therapies

On Brain Awareness Week, mental health innovation, tDCS, biofeedback, psychedelics, and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, start­ing with some ideas to get in the mood for Brain Aware­ness Week next month (March 15–21st). May BAW 2021 be a hun­dred times more upbeat than last year’s…

#1. Sev­en brain teasers and a neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty pod­cast to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week 2021

#2. Imag­ine what this capa­bil­i­ty may mean just a few years from now. Should/ will Google alert Gmail users about their (future) cog­ni­tive sta­tus? Study: Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram iden­ti­fies lin­guis­tic mark­ers that pre­dict, with 70% accu­ra­cy, who gets Alzheimer’s Dis­ease years later

#3. Sim­i­lar to what hap­pened to Thync back in 2016, Halo Neu­ro­science strug­gled to com­mer­cial­ize tDCS as a non-med­ical device and the tech­nol­o­gy is being repur­posed for clin­i­cal use. Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion devel­op­er Halo Neu­ro­science clos­es its doors; Flow Neu­ro­science acquires assets

#4. Here you have a cou­ple recent meta-analy­ses sug­gest­ing a grow­ing adop­tion in the near future of web-based, and increas­ing­ly per­son­al­ized, inter­ven­tions. Grow­ing research points to expand­ing adop­tion of online cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pies, both guid­ed and unguided

#5. “If there is any­thing we’ve seen out of this year, it’s real­ly become that fourth pil­lar of ben­e­fits for every employ­er out there. Every­one has med­ical, den­tal and vision. Men­tal health has now real­ly become that fourth pil­lar of ben­e­fits for all employ­ers.” — Alyson Wat­son, CEO and founder of Mod­ern Health. Four trends accel­er­at­ing men­tal health inno­va­tion in the COVID/ post-COVID era

#6. “Access to men­tal health­care is a human right that shouldn’t be buried by stig­ma, lack of access, or afford­abil­i­ty.” — Oliv­er Har­ri­son, CEO of Koa Health. Dig­i­tal men­tal health start-up Koa Health rais­es €30M to accel­er­ate growth in Europe and the US

#7. “Just as the viral pan­dem­ic has accel­er­at­ed vac­cine devel­op­ment, this glob­al cri­sis has brought togeth­er men­tal health experts from the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor around the world to address what is sure­ly a sec­ond pan­dem­ic trig­gered by loss, anx­i­ety, and social iso­la­tion” — Thomas Insel, MD, co-founder of Human­est Care. Sur­vey finds con­cerns AND hope to address grow­ing men­tal health needs due to the covid pandemic

#8. Can biofeed­back-based videogames help chil­dren bet­ter man­age stress? Mag­el­lan Health and Might­i­er secure $2 mil­lion NIMH grant to investigate

#9. “The Organ­i­sa­tion for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) has reviewed almost 600 men­tal health apps … only 29.6% meet qual­i­ty thresh­olds” The land­scape of dig­i­tal men­tal health apps: huge unmet needs, qual­i­ty con­cerns, app stores asked to ensure transparency

#10. Final­ly, an idea out there worth explor­ing … Next: Psy­che­del­ic-assist­ed psychotherapy?

Have a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing month of March,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Five reasons to welcome Digital Mental Health innovations

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Map­ping out the Men­tal Health start­up ecosys­tem (Medi­um):

“Today, 1 in 5 peo­ple have a diag­nos­able men­tal ill­ness, and 1 in 20 peo­ple have dif­fi­cul­ty lead­ing their every­day life due to men­tal ill­ness. How­ev­er before even talk­ing about the preva­lence of the issue?…one must real­ize how inef­fec­tive the cur­rent infra­struc­ture is. Here are some of the most mind-blow­ing find­ings: [Read more…] about Five rea­sons to wel­come Dig­i­tal Men­tal Health innovations

Reinventing Brain Medicine, Pharma adopts Digital Therapeutics: Evidence-based videogames, smartphone apps, and sensors

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From app store to drug store, dig­i­tal health is redefin­ing pharma’s pipeline (STAT):

“The pitch­es always sound­ed promis­ing: A new soft­ware app could track glu­cose lev­els for peo­ple with dia­betes or soothe the brains of insom­ni­acs. Most phar­ma exec­u­tives would polite­ly smile and nod, but then park their mon­ey some­where else.

Not any­more. [Read more…] about Rein­vent­ing Brain Med­i­cine, Phar­ma adopts Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics: Evi­dence-based videogames, smart­phone apps, and sensors

How can we take cognitive and emotional health interventions–both assessments and therapies–to scale?

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This pre­sen­ta­tion took place at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Decem­ber 6–8th, 2016).

–> Learn more about the upcom­ing 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th, 2017). The 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit will fea­ture over thir­ty of the world’s top experts and inno­va­tors work­ing on ways to enhance our brain health and per­for­mance in light of emerg­ing neu­ro­science and dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies. Addi­tion­al­ly, and for the first time, it will host a Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test to fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tive prob­lem-solv­ing between sci­en­tists, prac­ti­tion­ers, tech­nol­o­gists and entrepreneurs.

Take cognitive/ emotional assessments and therapies to scale

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Look­ing for­ward to the vir­tu­al sum­mit next week…we can’t wait to explore and dis­cuss, on Tues­day, Decem­ber 6th — how to Take cognitive/ emo­tion­al assess­ments and ther­a­pies to scale. Three dig­i­tal health entrepreneurs–who have col­lec­tive­ly raised over $75 mil­lion in ven­ture cap­i­tal in the last 18 months– and an investor will dis­cuss their respec­tive visions and approach­es to rev­o­lu­tion­ize brain and men­tal health in areas such as ADHD, sub­stance abuse, and gen­er­al brain fitness.

  • Chair: Rita Carter, Sci­ence writer and BBC Contributor
  • Edward Kli­phuis, Invest­ment Direc­tor at Mer­ck Ventures
  • Dr. Eddie Mar­tuc­ci, CEO of Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs
  • Dr. Corey McCann, CEO of Pear Therapeutics
  • Derek Luke, CEO of InteraXon

Learn more & Reg­is­ter Here

New book on how to practice mindfulness meditation with humor and playfulness

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JoyonDemandFrom the out­side, med­i­ta­tion appears to be a thor­ough­ly seri­ous endeav­or. You have to sit down, duti­ful­ly count your breaths and rein in your wan­der­ing mind, and prac­tice this every day whether it’s fun or not.

But that isn’t Chade-Meng Tan’s approach to mind­ful­ness. The found­ing chair of the Search Inside Your­self Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, which start­ed as a mind­ful­ness class at Google and now trains employ­ees around the world, Tan lives by the mot­to that “life is too impor­tant to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.” And he adopts the same atti­tude toward cul­ti­vat­ing mindfulness—outlined in his new book, Joy on Demand: The Art of Dis­cov­er­ing the Hap­pi­ness With­in.

While Tan acknowl­edges that there are oth­er routes to mas­ter­ing med­i­ta­tion (includ­ing sheer dis­ci­pline and will), his focus is on joy. The book [Read more…] about New book on how to prac­tice mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion with humor and playfulness