On cognitive reframing and biases, stress, mental health tech, Aduhelm backlash, Britney Spears, and more

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time nine sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try devel­op­ments to help pro­mote life­long brain and men­tal health. #1. To low­er stress lev­els and improve prob­lem-solv­ing, prac­tice cog­ni­tive refram­ing instead of vent­ing “… vent­ing like­ly doesn’t soothe anger as much as aug­ment it. That’s because encour­ag­ing peo­ple to…

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Headspace and Ginger merge to expand and scale up digital mental health

Head­space and Gin­ger are merg­ing to form Head­space Health (TechCrunch): Med­i­ta­tion app Head­space this morn­ing announced plans to merge with on-demand men­tal health ser­vice Gin­ger. Bar­ring unfore­seen reg­u­la­to­ry road­blocks, the two com­pa­nies will com­bine to form Head­space Health. The new orga­ni­za­tion would sport a com­bined val­ue of $3 bil­lion and a head­count of more than 800.…

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Startup Big Health raises $39M to universalize access to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety and poor sleep

Big Health Hones Dig­i­tal Men­tal Health Ther­a­py With $39M Series B (Crunch­base): “Start­up Big Health believes indi­vid­u­als can improve their men­tal health through its tech­nol­o­gy that focus­es on cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py ver­sus med­ica­tion or the help of human ther­a­pists. On Thurs­day it raised $39 mil­lion in a Series B financ­ing to advance that objective.

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Four immediate priorities to flatten the mental distress curve

The men­tal health cri­sis trig­gered by COVID-19 is esca­lat­ing rapid­ly. One exam­ple: When com­pared to a 2018 sur­vey, U.S. adults are now eight times more like­ly to meet the cri­te­ria for seri­ous men­tal dis­tress. One-third of Amer­i­cans report clin­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant symp­toms of anx­i­ety or clin­i­cal depres­sion, accord­ing to a late May 2020 release of Census…

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Virtual-reality gaming + affordable biofeedback = Anxiety therapy for all?

Videogame Tech­nol­o­gy Could Bring Biofeed­back Ther­a­py to the Liv­ing Room (The Wall Street Jour­nal): For decades, use of biofeed­back to help suf­fer­ers of anx­i­ety, among oth­er psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tions, has large­ly been lim­it­ed to clin­i­cal set­tings with expensive—and some­what tedious—medical equip­ment. Now, with an assist from devel­op­ers of vir­­tu­al-real­i­­ty games, effec­tive ther­a­peu­tic biofeed­back is becom­ing more…

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Study finds promise in smell training to harness neuroplasticity and improve brain health in older adults

___ An impaired sense of smell can sig­nal cog­ni­tive decline, but ‘smell train­ing’ could help (The Con­ver­sa­tion): “As we age, we often have prob­lems with our abil­i­ty to smell (called olfac­to­ry dys­func­tion). Old­er peo­ple might not be able to iden­ti­fy an odour or dif­fer­en­ti­ate one odour from anoth­er. In some cas­es they might not be able…

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