smartphones

On neuroplasticity, young brains, and smartphones

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Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Smart Phones (Psy­chi­atric Times):

In med­ical school, I was taught that the brain is hard­wired at birth. Dur­ing the past 30 years, neu­ro­science has defin­i­tive­ly shown that this is not the case at all. As our under­stand­ing of brain devel­op­ment advanced, it became clear that, dur­ing the first 3 years of life, neu­rons in the brain pro­lif­i­cal­ly form synap­tic con­nec­tions to be pre­pared for many diverse func­tion­al tasks, most of which it will nev­er encounter. From aged 3 years onward, the cir­cuits fre­quent­ly used strength­en their con­nec­tions while those serv­ing no func­tion are pruned away. Hence the com­mon phrase, “Neu­rons that fire togeth­er, wire togeth­er.” [Read more…] about On neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, young brains, and smartphones

Top 10 Mental Health Innovations to Watch: Special SciAm/ WEF report

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Cred­it: Adobe

The World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Glob­al Future Coun­cil on Men­tal Health, com­pris­ing some of the fore­most lead­ers in men­tal health, tech­nol­o­gy, infor­mat­ics, busi­ness, pub­lic pol­i­cy and advo­ca­cy is pub­lish­ing its selec­tions for the Top 10 Inno­va­tions in Men­tal Health. The ini­tia­tive is in part­ner­ship with Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, which is pub­lish­ing arti­cles by these lead­ers on its website.

Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, Coun­cil co-chair and pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine notes that “the coun­cil sift­ed through more than 60 nom­i­na­tions to pick nov­el solu­tions with the high­est near-term poten­tial to impact glob­al men­tal health”.

The Top 10 Inno­va­tions select­ed are: [Read more…] about Top 10 Men­tal Health Inno­va­tions to Watch: Spe­cial SciAm/ WEF report

Study: Social media and general tech engagement not found to “fry” teenagers’ brains

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Lit­tle to no increase in asso­ci­a­tion between ado­les­cents’ men­tal health prob­lems and dig­i­tal tech (Sci­ence Daily):

With the explo­sion in dig­i­tal enter­tain­ment options over the past sev­er­al decades and the more recent restric­tions on out­door and in-per­son social activ­i­ties, par­ents may wor­ry that exces­sive engage­ment with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy could have long-term effects on their chil­dren’s men­tal health.

A new study pub­lished in the jour­nal Clin­i­cal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, how­ev­er, found lit­tle evi­dence for an increased asso­ci­a­tion between ado­les­cents’ tech­nol­o­gy engage­ment and men­tal health prob­lems over the past 30 years. The data did not con­sis­tent­ly sup­port the sug­ges­tion that the tech­nolo­gies we wor­ry about most (e.g., smart­phones) are becom­ing more harm­ful… [Read more…] about Study: Social media and gen­er­al tech engage­ment not found to “fry” teenagers’ brains

UCLA launches major mental health study collecting & analyzing data from Apple wearables to better understand depression and anxiety

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Apple and UCLA kick off a three-year depres­sion study (CNBC):

UCLA on Tues­day said it is launch­ing a three-year study to bet­ter under­stand how fac­tors such as sleep, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, heart rate and dai­ly rou­tines impact symp­toms of depres­sion and anxiety.

UCLA is work­ing with Apple to design the study, which will use data col­lect­ed by the iPhone, Apple Watch and Bed­dit sleep-track­er … involves 150 par­tic­i­pants recruit­ed from among UCLA Health patients. From there, the next phas­es of the research will expand out to 3,000 par­tic­i­pants from both the hos­pi­tal and the stu­dent body. Study par­tic­i­pants will down­load an app onto their iPhones, then receive a Bed­dit sleep mon­i­tor and an Apple Watch, which they can use through­out the study.

[Read more…] about UCLA launch­es major men­tal health study col­lect­ing & ana­lyz­ing data from Apple wear­ables to bet­ter under­stand depres­sion and anxiety

Update: A brain-friendly lifestyle is the best approach to delay cognitive decline and dementia

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While the hip­pocam­pus tends to shrink with age, which con­tributes to cog­ni­tive decline, a recent study shows that this is not always the case (see all those blue lines), sug­gest­ing it can be pos­si­ble to main­tain hip­pocam­pus vol­ume and cog­ni­tive func­tion into our lat­er years.

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Time to wrap-up anoth­er stim­u­lat­ing month with Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of promis­ing news for every­one with a (human) brain 🙂

New tech for brain health:

New brain and mind research:

New thinking to shape education and healthcare:

Finally, a few riddles to tease your brain:

 

Have a great Thanks­giv­ing and December,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Four guidelines for smart use of smartphones

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These days, you can’t go any­where with­out hear­ing about how tech­nol­o­gy is ruin­ing every­thing, includ­ing our hap­pi­ness. There is some truth to this, but it’s not the whole story.

Tech­nol­o­gy can be bad for us—for exam­ple, when social media gives us FOMO (fear of miss­ing out) or traps us in fil­ter bub­bles that pre­vent us from see­ing mul­ti­ple points of view on impor­tant issues. As a soci­ety, we are increas­ing­ly con­cerned that tech­nolo­gies like smart­phones and social media result in more social com­par­i­son, bul­ly­ing, and loneliness—all stum­bling blocks to hap­pi­ness. Tech­nol­o­gy seems to be bad for our hap­pi­ness when it inter­feres with the men­tal, social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral process­es that con­tribute to well-being.

But we often fail to real­ize (and dis­cuss) the ways that tech­nol­o­gy can also sup­port hap­pi­ness and well-being—for exam­ple [Read more…] about Four guide­lines for smart use of smartphones