pharmacological

Study identifies cognitive benefits of ketamine in patients with treatment-resistant depression

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Ket­a­mine mol­e­cules attach them­selves to NMDA neu­ronal recep­tors, which play an impor­tant role in brain plas­tic­i­ty and pre­dic­tive pro­cess­ing. C22H31NO2, CC BY-SA

Which fac­tors deter­mine what we believe about our world, our­selves, our past, and our future? Cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science sug­gests that our beliefs are depen­dent on brain activ­i­ty, specif­i­cal­ly on the way our brains process sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion in order to make sense of our environment.

These beliefs (defined as prob­a­bil­i­ty esti­mates) are cen­tral to our brain’s pre­dic­tive pro­cess­ing func­tion, which enables it to pre­dict the prob­a­bilis­tic struc­ture of the world around us. These pre­dic­tions could even be the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks of men­tal states, such as per­cep­tions and emotions.

Many psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, such as depres­sion and schiz­o­phre­nia, are char­ac­terised by irreg­u­lar beliefs whose ori­gins we still don’t ful­ly under­stand. But if we can iden­ti­fy the cere­bral sys­tems gov­ern­ing them, we could tar­get those very areas in a bid to alle­vi­ate the pain asso­ci­at­ed to these ill­ness­es. [Read more…] about Study iden­ti­fies cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits of ket­a­mine in patients with treat­ment-resis­tant depression

Does ADHD treatment enable long-term academic success? (Yes, especially when pharmacological and non-pharma treatments are combined)

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Aca­d­e­m­ic dif­fi­cul­ties are one of the most impor­tant adverse con­se­quences of ADHD, and they fre­quent­ly con­tribute to par­ents’ deci­sion to seek treat­ment for their child. Whether treat­ment con­sis­tent­ly yields a pos­i­tive impact on long-term aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess is thus an impor­tant issue; how­ev­er, the answer to this ques­tion has been some­what controversial.

A study pub­lished recent­ly in the Jour­nal of Atten­tion Dis­or­ders, Long-term out­comes of ADHD: Aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, rep­re­sents the most com­pre­hen­sive effort to date to iden­ti­fy and syn­the­size research relat­ed to this impor­tant question.

The Study:

The authors began by iden­ti­fy­ing all stud­ies pub­lished between 1980 and 2012 that report­ed long-term aca­d­e­m­ic out­comes for youth with ADHD; this was defined as at least 2 years beyond an ini­tial base­line assess­ment. All stud­ies includ­ed a com­par­i­son group — either a nor­ma­tive com­par­i­son sam­ple or youth with ADHD who were not treat­ed — or a com­par­i­son mea­sure, e.g., a pre-treat­ment base­line mea­sure of aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment to which sub­se­quent achieve­ment could be com­pared. [Read more…] about Does ADHD treat­ment enable long-term aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess? (Yes, espe­cial­ly when phar­ma­co­log­i­cal and non-phar­ma treat­ments are combined)

Study: Antidepressant vortioxetine combined with cognitive training may help delay cognitive decline

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Can Phar­ma­co­log­i­cal Aug­men­ta­tion of Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Reme­di­ate Age-Relat­ed Cog­ni­tive Decline? (The Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Psychiatry):

A grad­ual decline of cog­ni­tive func­tion and con­cur­rent loss of brain vol­ume is an expect­ed process even in healthy aging. What if, how­ev­er, this process could be delayed, reversed, or even pre­vent­ed? This ques­tion has become increas­ing­ly rel­e­vant as the aver­age expect­ed lifes­pan ris­es. Indeed, the num­ber of Amer­i­cans over age 65 is expect­ed to more than dou­ble from 40 mil­lion in 2010 to 89 mil­lion in 2050.

[Read more…] about Study: Anti­de­pres­sant vor­tiox­e­tine com­bined with cog­ni­tive train­ing may help delay cog­ni­tive decline

Study finds combined pharma + non-pharma treatment most beneficial to help youth with ADHD address long-term academic difficulties

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Aca­d­e­m­ic dif­fi­cul­ties are one of the most impor­tant adverse con­se­quences of ADHD, and they fre­quent­ly con­tribute to par­ents’ deci­sion to seek treat­ment for their child. Whether treat­ment con­sis­tent­ly yields a pos­i­tive impact on long-term aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess is thus an impor­tant issue; how­ev­er, the answer to this ques­tion has been some­what con­tro­ver­sial. [Read more…] about Study finds com­bined phar­ma + non-phar­ma treat­ment most ben­e­fi­cial to help youth with ADHD address long-term aca­d­e­m­ic difficulties

Survey: Do you think we will soon have a pharmacological treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease and cognitive impairment?

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alzheimers-disease-prevention—–

Please answer this ques­tion and a few oth­er to help us bet­ter under­stand your thoughts and beliefs about brain health, and how we may be able to serve you bet­ter (should take no more than 5 min­utes to com­plete it):

Take the survey

Thank you!

To improve academic outcomes, children with ADHD need both medication and non-medication treatments

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children_school_attention.

Aca­d­e­m­ic prob­lems are extreme­ly com­mon in chil­dren with ADHD, and often the issue that leads to refer­ral for an ADHD evaluation.

Aca­d­e­m­ic out­comes can be mea­sured in 2 dif­fer­ent ways — aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance — and both are com­pro­mised in chil­dren with ADHD. Aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment refers to the infor­ma­tion and skills that chil­dren acquire and is typ­i­cal­ly mea­sured by stan­dard­ized tests. Aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance focus­es on direct mea­sures of suc­cess at school such as grades, grade reten­tion, high school grad­u­a­tion, and col­lege enrollment.

An impor­tant ques­tion then, for mil­lions of kids diag­nosed with ADHD and for their par­ents and edu­ca­tors, is whether long-term aca­d­e­m­ic func­tion­ing can improve with appro­pri­ate treat­ment. [Read more…] about To improve aca­d­e­m­ic out­comes, chil­dren with ADHD need both med­ica­tion and non-med­ica­tion treatments