

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Bio­gen to Launch Pio­neer­ing Study to Devel­op Dig­i­tal Bio­mark­ers of Cog­ni­tive Health Using Apple Watch and iPhone (press release):

Bio­gen Inc. (Nas­daq: BIIB) today announced a new vir­tu­al research study, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Apple, to inves­ti­gate the role Apple Watch and iPhone could play in mon­i­tor­ing cog­ni­tive per­for­mance and screen­ing for decline in cog­ni­tive health includ­ing mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI). [Read more…] about The new fron­tier in neu­rocog­ni­tive mon­i­tor­ing and demen­tia screen­ing: the Apple Watch

The latest on Brain Health and Resilience, plus a few fun Brain Teasers

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing fas­ci­nat­ing neu­ro­science find­ings and tips, com­bined with fun brain teasers.

#1. To cel­e­brate this quite-chal­leng­ing Thanks­giv­ing, here are five fun brain teasers that read­ers have enjoyed the most this year so far. It is always good to learn more about (and appre­ci­ate) that most pre­cious resource we all (yes, all) have up there! Five fun brain teasers to thank evo­lu­tion for our human brains and minds

#2. Want more? Ready, Set, Go! A few brain teasers to flex those cog­ni­tive muscles

#3. “[Breath­ing tech­niques] are allow­ing you to con­scious­ly take con­trol of your breath­ing so you can take con­trol of your ner­vous sys­tem so you can take con­trol of your anx­i­ety” — James Nestor, author of Breath: The New Sci­ence of a Lost Art. New book shares sci­ence and tech­niques to breathe bet­ter and pro­mote calm­ness not anxiety

#4. Voice does matter…especially in areas of poten­tial dis­agree­ment. To call, or to text, that is the (men­tal well-being) question

#5. Fas­ci­nat­ing research + inno­va­tion event brought by the Euro­pean Insti­tute of Inno­va­tion & Tech­nol­o­gy (EIT) and mul­ti­ple part­ners. Save the Date: Pro­mot­ing Brain Health for Life, Decem­ber 15–16th, online.

#6. “This isn’t a bat­tle between AI and doc­tors, it’s about how to opti­mize doc­tors’ abil­i­ty to deliv­er bet­ter care” — P. Murali Doraiswamy, direc­tor of the Neu­rocog­ni­tive Dis­or­ders Pro­gram at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Next: Ana­lyz­ing typ­ing speed, speech and sleep pat­terns to iden­ti­fy cog­ni­tive decline, demen­tia, Parkinson’s, and more

#7. Google’s X team shares 3 valu­able lessons learned from their ambi­tious and (for the time being) unsuc­cess­ful moon­shot: Alphabet’s X shares Amber EEG sys­tem to expand the quest for men­tal health biomarkers

#8. “An exer­cise pre­scrip­tion is an impor­tant treat­ment option and a great adjunct to med­ica­tions. The key is pre­scrib­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty in a way that the patient will com­ply and remain engaged with.” Debate: How should doc­tors pre­scribe exer­cise to ensure com­pli­ance and engagement?

#9. As the study authors note, “The expan­sion of women into the labor force in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry may have pro­vid­ed a new avenue of cog­ni­tive reserve for women via enhanced social stim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive engage­ment.” Study: Work in adult­hood seen to sig­nif­i­cant­ly delay mem­o­ry decline after age 60, sup­port­ing the Cog­ni­tive Reserve theory

#10. “Through­out many sub­red­dits, we found sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in the use of tokens relat­ed to iso­la­tion (eg, “lone­ly,” “can’t see any­one,” “quar­an­tine”), eco­nom­ic stress (eg, “rent,” “debt,” “pay the bills”), and home (“fridge,” “pet,” “lease”), and a decrease in the lex­i­con relat­ed to motion (eg, “walk,” “vis­it,” “trav­el”).” Hope­ful­ly the promis­ing vac­cine news helps turn the tide; until then we need to pro­mote men­tal health & resilience hard. Using Red­dit as a pop­u­la­tion-lev­el “men­tal health track­er” dur­ing the COVID pandemic

#11. “BCI devices can be non-inva­sive devices that users wear, or they can be inva­sive devices, which are sur­gi­cal­ly implant­ed,” says Veljko Dublje­vi … “The inva­sive devices are more effi­cient, since they can read sig­nals direct­ly from the brain. How­ev­er, they also raise more eth­i­cal con­cerns. For exam­ple, inva­sive BCI tech­nolo­gies car­ry more asso­ci­at­ed risks such as surgery, infec­tion, and glial scar­ring — and inva­sive BCI devices would be more dif­fi­cult to replace as tech­nol­o­gy improves.” Stud­ies iden­ti­fy key eth­i­cal con­cerns raised by inva­sive and non-inva­sive neurotechnologies

#12. “(the app) uses the Watch’s sen­sors to track the heart rate and move­ment of users as they sleep. After estab­lish­ing a base­line pro­file for the patient with­in one or two nights’ sleep, the machine learn­ing algo­rithm spots heart rate or move­ment abnor­mal­i­ties pre­sum­ably caused by a night­mare. The appli­ca­tion then vibrates the smart­watch just enough to inter­rupt the wearer’s dream­ing, but not enough to wake them up or dis­rupt their cir­ca­di­an sleep cycle.” FDA grants clear­ance for Night­Ware app designed to reduce PTSD-relat­ed nightmares

 

Wish­ing you a safe and healthy December,

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and the Sharp­Brains Team

 

Next: Analyzing typing speed, speech and sleep patterns to identify cognitive decline, dementia, Parkinson’s, and more

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AI May Help Iden­ti­fy Patients With Ear­ly-Stage Demen­tia (The Wall Street Journal):

Researchers are study­ing whether arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence tools that ana­lyze things like typ­ing speed, sleep pat­terns and speech can be used to help clin­i­cians bet­ter iden­ti­fy patients with ear­ly-stage demen­tia. [Read more…] about Next: Ana­lyz­ing typ­ing speed, speech and sleep pat­terns to iden­ti­fy cog­ni­tive decline, demen­tia, Parkinson’s, and more