personalized-medicine

Update: Moderate lifetime drinking may lead to lower Alzheimer-related beta amyloid deposits in the brain

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Time for a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter.

#1. First of all, it’s not all bad news this month. Study finds that mod­er­ate life­time drink­ing may lead to low­er Alzheimer-relat­ed beta amy­loid deposits in the brain

#2. And, talk about per­son­al­ized med­i­cine! This fas­ci­nat­ing study show­ing how brain imag­ing (fMRI) + machine learn­ing + inten­sive, non-inva­sive neu­rostim­u­la­tion = tar­get­ed treat­ments that can max­i­mize effi­ca­cy and min­i­mize side effects: Rein­vent­ing depres­sion treat­ment via tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic brain stim­u­la­tion (TMS)

#3. Also, not a minute too soon … Med­i­ta­tion apps have gone main­stream in the covid-19 era and Dig­i­tal health start-ups raised a record $3.1 bil­lion in Q1; focus will like­ly evolve from providers to con­sumers and employers

#4. Fyi, a very time­ly vir­tu­al event com­ing Tues­day April 28th, online: Explore strate­gies and tools to boost men­tal well­be­ing dur­ing (and after) Covid-19

#5. Now, “While Pear has an advan­tage over the com­pe­ti­tion in that its prod­ucts are backed by ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­als, physi­cians and health plans are still work­ing out how to pre­scribe and pay for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics.” The FDA clears Som­ryst, Pear’s dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic to treat chron­ic insomnia

#6. Net net, now is the time for indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive action to shift to a health­i­er “new nor­mal” for all: 3 ways to pro­tect your men­tal health dur­ing –and after– COVID-19 (in Span­ish: Tres hábitos de higiene men­tal para vencer al COVID-19 y crear un futuro más salud­able). Want more? Enjoy these Three tips for wise minds to calm coro­n­avirus anxiety

#7. A small but impor­tant study for that hope­ful near future when uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges reopen their doors: Study finds mixed results of Adder­all as cog­ni­tive enhancer (seems to boost emo­tion more than cognition)

#8. But, first things first. “The Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive” reached #1 on the pop charts in 1977. Maybe it was the beat, maybe it was John Travolta’s danc­ing. Or maybe it’s that the Gibb broth­ers’ cen­tral lyric is quite lit­er­al­ly always play­ing in our head. Keep­ing us safe —that is, “stayin’ alive ”— is the pri­ma­ry mis­sion of the brain”

Enough with coro­n­avirus out­break. Any­thing else going on? Yes!

#9. The Right to Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty. The Right to Free Will. The Right to Men­tal Pri­va­cy. The Right to Equal Access to Men­tal Aug­men­ta­tion. The Right to Pro­tec­tion from Algo­rith­mic Bias. Will these five Neu­roR­ights help har­ness emerg­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies for the com­mon good?

#10. “Today, the sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ences is, in my view, one of the most excit­ing fron­tiers in the sci­ence of well-being.” Tran­scend­ing Maslow’s famous “hier­ar­chy of needs” through Maslow’s own research on Peak Experiences

#11. You CAN have your cake and eat it too: Here’s a brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

#12. Ques­tion: My first thought after con­grat­u­lat­ing myself on being so clever about some­thing? Tease your brain with these eight fun rid­dles…

 

Wish­ing you and yours a great month of May,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Must-read interview with George Rebok, PhD: Can cognitive training help aging brains?

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george_rebokCan Train­ing Help Aging Brains? (Web­MD):

George Rebok, PhD, con­duct­ed one of the largest stud­ies to date look­ing at how cog­ni­tive train­ing affects old­er adults. Rebok, a pro­fes­sor at the Cen­ter on Aging and Health at Johns Hop­kins School of Pub­lic Health, talks about the study find­ings, com­mer­cial­ly avail­able brain train­ing, and what he rec­om­mends for brain health.

“What we found was I think very encour­ag­ing and also some­what sur­pris­ing [Read more…] about Must-read inter­view with George Rebok, PhD: Can cog­ni­tive train­ing help aging brains?

Cognitive therapy or medication? Brain scans may help personalize treatments

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Pre­dict­ing How Patients Respond to Ther­a­py (press release):

“A new study led by MIT neu­ro­sci­en­tists has found that brain scans of patients with social anx­i­ety dis­or­der can help pre­dict whether they will ben­e­fit from cog­ni­tive behav­ioral therapy…Social anx­i­ety is usu­al­ly treat­ed with either cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py or med­ica­tions. How­ev­er, [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive ther­a­py or med­ica­tion? Brain scans may help per­son­al­ize treatments

Working with Healthcare Stakeholders towards Brain-Based Personalized Medicine

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(Edi­tor’s Note: this is Part 3 of the new 3‑part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

Work­ing with Health Care Indus­try Stake­hold­ers: Clin­i­cians, Pharma/Biotech, Pay­ers, PBMs, Lawyers, Medicare, FDA

Clin­i­cians seek clear val­i­dat­ed “rules of thumb” that can be eas­i­ly imple­ment­ed and fit into their work­flow and reim­burse­ment regime. Many are explor­ing “Clin­i­cal Deci­sion Sup­port (CDS)” tools on the web and solu­tions linked to “Elec­tron­ic Health Records” (EHR’s). CDC and EHR’s are seed­ing the ground for clin­i­cians to adopt robust Bio­mark­ers that are shown to be unam­bigu­ous­ly clin­i­cal­ly relevant.

[Read more…] about Work­ing with Health­care Stake­hold­ers towards Brain-Based Per­son­al­ized Medicine

Personalized Medicine in Psychiatry: from DSM to brain-based RDoC, iSPOT‑D and biomarkers

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(Edi­tor’s Note: this is Part 2 of the new 3‑part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

Most Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine research in Psy­chi­a­try using mol­e­c­u­lar mea­sures alone have failed to repli­cate. Whilst dis­ap­point­ing, this is not sur­pris­ing, since 80% of human 25,000 genes have some effect on the brain.

There are there­fore grow­ing efforts expand­ing Genom­ic Bio­mark­ers in Psy­chi­a­try to Neu­roimag­ing (all Brain-based bio­log­i­cal and cog­ni­tive mea­sures). Some approach­es tar­get [Read more…] about Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine in Psy­chi­a­try: from DSM to brain-based RDoC, iSPOT‑D and biomarkers

The State of Personalized Medicine: The Role of Biomarkers

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(Edi­tor’s Note: this is Part 1 of the new 3‑part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

On aver­age, the med­ica­tions pre­scribed for brain-relat­ed con­di­tions ben­e­fit approx­i­mate­ly 50% of patients. But which 50%?

Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine seeks to move away from the cur­rent “1 size fits all, tri­al and error” approach that has been nec­es­sary because of a lack of evi­dence. Instead, it focus­es on [Read more…] about The State of Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine: The Role of Biomarkers