Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

psychiatrist

Next: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy?

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How ecsta­sy and psilo­cy­bin are shak­ing up psy­chi­a­try (Nature):

… The Impe­r­i­al study was one of a spate of clin­i­cal tri­als launched over the past few years using illic­it psy­che­del­ic drugs such as psilo­cy­bin, lyser­gic acid diethy­lamide (LSD) and MDMA (3,4‑methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as mol­ly or ecsta­sy) to treat men­tal-health dis­or­ders, gen­er­al­ly with the close guid­ance of a psy­chi­a­trist or psy­chother­a­pist. The idea has been around for decades — or cen­turies in some cul­tures — but the momen­tum has picked up dras­ti­cal­ly over the past few years as investors and sci­en­tists have begun to cham­pi­on the approach again. [Read more…] about Next: Psy­che­del­ic-assist­ed psychotherapy?

Mental Health Innovation and Dr. Tom Insel: from the NIMH to Google/ Verily Life Sciences to Startup Mindstrong

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For­mer Alpha­bet exec is work­ing on an idea to detect men­tal health dis­or­ders by how you type on your phone (CNBC):

“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

Is Mental Health ready to start transitioning towards measurable brain circuits, away from subjective symptoms?

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mental-healthTo 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?

Study: An innovative telehealth service to provide high quality ADHD treatment

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telehealth_adhd.

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

Online Cognitive Therapy OKed by Health Insurance

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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

The brain virtues of physical exercise

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Dr. Adri­an Pre­da, our newest Expert Con­trib­u­tor, writes today the first in a series of thought-pro­vok­ing arti­cles,physical exercise for the brain 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