On neuroplasticity, young brains, and smartphones

By SharpBrains | February 14, 2022

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…

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

By World Economic Forum | September 14, 2021

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…

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

By SharpBrains | May 10, 2021

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…

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

By SharpBrains | August 11, 2020

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…

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

By SharpBrains | November 26, 2019

_____ 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: Neu­ro­engi­neer­ing meets neu­roethics to address treat­­ment-resis­­tant depres­sion Study: Hear­ing aids may help old­er adults delay demen­tia, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and falls Four guide­lines for smart use of smartphones…

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Four guidelines for smart use of smartphones

By Greater Good Science Center | November 14, 2019

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…

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