Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Ritalin

Brain training seen as promising non-pharmacological method to enhance attention in healthy young adults

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This brain train­ing app may help you stay focused, says new study (CNN):

“Our dig­i­tal lives make con­cen­tra­tion difficult…A group of Cam­bridge uni­ver­si­ty researchers believes to have devel­oped a “fun” solu­tion to this mod­ern prob­lem. By play­ing a “brain train­ing” game, called Decoder, play­ers can increase their con­cen­tra­tion. [Read more…] about Brain train­ing seen as promis­ing non-phar­ma­co­log­i­cal method to enhance atten­tion in healthy young adults

Neurofeedback or medication to treat ADHD?

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Neu­ro­feed­back (NF) is an approach for treat­ing ADHD in which indi­vid­u­als receive real-time feed­back on their brain­wave activ­i­ty and taught to alter their typ­i­cal EEG pat­tern to one that is con­sis­tent with a more focused and atten­tive state.

While con­sid­er­able research sup­ports the effec­tive­ness of neu­ro­feed­back for many chil­dren with ADHD, rel­a­tive­ly few stud­ies have direct­ly com­pared neu­ro­feed­back to ADHD med­ica­tion. [Read more…] about Neu­ro­feed­back or med­ica­tion to treat ADHD?

Growing awareness of the opportunities and risks posed by pharmacological cognitive enhancement (aka “smart drugs”)

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Nootropics

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More research need­ed on use of ‘smart drugs’ by healthy peo­ple (Med­ical News):

“Drugs such as methylphenidate and modafinil, mar­ket­ed as Rital­in and Provig­il respec­tive­ly, are used by some healthy indi­vid­u­als in order to boost their cog­ni­tive per­for­mance, despite a gen­er­al lack of knowl­edge about [Read more…] about Grow­ing aware­ness of the oppor­tu­ni­ties and risks posed by phar­ma­co­log­i­cal cog­ni­tive enhance­ment (aka “smart drugs”)

Open question: Can coffee & Ritalin’s mental effects be delivered, safely, over a smartphone?

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calm_energy_thync

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Will 2015 be the year our smart­phones link up to our brains? (Pop­u­lar Science):

“Thync bills itself first and fore­most as a neu­ro­science com­pa­ny. Its sole product—slated for release lat­er this year—is a smart­phone-con­trolled wear­able device that will allow the user to active­ly alter his or her brain’s elec­tri­cal state through tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS). The big idea: [Read more…] about Open ques­tion: Can cof­fee & Ritalin’s men­tal effects be deliv­ered, safe­ly, over a smartphone?

Study: Use of methylphenidate-based ADHD medication increases the risk of heart problems

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Methylphenidate_pillsADHD med­ica­tion enhances the risk of heart prob­lems in chil­dren (Sci­ence Nordic):

“The risk of devel­op­ing heart prob­lems is twice as big for chil­dren tak­ing med­i­cine for Atten­tion Deficit-Hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty Dis­or­der (ADHD) when com­pared to chil­dren not receiv­ing the medicine…The study builds on data from 714,000 chil­dren [Read more…] about Study: Use of methylphenidate-based ADHD med­ica­tion increas­es the risk of heart problems

Use and misuse of ADHD drugs and nootropics among teenagers and toddlers

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Human-brain-pillsRital­in may pose brain risks for young peo­ple with­out ADHD, study shows (Fox News):

“Smart” drugs, like Rital­in, also known as nootrop­ics, are known to increase a person’s atten­tion span, mem­o­ry and abil­i­ty to stay alert. As a result, they have become increas­ing­ly abused by stu­dents seek­ing an extra edge in their stud­ies. Accord­ing to a report from The Part­ner­ship at Drugfree.org and the MetLife Foun­da­tion, approx­i­mate­ly 1.3 mil­lion Amer­i­can teenag­er [Read more…] about Use and mis­use of ADHD drugs and nootrop­ics among teenagers and toddlers