October 6–7th in Stanford University: Virtual Reality and Behavior Change in Psychiatry and Behavioral Health

Quick heads-up about a time­ly con­fer­ence tak­ing place late next week. What: This year the con­fer­ence is com­plete­ly devot­ed to vir­tu­al and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (VR/AR) tech­nolo­gies and behav­ioral change, explor­ing the appli­ca­tion of immer­sive tech­nolo­gies for treat­ing and research­ing addic­tions, ADHD, anx­i­ety, PTSD, psy­chosis, pain, depres­sion, psy­cho­so­mat­ic ill­ness and more. Where: Li Ka Shing Cen­ter for Learning…

Read More

Studies reinforce the critical importance of ADHD treatment monitoring

__________ As the new school year approach­es, let me high­light the essen­tial val­ue of ADHD treat­ment mon­i­tor­ing. Even when a child’s treat­ment has been going well, response to treat­ment can change over time. This is true for med­ica­tion treat­ment, or any oth­er treat­ment a child is receiv­ing. By reg­u­lar­ly mon­i­tor­ing how a child is doing…

Read More

Brain scan study finds links between adolescent brain development and mental health disorders

Scans reveal how teenage brain devel­ops (BBC News): “The team from Cam­bridge’s depart­ment of psy­chi­a­try scanned the brains of 300 peo­ple between the ages of 14 and 24. While the areas asso­ci­at­ed with the basic func­tion­ing of the body such as vision, hear­ing and move­ment are ful­ly devel­oped by ado­les­cence, the areas asso­ci­at­ed with com­plex thought…

Read More

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

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…

Read More

Study: Combining aerobic and mental training can significantly improve mental and cognitive health

(Edi­tor’s Note: Hat tip to co-author Tj Shors for bring­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing new study to our atten­tion) “It is wide­ly accept­ed that aer­o­bic exer­cise and med­i­ta­tion train­ing are use­ful behav­ioral ther­a­pies for reme­di­at­ing clin­i­cal symp­toms of depres­sion. How­ev­er, no study to date has assessed the com­bined effects of the two behav­ioral inter­ven­tions. Here, we present data indi­cat­ing that 

Read More