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“Can a smartphone detect whether a user is suicidal or depressed?
That’s the promise of an exploding number of mental health entrepreneurs, who are exploring opportunities to monitor users’ smartphone behavior to detect a variety of symptoms — all with their consent. [Read more…] about Mental Health Innovation and Dr. Tom Insel: from the NIMH to Google/ Verily Life Sciences to Startup Mindstrong
To Diagnose Mental Illness, Read the Brain (Scientific American):
Although scientists have learned a lot about the brain in the last few decades, approaches to treating mental illnesses have not kept up. As neuroscientists learn more about brain circuits, Stanford psychiatrist Amit Etkin foresees a time when diagnoses will be based on brain scans rather than symptoms [Read more…] about Is Mental Health ready to start transitioning towards measurable brain circuits, away from subjective symptoms?
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An unfortunate reality is that many children with ADHD do not have access to high quality, evidence-based treatment for ADHD. This is especially true in rural communities where children are generally treated by primary care providers who may have less ADHD-specific training than child psychiatrists and where [Read more…] about Study: An innovative telehealth service to provide high quality ADHD treatment
My apologies for not writing in a few days…the Global Agenda Summit in Dubai has required all my attention — I will summarize the great experience when I land back in San Francisco tomorrow night.
The concepts of night and day do become challenging when working for a few days in a place with a 12-hour time difference with one’s home base. Sleep is indeed very important to maintain top cognitive shape…which leads me to a fascinating news announcement:
Health insurance firms offering online cognitive therapy for insomnia (Los Angeles Times)
- “helping consumers get a good night’s sleep has become a priority for most of the top-tier U.S. health insurance companies, including WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna, Kaiser Permanente and several Blue Cross plans. Their new programs don’t involve sleeping pills. Instead, insurers are advocating the use of cognitive behavior therapy. Traditionally, the therapy has been done largely through face-to-face sessions, but many of the programs are now available online.”
- “And use of sleeping pills has skyrocketed. A study this year [Read more…] about Online Cognitive Therapy OKed by Health Insurance
Dr. Adrian Preda, our newest Expert Contributor, writes today the first in a series of thought-provoking articles,
challenging us to think about physical exercise as the best and most unappreciated form of “brain exercise”. A superb article.
And one thing is clear, he points out: “the brain really likes it when it’s asked to be “active”. Passive audiences, which are spoon fed information, score less well when tested on retention and understanding of the presented material than audiences that were kept engaged through the process.”
So, will you write a comment below and contribute to an engaging conversation? Thoughts? reactions? questions?
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Don’t ignore plain old common sense.
Brain Lessons Part 1
– By Adrian Preda, M.D.
Let me start with a list of common biases: expensive is better than cheap, free is of dubious value (why would then be free?), rare is likely to be valuable, and while new is better than old, ancient is always best. Which explains a common scenario that is reenacted about twice a week in my office. It starts like this: a patient shows me a fancy looking bottle of the brain supplement of the week: ancient roots with obscure names mixed together in another novel combination which you can exclusively find in that one and only store (rarity oblige!). And not to forget: it ain’t cheap either! Of course, there it is, the perfect the recipe for success: ancient yet new, rare and expensive. It got to be good! But is it, really?
[Read more…] about The brain virtues of physical exercise
A fun article from the BBC highlights some of the latest entries to the 2.5 billion-word database of words in the Collins English Dictionary, 9th edition.
We were of course biased and happy to see “brainfood” as a newly minted word. According to Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, they define “brain food”:
Part of Speech: n
Definition: any food that is considered to aid intelligence, memory, or creativity; by extension, any intellectual sustenance
We’d like to add SharpBrains to the list of brain foods! If you need some puzzles to pick up your mental metabolism, see how you do on these. Or maybe delve into some science and see if that expands your mental waistline a bit. Just save room for dessert!
