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Prac­tice Imper­fect: Repeat­ed Cog­ni­tive Test­ing Can Obscure Ear­ly Signs of Demen­tia (UC San Diego Health press release):

“Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD) is a pro­gres­sive, neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tion that often begins with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment or MCI, mak­ing ear­ly and repeat­ed assess­ments of cog­ni­tive change cru­cial to diag­no­sis and treat­ment.

But in a paper pub­lished online in the jour­nal Alzheimer’s & Demen­tia: Diag­no­sis, Assess­ment & Dis­ease Mon­i­tor­ing, a team of researchers led by sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Diego School of Med­i­cine found that repeat­ed test­ing of mid­dle-age men pro­duced a “prac­tice effect” which obscured true cog­ni­tive decline and Read the rest of this entry »

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Why I’m Dig­ging Deep Into Alzheimer’s (Bill Gates):

“In every part of the world, peo­ple are liv­ing longer than they used to. Thanks to sci­en­tif­ic advance­ments, few­er peo­ple die young from heart dis­ease, can­cer, and infec­tious dis­eases. It’s no longer unusu­al for a per­son to live well into their 80s and beyond. My dad will cel­e­brate his 92nd birth­day in a cou­ple weeks, a mile­stone that was prac­ti­cal­ly unimag­in­able when he was born.

This fact—that peo­ple are liv­ing longer than ever before—should always be a won­der­ful thing. But what hap­pens when it’s not? Read the rest of this entry »

– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 8,121,694

Today we are shar­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing patent from Medtron­ic.  (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing 50 foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patents, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 8,121,694: Therapy control based on a patient movement state

• Assignee(s): Medtron­ic, Inc.
• Inventor(s): Gre­go­ry F. Mol­nar, Steven S. Gill, Kei­th A, Miesel, Mark S. Lent, Tim­o­thy J. Deni­son, Eric J. Panken, Carl D. Wahlstrand, Jonathan C. Werder
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neu­ro-mon­i­tor­ing
• Issue Date: Feb­ru­ary 21, 2012

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘694 patent dis­clos­es meth­ods to treat patients afflict­ed with move­ment or oth­er neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­or­ders through brain-sig­nal feed­back. Read the rest of this entry »

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If the media is your main source of infor­ma­tion about brain train­ing and cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, you will prob­a­bly believe the fol­low­ing:

1) All brain train­ing is the same…

2) …and it sim­ply doesn’t work.

3) Com­mer­cial brain train­ing pro­grams, espe­cial­ly, don’t work.

4) How could they work? Genet­ics is des­tiny, aging is a pre­de­ter­mined process…so by age 60 or 70 or 80, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

If you tracked and ana­lyzed the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture around cog­ni­tive train­ing, cog­ni­tive ther­a­pies, biofeed­back, med­i­ta­tion, brain reserve and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in gen­er­al, you’d know those 4 beliefs are wrong. They are myths that pre­vent a more nuanced con­ver­sa­tion about brain-enhanc­ing lifestyles and about the emerg­ing brain train­ing and neu­rotech­nol­o­gy toolk­it.

Good news is, a just-pub­lished study should help debunk those myths–especially with regards to com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive training–and pro­vide a bet­ter Read the rest of this entry »

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Advanced Brain Mon­i­tor­ing Named “Most Inno­v­a­tive Med­ical Device Com­pa­ny” at Glob­al Health and Phar­ma Awards (Sleep Review):

“Advanced Brain Mon­i­tor­ing Inc was named the “Most Inno­v­a­tive Med­ical Device Com­pa­ny” by Glob­al Health and Phar­ma at its 2016 Health­care and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal awards. “This award rec­og­nizes our company’s suc­cess­es in devel­op­ing tech­nolo­gies which enable clin­i­cians and clin­i­cal tri­al spon­sors to pro­file brain health through the analy­sis of the brain’s elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty (EEG) dur­ing sleep and wake,” says Chris Berka, Advanced Brain Mon­i­tor­ing CEO…The com­pa­ny was recent­ly award­ed a $1.5 mm grant from Nation­al Insti­tute of Health to expand its data­base of awake and sleep EEG in patients with neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases. “The envi­sioned future is for rou­tine brain health assess­ments dur­ing sleep and wak­ing to be con­duct­ed in a man­ner sim­i­lar to a mam­mo­gram or colonoscopy,” says Berka. “Ulti­mate­ly, ear­ly detec­tion will increase the like­li­hood that an inter­ven­tion can be matched to the patient based on the pres­ence of brain bio­mark­ers and admin­is­tered pri­or to the onset of cog­ni­tive decline.”

To learn more:

• Mar­ket Report on Per­va­sive Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy: A Ground­break­ing Analy­sis of 10,000+ Patent Fil­ings Trans­form­ing Med­i­cine, Health, Enter­tain­ment and Busi­ness
• Info­graph­ic on the Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020