Above: Pat­tern of Typ­ing Cadence in 52-year-old male with Parkinson’s. Source: Neu­raMetrix

_____

Time for Sharp­Brains’ first eNewslet­ter in 2018, offer­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing sneek peek into the rapid­ly grow­ing toolk­it to mea­sure and improve brain health.

(And don’t miss the fun teas­er at the end!)

New thinking:

• Brain­no­va­tions Win­ner Jan Samzelius on why mon­i­tor­ing Typ­ing Cadence may help detect ear­ly Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Dis­ease
• Firms Race to Find New Ways to Scan Brain Health
• Pho­to­bio­mod­u­la­tion: A new and promis­ing way to enhance brain func­tion
• Dig­i­tal Men­tal Health: the Hurt, the Hype, the Hope
• Eight Tips To Under­stand and Remem­ber What You Read

New research:

• 10 Research Find­ings to Encour­age and Guide Med­i­ta­tion in 2018
• Study sug­gests the sus­tained use of canola oil may cause mem­o­ry prob­lems and brain dam­age
• With phar­ma exit­ing Alzheimer’s research, new hope seen in the com­bi­na­tion of brain train­ing and tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS)
• Impor­tant insights on the grow­ing home use of tDCS brain stim­u­la­tion

New tools:

• Coder and teenag­er Emma Yang launch­es crowd­fund­ing cam­paign for app to help improve Alzheimer’s patients’ dai­ly lives
• Pend­ing FDA review, research find­ings pave way for Akili’s EVO to become first brain train­ing plat­form pre­scribed for ADHD
• Pear Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $50M to devel­op and mar­ket a port­fo­lio of dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics for men­tal health
• Neur­al Ana­lyt­ics rais­es $15M to com­mer­cial­ize non-inva­sive, ultra­sound-based, brain health mon­i­tor­ing device

Final­ly, a quick brain teas­er. What do you see first, ani­mals or peo­ple?

Have a great month of Feb­ru­ary!

Here’s a quick test to deter­mine your stress lev­el.  Read the fol­low­ing descrip­tion com­pletely before look­ing at the pic­ture linked below.

The pic­ture was used in a case study on stress lev­els at St. Mary’s Hos­pi­tal. Look at both dol­phins jump­ing out of the water. The dol­phins are essen­tial­ly iden­ti­cal. A close­ly mon­i­tored, sci­en­tific study revealed that, in spite of the fact that the dol­phins are so sim­i­lar, a per­son under stress would find many dif­fer­ences between the two dol­phins. The more dif­fer­ences a per­son finds between the dol­phins, the more stress that per­son is expe­ri­enc­ing.

Look at the image and, if you find more than one or two dif­fer­ences, you may want to enjoy a real­ly relax­ing week­end…

–> CLICK HERE to see the pic­ture

How did you do? Do you need a vaca­tion?! Appar­ent­ly I do! Here are some tips to man­age stress…

Next brain teas­er in Sharp­Brains’ top 25 series:

• #4. Guess: Are there more brain con­nec­tions or leaves in the Ama­zon?