physiological

Study: A few slow-paced breaths are enough to significantly reduce physiological stress

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It’s one of the first things par­ents and teach­ers tell a child who gets upset: “Take a deep breath.” But research into the effect of deep breath­ing on the body’s stress response has over­whelm­ing­ly ignored young chil­dren – and stud­ies done with adults typ­i­cal­ly take place in a uni­ver­si­ty lab, mak­ing them even less applic­a­ble to children’s actu­al lives.

A new study by Stan­ford researchers is the first to show that tak­ing just a few slow, deep breaths sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces young children’s phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal. By mea­sur­ing the effects in nat­u­ral­is­tic set­tings such as day camps and play­grounds, the study is also ground­break­ing for its design, which more close­ly reflects a child’s expe­ri­ence than a study in a lab would. [Read more…] about Study: A few slow-paced breaths are enough to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress

Apple/ Eli Lilly’s bet: Wearable and mobile consumer devices may well help us detect cognitive impairment and dementia

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Apple, Eli Lil­ly research whether devices can detect demen­tia signs (Health­care Dive):

“Demen­tia, which affects rough­ly 47 mil­lion peo­ple across the globe, costs $1 tril­lion world­wide, accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion. Ear­ly test­ing for the con­di­tion is spo­radic and, when con­duct­ed, it’s often not sen­si­tive enough to detect ear­ly stages of men­tal decline, cre­at­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty for tech com­pa­nies like Apple to see whether they can turn a profit.

The “rich, lon­gi­tu­di­nal infor­ma­tion” from wear­able and mobile con­sumer devices can be [Read more…] about Apple/ Eli Lilly’s bet: Wear­able and mobile con­sumer devices may well help us detect cog­ni­tive impair­ment and dementia

Tara Thiagarajan, Founder of Brainnovations Winner Sapien Labs, on building a global platform for brain research that truly captures the diversity of humanity

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What sur­prised you the most from the Judges’ ques­tions and feed­back dur­ing the Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test?

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to see the sig­nif­i­cant range and depth of knowl­edge shown by the judg­ing pan­el, lead­ing to very spe­cif­ic and use­ful ques­tions around the key chal­lenges to build our glob­al research platform.

In a nut­shell, what is the core idea behind Sapi­en Labs?

The core idea is to fur­ther our under­stand­ing of the large dif­fer­ences between indi­vid­ual brains in order to man­age our brain health and brain states bet­ter. [Read more…] about Tara Thi­a­gara­jan, Founder of Brain­no­va­tions Win­ner Sapi­en Labs, on build­ing a glob­al plat­form for brain research that tru­ly cap­tures the diver­si­ty of humanity

Improving driving safety with alarms triggered by impending sleep state, detected via brain signals: Key Neurotech Patent #11

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sleep state alarm
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,497,658

As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date. Today we are shar­ing a 2002 patent core to the field of dri­ving safety.

U.S. Patent No. 6,497,658: Alarm upon detec­tion of impend­ing sleep state

  • Inventor(s): Michael F. Roizen, Lawrence J. Got­tlieb, Avery Tung
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: EEG
  • Issue Date: Decem­ber 24, 2002

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘658 patent presents EEG tech­nol­o­gy applied to the field of sleep, with an appli­ca­tion geared less towards improved sleep states and more towards increased vig­i­lance dur­ing awake but sleepy states that may be nec­es­sary for exam­ple with vehi­cle oper­a­tors. [Read more…] about Improv­ing dri­ving safe­ty with alarms trig­gered by impend­ing sleep state, detect­ed via brain sig­nals: Key Neu­rotech Patent #11

Witnessing an explosion of consumer-facing neurotechnologies to (potentially) harness lifelong neuroplasticity

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Last week I shared some key sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and invest­ment trends rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing Brain Health, based on my par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, and promised a sec­ond arti­cle more focused on the tech­nol­o­gy side of things.

Here it is 🙂

Just a few weeks after the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit I also attend­ed CES 2017. While I enjoyed the myr­i­ad emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies –autonomous vehi­cles, robot­ics, drones, aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets, voice acti­vat­ed every­thing– I was most­ly struck by a firm named Halo Neu­ro­science. They have a fas­ci­nat­ing wear­able prod­uct, Halo Sport, claim­ing to accel­er­ate gains in strength, explo­sive­ness, endurance, and mus­cle mem­o­ry, improv­ing the brain’s response to ath­let­ic train­ing. It uses tDCS (tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion), essen­tial­ly prim­ing move­ment-relat­ed cir­cuits of the brain to become more recep­tive to stim­uli, help­ing the brain wire in the prac­tice for improved future response.

The cutting edge of applied neuroplasticity

Both con­fer­ences allowed me to see the cut­ting edge of [Read more…] about Wit­ness­ing an explo­sion of con­sumer-fac­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies to (poten­tial­ly) har­ness life­long neuroplasticity

Can biofeedback-based videogames help kids regulate anger and emotions?

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Video Game With Biofeed­back Teach­es Chil­dren to Curb Their Anger (Sci­ence Daily):

“Chil­dren with seri­ous anger prob­lems can be helped by a sim­ple video game that hones their abil­i­ty to reg­u­late their emo­tions, finds a pilot study at Boston Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal. Results were pub­lished online Octo­ber 24 in the jour­nal Ado­les­cent Psy­chi­a­try [Read more…] about Can biofeed­back-based videogames help kids reg­u­late anger and emotions?