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neurotechnologies

Time for a universal “exercise prescription” for kids and adults to boost cognition and mental health?

August 31, 2023 by SharpBrains 9 Comments

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of brain research find­ings, tools and con­tro­ver­sies plus some brain teasers to chal­lenge your (and our) work­ing memory.

#1. Major evi­dence review sup­ports an “exer­cise pre­scrip­tion” for most adults to boost men­tal health

“High­er inten­si­ty phys­i­cal activ­i­ty was asso­ci­at­ed with greater improve­ments” and “Effec­tive­ness of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty inter­ven­tions dimin­ished with longer dura­tion interventions.”
The sweet spot was four or five half-hour effort­ful ses­sions per week. Are you hit­ting it?

#2. (Sep­a­rate) Evi­dence review: Phys­i­cal exer­cise helps boost atten­tion, cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty and inhibito­ry con­trol in chil­dren and ado­les­cents with ADHD

Not sur­pris­ing but impor­tant find­ings. Next to research: the type, inten­si­ty, and dura­tion that may help the most.

#3. Read­ing for plea­sure dur­ing child­hood may lead to high­er brain/ cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment and men­tal well-being dur­ing adolescence

Cru­cial­ly, “… read­ing for plea­sure in ear­ly child­hood was linked with bet­ter scores on com­pre­hen­sive cog­ni­tion assess­ments and bet­ter edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment in young ado­les­cence. It was also asso­ci­at­ed with few­er men­tal health prob­lems and less time spent on elec­tron­ic devices … can be ben­e­fi­cial regard­less of socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus. It may also be help­ful regard­less of the children’s ini­tial intel­li­gence lev­el.” — Long Live Books and Read­ing (and, yes, Exercise)!

#4. Vir­tu­al cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py (CBT) accounts for over 30% of NHS men­tal health treat­ments — up from 10% in 2017

“Ear­ly inter­ven­tion is crit­i­cal in pre­vent­ing a patient’s mild to mod­er­ate symp­toms from wors­en­ing” … (but) online ther­a­py may not suit every­one and that it was still up to health­care pro­fes­sion­als to iden­ti­fy “who may and may not benefit”

#5. Just-pub­lished Apple patent sig­nals aim to mea­sure brain activ­i­ty using Air­Pods sen­sor system

Still ear­ly days, but rel­e­vant sig­nal to note and track

#6. Neu­rotech and brain data in con­text: Are “neu­ror­ights” the way to men­tal privacy?

Impor­tant point: “The poten­tial to col­lect brain data more direct­ly, with high­er res­o­lu­tion, and in greater amounts has height­ened wor­ries about men­tal and brain pri­va­cy …(but) We argue that by empha­siz­ing what is dis­tinct about brain pri­va­cy issues, rather than what they share with oth­er data pri­va­cy con­cerns, risks weak­en­ing broad­er efforts to enact more robust pri­va­cy law and policy.”

#7. Hopes and Ques­tions raised by Alzheimer’s drug Leqem­bi (lecanemab)

“Will Leqembi’s pri­ma­ry ben­e­fit — a slight slow­ing of decline in cog­ni­tion and func­tion­ing — make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence to patients and fam­i­ly mem­bers or will it be dif­fi­cult to dis­cern? … How many old­er adults in their 70s and 80s will be able and will­ing to trav­el to med­ical cen­ters for infu­sions twice a month and have reg­u­lar MRI scans and physi­cian vis­its to mon­i­tor for poten­tial side effects such as brain bleeds or swelling? Even with Medicare cov­er­age, how many peo­ple will be able to afford the suite of med­ical ser­vices required?”

#8. Its mas­sive price tag: $109,000 per patient, per year

“To qual­i­fy for Leqem­bi, patients must under­go a PET scan that looks for amy­loid plaques, the pro­tein clumps that clog the brains of many Alzheimer’s patients. About 1 in 5 patients who took Leqem­bi in the major clin­i­cal test of the drug devel­oped brain hem­or­rhag­ing or swelling, a risk that requires those tak­ing the drug to under­go fre­quent med­ical check­ups and brain scans called MRIs … Out­stand­ing doubts about Leqem­bi and relat­ed drugs have giv­en urgency to efforts to mon­i­tor patient experiences.”
#9. Final­ly, let’s piv­ot into some­thing more fun. Here are a few brain teasers aimed at chal­leng­ing your work­ing mem­o­ry and help­ing get that brain and mind in great shape for the new academic/ life­long learn­ing year. Please give them a try … they are not as easy as they may sound:

 

Say the days of the week in alpha­bet­i­cal order, then back­wards. If too hard, try the 5 work days first.

If you speak a lan­guage oth­er than Eng­lish, do the same in said language.

Say the months of the year in alpha­bet­i­cal order. Too easy? Well, try doing so back­wards, in reverse alpha­bet­i­cal order. (You will prob­a­bly need some pen and paper for this one.)

Find the sum of your date of birth, mm/dd/yyyy. For a tougher brain teas­er, do the same with your best friend’s date of birth (with­out look­ing it up…)

Look around you and, with­in a minute, find three green things that may fit in your pock­ets, and three red objects that are clear­ly too big to fit.

(more brain teasers here, for teens and adults of every age)
Have a great month of September!

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Filed Under: Attention & ADD/ADHD, Brain Teasers, Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Peak Performance, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: AirPods, Apple, attention, boost mental health, Brain Teasers, brain teasers for adults, brain-activity, brain-teaser, cognitive, cognitive behavioural therapy, cognitive-flexibility, exercise prescription, fun brain teasers, lecanemab, Leqembi, mental health treatments, Neuroethics, neurotech, neurotechnologies, Physical-Exercise, reading, virtual cognitive behavioural therapy, Working-memory

Neurotech, neuroethics and brain data in context: Are “neurorights” the way to mental privacy?

August 10, 2023 by The Conversation

Neu­rotech­nolo­gies – devices that inter­act direct­ly with the brain or ner­vous sys­tem – were once dis­missed as the stuff of sci­ence fic­tion. Not anymore.

Sev­er­al com­pa­nies are try­ing to devel­op brain-com­put­er inter­faces, or BCIs, in hopes of help­ing patients with severe paral­y­sis or oth­er neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders. Entre­pre­neur Elon Musk’s com­pa­ny Neu­ralink, for exam­ple, recent­ly received Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion approval to begin human test­ing for a tiny brain implant that can com­mu­ni­cate with com­put­ers. There are also less inva­sive neu­rotech­nolo­gies, like EEG head­sets that sense elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty inside the wearer’s brain, cov­er­ing a wide range of appli­ca­tions from enter­tain­ment and well­ness to edu­ca­tion and the work­place. [Read more…] about Neu­rotech, neu­roethics and brain data in con­text: Are “neu­ror­ights” the way to men­tal privacy?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain data, brain privacy, Brain-Computer Interfaces, contextual integrity, mental privacy, neural data, neurotechnologies, Neurotechnology, privacy

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

November 17, 2021 by SharpBrains

Neu­rotech start­up Bea­con Biosig­nals scores $27M to bring AI to EEG analy­sis (Med­C­i­ty News):

Elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy is a decades-old tech­nique for cap­tur­ing brain activ­i­ty, data that are used to eval­u­ate brain dis­or­ders. Bea­con Biosig­nals is apply­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to these tests, and the neu­rotech­nol­o­gy start­up has found a ready mar­ket in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in assess­ing how their exper­i­men­tal brain ther­a­pies are work­ing. Now Bea­con Biosig­nals has some­thing else: $27 mil­lion in financ­ing. [Read more…] about Bea­con Biosig­nals rais­es $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neu­ro­bio­mark­er dis­cov­ery platform

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: artificial intelligence, Beacon Biosignals, brain disorders, brain signatures, brain-activity, Cumulus Neuroscience, EEG, EEG brain signatures, electroencephalography, Kernel, machine-learning, neurobiomarkers, neurotechnologies, Neurotechnology, noninvasive neurotechnologies, noninvasive neurotechnology

Trend: Harnessing digital tech to improve mental health and wellness

October 25, 2021 by SharpBrains

From mind­ful­ness apps to vir­tu­al ther­a­py ses­sions, dig­i­tal tools offer instant access to well­ness resources (The Globe and Mail):

In 2015, Brie Code was work­ing at lead­ing video game com­pa­ny Ubisoft as lead arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram­mer when she real­ized that many peo­ple she knew – about half, by her esti­ma­tion – found video games bor­ing. [Read more…] about Trend: Har­ness­ing dig­i­tal tech to improve men­tal health and wellness

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Breathing, Calm, chronic insomnia, Clue, cognitive behavioural therapy, digital mental health, digital therapeutic, digital wellness, Global Wellness Institute, global wellness market, Headspace, Hydro Coach, market-research, meditation, meditative tasks, mental wellness market, mental-wellness, mindfulness, neurotech, neurotechnologies, Neurotechnology, prescription-only digital therapeutic, SelfCare, Somryst, Tru Luv, Ubisoft, video-games

On cognitive reframing and biases, stress, mental health tech, Aduhelm backlash, Britney Spears, and more

August 31, 2021 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time nine sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try devel­op­ments to help pro­mote life­long brain and men­tal health.

#1. To low­er stress lev­els and improve prob­lem-solv­ing, prac­tice cog­ni­tive refram­ing instead of venting

“… vent­ing like­ly doesn’t soothe anger as much as aug­ment it. That’s because encour­ag­ing peo­ple to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bod­ies, strength­en­ing the neur­al path­ways for anger and mak­ing it eas­i­er to get angry the next time around. Stud­ies on vent­ing anger (with­out effec­tive feed­back), whether online or ver­bal­ly, have also found it to be gen­er­al­ly unhelp­ful … To get out of that, you can ask the per­son to step back and help you reframe your expe­ri­ence by ask­ing, “How should I think about this dif­fer­ent­ly?” or “What should I do in this situation?”

#2. Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health

“The new com­pa­ny would find it push­ing well beyond its cur­rent mind­ful­ness focus to, “pro­vide the full spec­trum of proven, effec­tive vir­tu­al sup­port – from mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion, to text-based behav­ioral health coach­ing, to video-based ther­a­py and psy­chi­a­try – for all types of patient populations.”

Ambi­tious move!

#3. How to read, under­stand and write great med­ical research

12 good tips for stu­dents and every­one else

#4. Vet­er­ans Affairs won’t cov­er Biogen’s new “Alzheimer’s drug” giv­en con­cerns over safe­ty and lack of evidence

Their inde­pen­dent review con­cludes that “giv­en the lack of evi­dence of a robust and mean­ing­ful clin­i­cal ben­e­fit and the known safe­ty sig­nal, we rec­om­mend against offer­ing this agent to patients with Alzheimer’s demen­tia (mild or oth­er­wise) or mild cog­ni­tive impairment.”

#5. Alzheimer’s & Demen­tia researchers chal­lenge FDA’s approval of Aduhelm giv­en lack of evi­dence for beta-amy­loid as a marker

A strong call to “learn how this reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ure occurred and to ensure that it doesn’t occur again”

#6. Debunk­ing four myths about deci­sion-mak­ing capac­i­ty to keep Brit­ney Spears and oth­ers safe

Address­ing the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy about con­ser­va­tor­ships, a USC Pro­fes­sor of Law, Psy­chol­o­gy, and Psy­chi­a­try shares a great arti­cle to debunk these all-too-com­mon myths

#7. Study exam­ines com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es (have you tried this brain teas­er?) and ways to mit­i­gate them

If you have not encoun­tered the “Lin­da brain teas­er” before, please give it a try! If you have, you’ll enjoy the new paper titled Tver­sky and Kahneman’s Cog­ni­tive Illu­sions: Who Can Solve Them, and Why?

#8. Inte­grat­ing music, move­ment and stroke reha­bil­i­ta­tion, MedRhythms rais­es $25M to devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize dig­i­tal therapeutic

Fas­ci­nat­ing approach to gait training.

#9. Neu­rotech start-up Paradromics rais­es $20M to address brain-relat­ed dis­or­ders via next-gen brain-com­put­er interfaces

Neu­ralink vs. Paradromics vs. non-inva­sive plat­forms — quite a stim­u­lat­ing space to track

 

Wish­ing you and yours a hap­py and healthy back-to-school and month of September,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alzheimer's drug, Alzheimers-disease, anger, Behavioral Health, beta-amyloid, Biogen, Brain Teasers, brain-teaser, Britney Spears, cognitive, cognitive biases, cognitive reframing, cognitive-bias, Decision-making, digital therapeutic, gait training, Ginger, Headspace, how to read, lower stress levels, MedRhythms, mild-cognitive-impairment, neurotechnologies, Neurotechnology, Paradromics, problem-solving, psychiatry, stroke-rehabilitation, therapy, venting, Veterans Affairs

Headspace and Ginger merge to expand and scale up digital mental health

August 25, 2021 by SharpBrains

Head­space and Gin­ger are merg­ing to form Head­space Health (TechCrunch):

Med­i­ta­tion app Head­space this morn­ing announced plans to merge with on-demand men­tal health ser­vice Gin­ger. Bar­ring unfore­seen reg­u­la­to­ry road­blocks, the two com­pa­nies will com­bine to form Head­space Health. The new orga­ni­za­tion would sport a com­bined val­ue of $3 bil­lion and a head­count of more than 800.

The merg­er comes dur­ing accel­er­at­ed usage of both par­ties, as a seem­ing­ly end­less pan­dem­ic has put a strain on men­tal health across the globe and many have turned to vir­tu­al solu­tions to address the grow­ing prob­lem. [Read more…] about Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Behavioral Health, Calm, Ginger, Headspace, Headspace Health, meditation app, mindfulness, neurotechnologies, on-demand mental healthcare, psychiatry, therapy

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