TMS

BrainHealth Week starts today! Plus: dancing, personalized mental health, brain stimulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, annouc­ing the kick-off of Brain­Health Week and fea­tur­ing some stim­u­lat­ing resources and teasers.

#1. Brain­Health Week (Feb­ru­ary 20–24th) starts today:

Explore many fun events includ­ing a dai­ly text chal­lenge, a talk with the always great Dr. Tom Insel, and more!

#2. With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

Impor­tant arti­cle giv­en that “It typ­i­cal­ly takes twen­ty to forty years or more for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies to mean­ing­ful­ly ben­e­fit human life. We can­not wait that long.” — Wise words!

#3. Sin Salud Cere­bral, Ust­ed no tiene Salud –same arti­cle, in Span­ish, for extra men­tal stim­u­la­tion and for sharing 🙂

“En los últi­mos diez años, los neu­ro­ci­en­tifi­cos hemos des­cu­bier­to mucho acer­ca de cómo fun­ciona el cere­bro, cómo mejo­rar la salud y el fun­cionamien­to del cere­bro y la mente a lo largo de la vida, y cómo esto con­tribuye a nues­tra salud y bien­es­tar en gen­er­al. Únase a nosotros y asegúrese de que los mejores años de su cere­bro están aún por venir, recor­dan­do que: Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud.”

#4. Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

“(Danc­ing) gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ments than tread­mill walk­ing on one mea­sure of exec­u­tive func­tion and on pro­cess­ing speed, which is the time it takes to respond to or process infor­ma­tion. Com­pared with walk­ing, danc­ing was also asso­ci­at­ed with reduced brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus – a brain region that is key to mem­o­ry func­tion­ing and is par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Alzheimer’s dis­ease … We think that social danc­ing may be more ben­e­fi­cial than walk­ing because it is phys­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing – and there­fore strength­ens a wide net­work of brain regions.”

#5. Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

“To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.”

#6. Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

“GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets.”

#7. The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

“To put this into per­spec­tive, the like­li­hood of a seizure from rTMS (0.003%) is low­er than that asso­ci­at­ed with the use of anti­de­pres­sants and antipsy­chotics (0.1–1, 5%) … More­over, when such seizures occur they do so most­ly out­side the clinician’s office, by con­trast with rTMS (Per­era et al., 2016). For low inten­si­ty tDCS, tACS, tRNS seizure risk is com­plete­ly absent … As an organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NIBS clin­i­cians and pro­fes­sion­als from across Europe, we, the ESBS, there­fore dis­agree with this EU deci­sion and in par­tic­u­lar with the fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of that deci­sion to reclas­si­fy TMS and TES as inva­sive technologies”

Final­ly, a cou­ple of brain teasers to help you test your men­tal rota­tion cog­ni­tive skills:

#8. Can you read a map?

#9. Brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

Have a great Brain­Health Week!

Reinventing depression treatment via transcranial magnetic brain stimulation (TMS)

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Deirdre Lehman with Nolan Williams, who over­saw this clin­i­cal tri­al of a poten­tial treat­ment that uses tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion. In the pho­to, Williams and Lehman demon­strate how a patient is posi­tioned and the equip­ment is used. Cred­it: Steve Fisch.

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Stan­ford researchers devise treat­ment that relieved depres­sion in 90% of par­tic­i­pants in small study (press release):

“A new form of mag­net­ic brain stim­u­la­tion rapid­ly relieved symp­toms of severe depres­sion in 90% of par­tic­i­pants in a small study con­duct­ed by researchers at the Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine … In tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion, elec­tric cur­rents from a mag­net­ic coil placed on the scalp excite a region of the brain impli­cat­ed in depres­sion. The treat­ment, as approved by the FDA, requires [Read more…] about Rein­vent­ing depres­sion treat­ment via tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic brain stim­u­la­tion (TMS)

Update: To honor Brain Awareness Week 2017, let’s highlight 10 Key Facts To Harness Neuroplasticity And Improve Brain Fitness

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– Giant neu­ron iden­ti­fied in mouse brain via nov­el brain imag­ing tech­nique. Study linked below.

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Last week was Brain Aware­ness Week, so let’s first of all dis­cuss these 10 Key Facts to Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty & Improve Brain Fit­ness com­ing from the hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical stud­ies we ana­lyzed to pre­pare the book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Improve Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age.

And here’s the rest of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter explor­ing the lat­est in brain health and men­tal performance.

New research:

New thinking:

New tools (via SharpBrains’ analysis of neurotech patents):

 

Final­ly, here’s a brain teas­er to test your pat­tern recog­ni­tion and oth­er cog­ni­tive skills: The Emp­ty Tri­an­gle.

 

Have a nice Spring!

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

The future of personalized brain stimulation via enhanced cognitive-emotive profiles: Key neurotechnology patent #31

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cognitive-emotive profiles
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 7,460,903

Today we high­light a fas­ci­nat­ing 2008 patent describ­ing how to com­bine a num­ber of neu­rotech­nolo­gies (EEG feed­back, TMS brain stim­u­la­tion, monitoring/ train­ing soft­ware) to help “upgrade” one’s cog­ni­tive-emo­tive profile.

U.S. Patent No. 7,460,903: Method and sys­tem for a real time adap­tive sys­tem for effect­ing changes in cog­ni­tive-emo­tive profiles

  • Inventor(s): Jaime A. Pine­da, Bren­dan Z. Allison
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Hybrid
  • Issue Date: Decem­ber 2, 2008

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘903 patent describes cou­pling neu­romon­i­tor­ing with brain activ­i­ty induc­ing tech­nolo­gies by com­bin­ing tech­niques includ­ing EEG brain­waves, TMS devices, and a set of soft­ware tools to enhance brain func­tion­al­i­ty in adap­tive and durable ways, via upgrad­ed indi­vid­ual cog­ni­tive-emo­tive pro­files. [Read more…] about The future of per­son­al­ized brain stim­u­la­tion via enhanced cog­ni­tive-emo­tive pro­files: Key neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent #31

Facilitating clinical treatments via Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): Key Neurotechnology Patent #21

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magnetic stimulation
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,926,660

Today we are shar­ing a key 2005 patent assigned to Neu­ro­net­ics, Inc. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 6,926,660: Facil­i­tat­ing treat­ment via mag­net­ic stimulation.

  • Assignee(s): Neu­ro­net­ics, Inc.
  • Inventor(s): Stan­ford W. Miller
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Tran­scra­nial Stimulation
  • Issue Date: August 9, 2005

SharpBrains’ Take:

TMS treat­ments pro­ce­dures are more effec­tive and effi­cient if tar­get­ed stim­u­la­tion to the patient can be quick­ly and eas­i­ly repeat­ed, rather than blind­ly hunt­ing for the cor­rect loca­tion and ori­en­ta­tion after ini­tial dosing/ test­ing pro­ce­dures con­duct­ed to deter­mine the appro­pri­ate stim­u­la­tion field strength and loca­tion. [Read more…] about Facil­i­tat­ing clin­i­cal treat­ments via Tran­scra­nial Mag­net­ic Stim­u­la­tion (TMS): Key Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Patent #21

Computer modeling meets Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): Key Neurotech Patent #17

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transcranial magnetic stimulation
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,827,681

This is a very inter­est­ing 2004 patent, assigned to Brain­lab AG,  out­lin­ing a way to use com­put­er mod­el­ing to tar­get brain stimulation.

U.S. Patent No. 6,827,681: Method and device for tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stimulation.

  • Assignee(s): Brain­lab AG
  • Inventor(s): Phillipp Tan­ner, Andreas Hartlep, Hen­rik Wist, Ker­stin Wen­dicke, Thomas Weyh
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Tran­scra­nial Stimulation
  • Issue Date: Decem­ber 7, 2004

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘681 patent claims broad cov­er­age over the use of com­put­er mod­el­ing in tar­get­ed brain stim­u­la­tion tech­niques. [Read more…] about Com­put­er mod­el­ing meets Tran­scra­nial Mag­net­ic Stim­u­la­tion (TMS): Key Neu­rotech Patent #17