neuroplasticity

UC study finds near-transfer of cognitive training to be necessary (yet not sufficient) for far-transfer, broader benefits

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Guicheng “Ariel” Tan / UCI Work­ing Mem­o­ry & Plas­tic­i­ty Lab

Who ben­e­fits from brain train­ing, and why? (UCI release):

If you are skilled at play­ing puz­zles on your smart­phone or tablet, what does it say about how fast you learn new puz­zles, or more broad­ly, how well can you focus in school or at work? In the lan­guage of psy­chol­o­gists, does “near trans­fer” pre­dict “far transfer”?

A team of psy­chol­o­gists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, River­side reports in Nature Human Behav­ior that peo­ple who show near trans­fer are more like­ly to show far trans­fer. For a per­son skilled at play­ing a game, such as Wor­dle, near trans­fer refers to being skilled at sim­i­lar games, such as a cross­word puz­zle. An exam­ple of far trans­fer for this per­son would be the abil­i­ty to bet­ter focus on dai­ly life activ­i­ties. [Read more…] about UC study finds near-trans­fer of cog­ni­tive train­ing to be nec­es­sary (yet not suf­fi­cient) for far-trans­fer, broad­er benefits

New book provides practical guidance for women (and men) to rebalance our lifestyles and build Cognitive Reserve

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On one of our “walk and talks” around the lush trails of Rock Creek Park in DC sur­round­ed by bik­ers, run­ners, cars and the occa­sion­al deer, Wendy and Lisa talked about aging. Wendy’s moth­er, who had her chil­dren in her ear­ly 20s, was still join­ing the family’s gru­el­ing sum­mer hikes with her chil­dren and nine grand­chil­dren well into her 60s. Wendy mused about how much old­er she would be when their kids could have their own kids. It dawned on her that her health was not just a here and now issue, but an invest­ment in that future. We agreed to help each oth­er cul­ti­vate the habits and make time to build strength as well as reserves, both phys­i­cal and men­tal, for the long-term. Their goal: to enjoy being active in their 40s and 50s while also lay­ing the ground­work to con­tin­ue being active into their 60s, 70s, and beyond. [Read more…] about New book pro­vides prac­ti­cal guid­ance for women (and men) to rebal­ance our lifestyles and build Cog­ni­tive Reserve

The Do’s and Don’ts of Harnessing Technology (and Anxiety) for Good

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing impor­tant brain & men­tal health news plus a few fun brain teasers to test your rea­son­ing skills and more…

#1. Chal­lenge ahead: Har­ness­ing tech­nol­o­gy for good men­tal health

“Tech­nol­o­gy can not only help us grow out of unhealthy habits, it is also pos­si­ble to expand human men­tal capac­i­ties … although it will be nec­es­sary to ana­lyze “the how and when” of these uses: they must be eth­i­cal­ly sound and ensure that results are ben­e­fi­cial to soci­ety.” — our very own Álvaro Fer­nán­dez, hop­ing you all agree 🙂

If you pre­fer to read the arti­cle in Span­ish: Cómo hac­er de la tec­nología un ali­a­do en el cuida­do de la salud mental

#2. On neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, young brains, and smartphones

“As with any tool, behav­ior, activ­i­ty, or tech­nol­o­gy, smart phones have the poten­tial to be either a use­ful and high­ly con­struc­tive asset or a destruc­tive and harm­ful diver­sion from life … What is the impact on brain devel­op­ment dur­ing the first 25 years of life when a sig­nif­i­cant part of each day is spent look­ing into a smart phone and the result­ing cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al experiences?”

#3. Explor­ing links between hear­ing loss, demen­tia and the ‘cog­ni­tive reserve’ — plus the role of hear­ing aids

“Cer­tain types of demen­tia, par­tic­u­lar­ly vas­cu­lar demen­tia, are caused when there is less blood flow reach­ing the brain. This can dam­age our brain cells. Recent stud­ies have also shown that the parts of our brain that process sounds (our audi­to­ry sys­tem) have many blood ves­sels and are vul­ner­a­ble to dam­age … Anoth­er area of research is look­ing at whether hear­ing loss indi­rect­ly affects demen­tia risk by mak­ing it hard­er for peo­ple to stay con­nect­ed. Social iso­la­tion is anoth­er known risk fac­tor for dementia.”

#4. Com­put­er-assist­ed cog­ni­tive behav­ior ther­a­py (CCBT) may out­per­form Treat­ment as Usu­al (TAU) in help­ing patients reduce depres­sion, improve 6‑month remis­sion rates

“The find­ings of this ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­al sug­gest that CCBT with a mod­est amount of clin­i­cian sup­port has poten­tial for wider-spread imple­men­ta­tion as an effec­tive, accept­able, and effi­cient treat­ment for depres­sion in pri­ma­ry care.”

#6. Wear­able EEG mon­i­tor­ing start-up Epi­tel rais­es $12.5M to mar­ket seizure detec­tion system

“It is time that EEGs for the brain become as acces­si­ble as EKGs for the heart to patients through­out the coun­try. For too long essen­tial neu­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices have been inac­ces­si­ble to large parts of our pop­u­la­tion” — Dr. Chaud­ery, Prin­ci­pal at Genoa Ven­tures (co-lead investor)

#7. Otsu­ka and Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty start-up Jol­ly Good sign $43M deal to pro­mote Social Skills Train­ing (SST) ther­a­pies, help­ing schiz­o­phre­nia patients first

“The com­bi­na­tion of SST and a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal reg­i­men has been proven in stud­ies to reduce the recur­rence of men­tal dis­or­ders, the com­pa­nies said. Their first joint­ly devel­oped pro­gram will be direct­ed toward schiz­o­phre­nia patients, and they’re pre­dict­ing that the immer­sive nature of Jol­ly Good’s VR will make the SST ther­a­py more engag­ing and effec­tive than stan­dard methods.”

#8. Q&A with Dr. Wendy Suzu­ki on the parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem and har­ness­ing anx­i­ety for good

“Most peo­ple have all heard of the fight-or-flight system—that’s the stress sys­tem, it makes your heart rate go up and you can run away real­ly fast. Well, peo­ple don’t real­ize that through evo­lu­tion in par­al­lel with the fight-or-flight sys­tem evolved an equal and oppo­site part of our ner­vous sys­tem that’s nick­named the “rest-and-digest” part of the ner­vous sys­tem, or parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem. It’s basi­cal­ly the de-stress­ing part of our ner­vous sys­tem. That is what we need to acti­vate to bring our­selves back to equi­lib­ri­um when we’re in a stress­ful state.”

 

Final­ly, as promised, a few fun brain teasers to test your rea­son­ing skills–and more. Enjoy!

#9. Test your mem­o­ry and rea­son­ing skills with these proverbs

#10. Brain teas­er: Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?

#11. Did you notice the jump? Good rea­son­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing often requires prop­er atten­tion to detail…

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and safe March,

The Sharp­Brains Team

On neuroplasticity, young brains, and smartphones

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Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Smart Phones (Psy­chi­atric Times):

In med­ical school, I was taught that the brain is hard­wired at birth. Dur­ing the past 30 years, neu­ro­science has defin­i­tive­ly shown that this is not the case at all. As our under­stand­ing of brain devel­op­ment advanced, it became clear that, dur­ing the first 3 years of life, neu­rons in the brain pro­lif­i­cal­ly form synap­tic con­nec­tions to be pre­pared for many diverse func­tion­al tasks, most of which it will nev­er encounter. From aged 3 years onward, the cir­cuits fre­quent­ly used strength­en their con­nec­tions while those serv­ing no func­tion are pruned away. Hence the com­mon phrase, “Neu­rons that fire togeth­er, wire togeth­er.” [Read more…] about On neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, young brains, and smartphones

Could I be wrong? Exploring cognitive bias, curiosity, intellectual humility, and lifelong learning

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing eight time­ly sci­en­tif­ic and indus­try news plus a few fun teasers to appre­ci­ate our unique human brains.

#1. Could I be wrong? Explor­ing research on cog­ni­tive bias, curios­i­ty, intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty, and life­long learning

“None of us thinks that our beliefs and atti­tudes are incor­rect; if we did, we obvi­ous­ly wouldn’t hold those beliefs and atti­tudes. Yet, despite our sense that we are usu­al­ly cor­rect, we must accept that our views may some­times turn out to be wrong. This kind of humil­i­ty isn’t sim­ply virtuous—the research sug­gests that it results in bet­ter deci­sions, rela­tion­ships, and out­comes. So, the next time you feel cer­tain about some­thing, you might stop and ask your­self: Could I be wrong?”

#2. Great inter­view on bilin­gual­ism, sports, edu­ca­tion and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty — en español

#3. Should old­er politi­cians, and oth­er lead­ers, under­go cog­ni­tive test­ing? The debate con­tin­ues … here are some good com­ments from the online debate we had last summer:

  • PRO: “Def­i­nite­ly. We rou­tine­ly screen appli­cants for a wide range of jobs. Apply for the police, you will be test­ed. Join the mil­i­tary, you will be eval­u­at­ed. Should we not know if a can­di­date for the high­est posi­tion in the coun­try has a seri­ous emo­tion­al, intel­lec­tu­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal impairment?”
  • CON: “I dis­agree because these tests are very bad at pre­dict­ing how good some­one would be in lead­ing a coun­try. It doesn’t require the abil­i­ty to store a lot of infor­ma­tion in your work­ing mem­o­ry. Being a good leader requires only one essen­tial thing: hav­ing the right priorities.”
  • IT DEPENDS: “Who makes the test? What cog­ni­tive met­rics do we use? The bias­es in that design could lead to sig­nif­i­cant unex­pect­ed or even inten­tion­al­ly skewed results.”

#4. Click Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es fur­ther $52M to build up dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pipeline for depres­sion, insom­nia, smok­ing ces­sa­tion and more

What a year for Click and for dig­i­tal therapeutics!

#5. The Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Monitoring

The road to heav­en is paved with good decisions…

#6. FDA-approved, Cybin-spon­sored clin­i­cial tri­al to mea­sure ketamine’s impact on the brain via Ker­nel Flow neu­roimag­ing helmet

“The word psy­che­del­ic means ‘mind-man­i­fest­ing,’ but what has been miss­ing is use­ful ‘mind-imaging’—the abil­i­ty to dynam­i­cal­ly trace the neur­al cor­re­lates of human con­scious expe­ri­ence. Con­ven­tion­al neu­roimag­ing just isn’t dynam­ic enough to study the psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence in the brain as it hap­pens. This study of ketamine’s psy­che­del­ic effects while wear­ing head­gear equipped with sen­sors to record brain activ­i­ty could open up new fron­tiers of under­stand­ing” — Dr. Alex Belser, Cybin’s Chief Clin­i­cal Officer

#7. Bea­con Biosig­nals rais­es $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neu­ro­bio­mark­er dis­cov­ery platform

“ana­lyz­ing EEGs is labor inten­sive and inter­pre­ta­tion of these tests can vary from one clin­i­cian to another..…Beacon Biosig­nals has assem­bled what it claims is one of the world’s largest clin­i­cal EEG data­bas­es. By apply­ing its pro­pri­etary machine-learn­ing algo­rithms to the data­base, the com­pa­ny says it has iden­ti­fied neurobiomarkers—biological indi­ca­tors that are asso­ci­at­ed with cer­tain groups of patients, drug activ­i­ty, and ther­a­peu­tic efficacy.”

#8. Amy­loid-relat­ed imag­ing abnor­mal­i­ties (ARIA) found in approx­i­mate­ly 40% of patients tak­ing “Alzheimer’s drug” Aduhelm

Not good, yet com­plete­ly pre­dictable, and let’s remem­ber this is for a “treat­ment” cost­ing as much as $100,000/ year with exact­ly ZERO proven clin­i­cal ben­e­fit: “…The researchers found 425 cas­es in the com­bined adu­canum­ab group expe­ri­enced ARIA (41.3%), and ARIA-ede­ma was iden­ti­fied in 362 patients or 35.2%. Of them, 94 (26%) had symp­toms, such as headache, con­fu­sion, dizzi­ness and nau­sea. They found ARIA-micro­he­m­or­rhage and ARIA-super­fi­cial sidero­sis in 197 patients (19.1%) and 151 patients (14.7%), respectively.”

Final­ly, Let’s Thank our unique Human Brains and Minds with a few fam­i­ly-friend­ly riddles

Q: What does, “you must come and vis­it us some­time!” actu­al­ly mean?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a Hap­py & Healthy Hanukkah, Decem­ber and Christmas,

The Sharp­Brains Team

 

On physical activity, neuroplasticity, depression, screen time, neuromodulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time eight sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a few fun brain teasers.

#1. Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-mod­el­ing):

“Girls who spent less than an hour on screens and boys who spent less than 90 min­utes on screens were not neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by it. But at high­er amounts of screen time, their life sat­is­fac­tion dropped significantly—they were less hap­py with their lives, and it got worse the more time they spent … (the) study also found that teens who got more reg­u­lar exer­cise had greater life sat­is­fac­tion and few­er phys­i­cal com­plaints for both gen­ders. Not only that, the effects were large­ly unre­lat­ed to how much time a teen spent on screens, so that if teens exer­cised more, it could poten­tial­ly undo the dam­age to their well-being that went along with even six or eight hours of screen time.”

#2. Stud­ies find grow­ing evi­dence link­ing weight, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and depres­sion:

‘Obe­si­ty and depres­sion are both major glob­al health chal­lenges, and our study pro­vides the most robust evi­dence to date that high­er BMI caus­es depres­sion,’ said lead author Jess O’Loughlin. ‘Under­stand­ing whether phys­i­cal or social fac­tors are respon­si­ble for this rela­tion­ship can help inform effec­tive strate­gies to improve men­tal health and wellbeing.’

#3. Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and psy­chother­a­py:

Let’s hope! — “I think Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT) will con­tin­ue to be adapt­ed for more prob­lems, diag­noses, and con­di­tions. We will train many kinds of care­givers, teach­ers, front-line work­ers, police, and even politicians.”

#4. Ratio­nal­i­ty doesn’t equal effi­cien­cy: Cell­phone data shows how we nav­i­gate cities:

“We dis­cov­ered that the most pre­dic­tive mod­el – rep­re­sent­ing the most com­mon mode of city nav­i­ga­tion – was not the quick­est path, but instead one that tried to min­i­mize the angle between the direc­tion a per­son is mov­ing and the line from the per­son to their des­ti­na­tion … Evo­lu­tion is a sto­ry of trade-offs, not opti­miza­tions, and the cog­ni­tive load of cal­cu­lat­ing a per­fect path rather than rely­ing on the sim­pler point­ing method might not be worth a few saved min­utes. After all, ear­ly humans had to pre­serve brain pow­er for dodg­ing stam­ped­ing ele­phants, just like peo­ple today might need to focus on avoid­ing aggres­sive SUVs.”

#5. Trend: Har­ness­ing dig­i­tal tech to improve men­tal health and well­ness:

“Designed with the help of Dutch aca­d­e­m­ic Isabela Granic … the game is cen­tred around an avatar who stays in bed for the day and aims to relax play­ers by using sooth­ing music, mut­ed colours and self-care prac­tices. Think med­i­ta­tive tasks such as word games and guid­ed breath­ing exer­cis­es. There’s no way to win, com­pete or binge – in fact, it delib­er­ate­ly starts to feel bor­ing after a few min­utes of play, which dis­in­cen­tivizes mind­less scrolling. #Self­Care was an instant hit, gar­ner­ing half a mil­lion down­loads in its first six weeks with­out any advertising…”

#6. Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”:

“What made this proof-of-prin­ci­ple tri­al suc­cess­ful was the dis­cov­ery of a neur­al bio­mark­er – a spe­cif­ic pat­tern of brain activ­i­ty that indi­cates the onset of symp­toms – and the team’s abil­i­ty to cus­tomize a new DBS device to respond only when it rec­og­nizes that pat­tern. The device then stim­u­lates a dif­fer­ent area of the brain cir­cuit, cre­at­ing on-demand, imme­di­ate ther­a­py that is unique to both the patient’s brain and the neur­al cir­cuit caus­ing her illness.”

#7. Six guide­lines to nav­i­gate the Aduhelm con­tro­ver­sy and (hope­ful­ly) help patients with Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s Dis­ease:

“After ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ing that Aduhelm could be pre­scribed to any­one with demen­tia, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion now spec­i­fies that the pre­scrip­tion drug be giv­en to indi­vid­u­als with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment or ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s, the groups in which the med­ica­tion was studied.
Yet this nar­row­er rec­om­men­da­tion rais­es ques­tions. What does a diag­no­sis of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment mean? Is Aduhelm appro­pri­ate for all peo­ple with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, or only some? And who should decide which patients qual­i­fy for treat­ment: demen­tia spe­cial­ists or pri­ma­ry care physicians?”

#8. The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) hard­ens data secu­ri­ty rules for health apps and devices:

“With data breach­es on the rise, the FTC is look­ing to make health apps more account­able for telling patients when their data has been exposed.”

 

Wish­ing you and yours a sweet Hal­loween and a healthy month of November,

The Sharp­Brains Team