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psychiatric disorders

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

December 8, 2022 by The Conversation

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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: affective bias, antidepressants, augmented psychotherapy, brain-activity, Brain-Plasticity, Cognitive Neuroscience, depression, depressive beliefs, ketamine, NMDA, pharmacological, psilocybin, psychedelic medicine, psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia

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

Initial study finds promise and limitations in using virtual reality (VR) to treat ADHD

May 9, 2018 by Dr. David Rabiner

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Giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of exist­ing evi­dence-based ADHD treat­ments, i.e., stim­u­lant med­ica­tion and behav­ior ther­a­py — research on nov­el inter­ven­tion approach­es con­tin­ues to be important.

Cog­ni­tive train­ing is one such approach that has been sug­gest­ed as a poten­tial adjunct or even replace­ment for med­ica­tion treat­ment. While cog­ni­tive train­ing takes dif­fer­ent forms, e.g., com­put­er­ized atten­tion train­ing, work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing, the basic idea is that by repeat­ed­ly prac­tic­ing cog­ni­tive tasks relat­ed to atten­tion, one’s abil­i­ty to focus and attend will improve. In oth­er words, [Read more…] about Ini­tial study finds promise and lim­i­ta­tions in using vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) to treat ADHD

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Filed Under: Attention & ADD/ADHD, Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: AD/HD-treatments, adhd, anxiety, attention-training, behavior-therapy, Cognitive-Training, medication, methylphenidate, Neurofeedback, psychiatric disorders, Psychotherapy, stimulant medication, treatments, virtual-reality, working-memory-training

Jan Samzelius, CEO of Brainnovations Winner NeuraMetrix, encourages pioneers to focus on “simple, elegant solutions to big problems”

January 9, 2018 by Alvaro Fernandez

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

Even with only a brief pre­sen­ta­tion the judges imme­di­ate­ly got the poten­tial impact of our tech­nol­o­gy to mea­sure and mon­i­tor brain health and began to think about oth­er appli­ca­tions for us – sev­er­al we had not thought about. That was fun.

In a nut­shell, what is the core idea behind Neu­raMetrix?

Typ­ing Cadence is among the strongest habit we have. If the brain is attacked by a dis­ease, the habit will begin to break – very slow­ly and in very small incre­ments. Our way of mea­sur­ing is so sen­si­tive that we can pick up changes at the lev­el of 1/100th of sec­ond – many orders of mag­ni­tude bet­ter than today’s tools.

When and how did the idea come to you?

Com­ing from data secu­ri­ty, our first idea was to use typ­ing cadence for authen­ti­ca­tion, and then were alert­ed to the brain health appli­ca­tion by an out­sider. [Read more…] about Jan Samzelius, CEO of Brain­no­va­tions Win­ner Neu­raMetrix, encour­ages pio­neers to focus on “sim­ple, ele­gant solu­tions to big problems”

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Alzheimer’s Disease, biotech, brain diseases, brain health application, Brain-health, Brainnovations, CNS, CNS diseases, depression, diagnostics, disease, disease management, drug trials, early diagnostics, medication, NeuraMetrix, Parkinsons, precision medicine, psychiatric disorders, Typing Cadence

Non-invasive brain stimulation in children creates opportunities and risks

September 23, 2015 by SharpBrains

TMSvtDCSBrain Stim­u­la­tion in Chil­dren Spurs Hope—and Con­cern (Sci­en­tif­ic American):

“The idea of using mag­nets or elec­tric cur­rents to treat psy­chi­atric or learn­ing dis­or­ders — or just to enhance cog­ni­tion — has gen­er­at­ed a flur­ry of excite­ment over the past ten years. The tech­nique is thought to work by acti­vat­ing neur­al cir­cuits or by mak­ing it eas­i­er for neu­rons to fire. The research is still in its infan­cy, but at least 10,000 adults have under­gone [Read more…] about Non-inva­sive brain stim­u­la­tion in chil­dren cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties and risks

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain-stimulation, children, cognition, enhance cognition, learning-disorders, neural circuits, psychiatric disorders, tDCS, Transcranial-direct-current-stimulation, Transcranial-Magnetic-Stimulation

Q: What do people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety have in common? A: A brain with similar gray-matter loss

February 6, 2015 by SharpBrains

graymatter_comparison

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Dif­fer­ent men­tal dis­or­ders cause same brain-mat­ter loss, study finds (press release):

“A meta-analy­sis of 193 brain-imag­ing stud­ies shows sim­i­lar gray-mat­ter loss in the brains of peo­ple with diag­noses as dif­fer­ent as schiz­o­phre­nia, depres­sion and addiction…The find­ings call into ques­tion a long­stand­ing ten­den­cy to dis­tin­guish psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders chiefly by their symp­toms rather than their under­ly­ing brain pathol­o­gy. [Read more…] about Q: What do peo­ple with schiz­o­phre­nia, bipo­lar dis­or­der, depres­sion, addic­tion, obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der, and anx­i­ety have in com­mon? A: A brain with sim­i­lar gray-mat­ter loss

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: addiction, anxiety-disorders, bipolar-disorder, brain pathology, Brain-Imaging, cognition, executive function deficits, Executive-Functions, gray-matter, magnetic-resonance, major depression, mental-illness, neurobiological, Neurotechnology, non-invasive neurotechnology, obsessive-compulsive disorder, psychiatric conditions, psychiatric disorders, psychiatric symptoms, psychopathology, schizophrenia

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