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psychiatric

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

August 9, 2021 by The Conversation

Brit­ney Spears’ impas­sioned remarks in court have raised many ques­tions about con­ser­va­tor­ships, includ­ing when they’re nec­es­sary and whether they effec­tive­ly pro­tect someone’s best interests.

When one los­es the capac­i­ty to make deci­sions for one­self the court appoints a guardian, or con­ser­va­tor, to make those deci­sions. Appoint­ing some­one to make deci­sions about per­son­al and finan­cial mat­ters on another’s behalf has been part of civ­il soci­ety since the ancient Greeks. Today, all juris­dic­tions in the U.S. have con­ser­va­tor­ship laws to pro­tect peo­ple who lack the abil­i­ty to make their own deci­sions. [Read more…] about Debunk­ing four myths about deci­sion-mak­ing capac­i­ty to keep Brit­ney Spears and oth­ers safe

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Britney Spears, conservatorship, decision-making capacity, ethics, medication, mental health, psychiatric, psychiatric disorders, Psychotherapy, psychotic states, schizophrenia

Update: Should candidates to high office should pass a cognitive/ mental fitness test?

July 24, 2020 by SharpBrains

Wow, that was a cou­ple of very insight­ful dis­cus­sions, via social media no less.

#1. The first one was about whether heads of state and can­di­dates to high office should pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test. Click HERE to read and dis­cuss some of the sharpest com­ments, such as…

  • “I won­der what brought this up.”
  • “Def­i­nite­ly. We rou­tine­ly screen appli­cants for a wide range of jobs.”
  • “Then the bal­ance of polit­i­cal pow­er would shift towards the design­ers of those tests.”
  • “That’s what debates are for.”
  • “Yes, but prob­a­bly nobody would pass it.”
  • “No, because if we can’t judge that for our­selves, then what busi­ness do we have vot­ing at all?”

#2. The sec­ond debate cen­tered on the future of men­tal health: In ten years, will we see DSM‑6 or Some­thing Much Bet­ter (SMB‑1)? Would you say “Some­thing bet­ter hope­ful­ly” or “Well con­sid­er­ing we approach men­tal health from a dis­ease model.…that’s the first prob­lem” or “DSM is a tool, and a very use­ful one. As any oth­er tool it depends on the use you make of it,” or some­thing else.

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing as always new think­ing, research and tools for life­long brain health and men­tal fitness.

#3. Study: Across all ide­o­log­i­cal groups, high­er cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty and intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty pre­dicts sup­port for free speech

#4. Let’s under­stand how to increase resis­tance to tau and amy­loid pro­teins so we can all become “super-agers.”  Brain scans show low­er accu­mu­la­tion of tau and amy­loid pathol­o­gy among cog­ni­tive “super-agers”

#5. For exam­ple: Jobs with low phys­i­cal stress and good work­ing con­di­tions linked to larg­er hip­pocam­pus and bet­ter memory

#6. Want­ed: 30,000 vol­un­teers! Large UC study to inves­ti­gate when and how brain train­ing trans­fers (or does not) to broad­er cog­ni­tive and health benefits

#7. Time­ly ques­tions: “How com­mon are neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric com­pli­ca­tions in patients with COVID-19? What pro­por­tion of neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric com­pli­ca­tions affect the (cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem) ver­sus the periph­er­al ner­vous sys­tem, and are nov­el syn­dromes emerg­ing? And who is most at risk?” Sur­vey finds ischaemic stroke and altered men­tal sta­tus as most com­mon neu­ro­log­i­cal com­pli­ca­tions in severe COVID-19 cases

#8. “Our mind is one of the only things that we can­not con­sis­tent­ly mea­sure and quan­ti­fy. And humans do remark­able things when we can mea­sure some­thing.”  Ker­nel rais­es $53 mil­lion to ease access to rich neur­al data and mar­ket Neu­ro­science as a Ser­vice (NaaS)

#9. “We are tak­ing proven cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pies and ful­ly automat­ing them to deliv­er the care scal­ably and con­sis­tent­ly as drugs.” Start­up Big Health rais­es $39M to uni­ver­sal­ize access to cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) for anx­i­ety and poor sleep

#10. Build­ing on Bill Gates’ orig­i­nal goal of ‘a com­put­er on every desk,’ per­haps it’s time for ‘real-time men­tal health sup­port on every phone.’ Microsoft announces sup­port for three inno­v­a­tive men­tal health ser­vices har­ness­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)

#11. Res­o­nance. Empa­thy. Aware­ness. Com­pas­sion. Hope. And our favorite… Humor. Six tips to help reg­u­late stress lev­els in our organizations

#12. Final­ly, a fun brain teas­er. What do you see, rec­tan­gles or cir­cles?

 

Wish­ing you a good and safe August,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Alzheimer's disease prevention, Alzheimers-disease, amyloid, artificial intelligence, Bill Gates, brain health, brain-teaser, cognitive behavioral therapies, cognitive test, cognitive-ability, free speech, hippocampus, mental fitness test, mental health, mental-fitness, Microsoft, neurological, psychiatric, regulate stress, stress-levels, tau

Update: Trained older brains can outperform untrained younger ones at demanding cognitive tasks

August 29, 2019 by SharpBrains

_______________

Time for Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing the lat­est research, tools and think­ing for life­long brain health and men­tal well-being — and a cou­ple fun brain teasers 🙂

New brain research:

  • Can trained old­er brains out­per­form untrained younger ones at demand­ing cog­ni­tive tasks? Quick answer: YES
  • Sep­tem­ber 17th @ UC Berke­ley: Dis­rupt­ing neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive diseases

New neurotech and digital health:

  • Har­ness­ing inno­v­a­tive neu­rotech­nolo­gies to pro­vide bet­ter urgent care at Ban­ner Health
  • Phar­ma indus­try warm­ing up to dig­i­tal therapeutics
  • Dig­i­tal Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBTi) may become the uni­ver­sal first-line treat­ment for insomnia

New thinking on brain and mind:

  • Pos­i­tive soli­tude, Feel­ing active and Future-mind­ednes: Three Keys to Well-being
  • Study finds psy­chi­atric diag­noses to be ‘sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly meaningless’

And a couple fun brain teasers:

  • Quick brain teas­er to deter­mine your stress levels
  • Test your cog­ni­tive flexibility

 

Have a great month of September,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers, Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Banner Health, brain health, brain teaser adults, Brain Teasers, brain-research, brain-teaser, CBT, CBTi, cognitive, cognitive-flexibility, digital health, digital therapeutics, mental well being, neurotech, neurotechnologies, pharma, psychiatric

10-year study finds that the higher the blood sugar level, the faster the cognitive decline over time — regardless of diabetic status

January 29, 2018 by SharpBrains

___

The Star­tling Link Between Sug­ar and Alzheimer’s (The Atlantic):

“A lon­gi­tu­di­nal study, pub­lished Thurs­day in the jour­nal Dia­betolo­gia, fol­lowed 5,189 peo­ple over 10 years and found that peo­ple with high blood sug­ar had a faster rate of cog­ni­tive decline than those with nor­mal blood sugar—whether or not their blood-sug­ar lev­el tech­ni­cal­ly made them dia­bet­ic. In oth­er words, the high­er the blood sug­ar, the faster the cog­ni­tive decline. [Read more…] about 10-year study finds that the high­er the blood sug­ar lev­el, the faster the cog­ni­tive decline over time — regard­less of dia­bet­ic status

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alzheimer’s, blood sugar, cognitive-decline, cognitive-health, dementia, diabetes, diabetic, Diabetologia, HbA1c, high blood sugar, psychiatric, psychiatric conditions, risk factors

Photobiomodulation: A new and promising way to enhance brain function

December 4, 2017 by Dr. Lew Lim

___

As is increas­ing­ly evi­dent, there are mul­ti­ple meth­ods aimed at enhanc­ing brain function.

Brain train­ing and mind­ful­ness prac­tices are com­mon­ly used. Sub­stance-based meth­ods are pop­u­lar too, includ­ing hal­lu­cino­gens in the form of plant extracts, and drugs. Same as tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) and tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion (TMS): All of these are promis­ing but have been chal­lenged — for exam­ple, the repro­ducibil­i­ty of elec­tri­cal-based stim­u­la­tion results is increas­ing­ly ques­tioned. [Read more…] about Pho­to­bio­mod­u­la­tion: A new and promis­ing way to enhance brain function

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Peak Performance, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain-enhancement, brain-function, Brain-Training, enhance brain function, low level light therapy, mindfulness, Neurodevelopmental, neurological, Photobiomodulation, psychiatric, Transcranial-direct-current-stimulation, Transcranial-Magnetic-Stimulation, VieLight

Executive Functions in Health and Disease: New book to help integrate Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology

August 8, 2017 by Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg

__________

Neu­ro­science used to be the monop­oly of a few elite uni­ver­si­ties locat­ed in a hand­ful of coun­tries. Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy used to be a quaint niche dis­ci­pline rel­a­tive­ly uncon­nect­ed to the larg­er world of neu­ro­science and con­tent in its meth­ods with paper-and-pen­cil tests. [Read more…] about Exec­u­tive Func­tions in Health and Dis­ease: New book to help inte­grate Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science and Neuropsychology

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Alexander-Luria, clinical psychologists, cognition, cognitive-psychologists, disease, Executive-Functions, frontal-lobe, health, medical, neurologists, neuropsychologists, Neuropsychology, neuroscience, neuroscientist, prefrontal-cortex, psychiatric, Psychiatrists

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