Transcend

Update: Moderate lifetime drinking may lead to lower Alzheimer-related beta amyloid deposits in the brain

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Time for a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter.

#1. First of all, it’s not all bad news this month. Study finds that mod­er­ate life­time drink­ing may lead to low­er Alzheimer-relat­ed beta amy­loid deposits in the brain

#2. And, talk about per­son­al­ized med­i­cine! This fas­ci­nat­ing study show­ing how brain imag­ing (fMRI) + machine learn­ing + inten­sive, non-inva­sive neu­rostim­u­la­tion = tar­get­ed treat­ments that can max­i­mize effi­ca­cy and min­i­mize side effects: Rein­vent­ing depres­sion treat­ment via tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic brain stim­u­la­tion (TMS)

#3. Also, not a minute too soon … Med­i­ta­tion apps have gone main­stream in the covid-19 era and Dig­i­tal health start-ups raised a record $3.1 bil­lion in Q1; focus will like­ly evolve from providers to con­sumers and employers

#4. Fyi, a very time­ly vir­tu­al event com­ing Tues­day April 28th, online: Explore strate­gies and tools to boost men­tal well­be­ing dur­ing (and after) Covid-19

#5. Now, “While Pear has an advan­tage over the com­pe­ti­tion in that its prod­ucts are backed by ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­als, physi­cians and health plans are still work­ing out how to pre­scribe and pay for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics.” The FDA clears Som­ryst, Pear’s dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic to treat chron­ic insomnia

#6. Net net, now is the time for indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive action to shift to a health­i­er “new nor­mal” for all: 3 ways to pro­tect your men­tal health dur­ing –and after– COVID-19 (in Span­ish: Tres hábitos de higiene men­tal para vencer al COVID-19 y crear un futuro más salud­able). Want more? Enjoy these Three tips for wise minds to calm coro­n­avirus anxiety

#7. A small but impor­tant study for that hope­ful near future when uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges reopen their doors: Study finds mixed results of Adder­all as cog­ni­tive enhancer (seems to boost emo­tion more than cognition)

#8. But, first things first. “The Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive” reached #1 on the pop charts in 1977. Maybe it was the beat, maybe it was John Travolta’s danc­ing. Or maybe it’s that the Gibb broth­ers’ cen­tral lyric is quite lit­er­al­ly always play­ing in our head. Keep­ing us safe —that is, “stayin’ alive ”— is the pri­ma­ry mis­sion of the brain”

Enough with coro­n­avirus out­break. Any­thing else going on? Yes!

#9. The Right to Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty. The Right to Free Will. The Right to Men­tal Pri­va­cy. The Right to Equal Access to Men­tal Aug­men­ta­tion. The Right to Pro­tec­tion from Algo­rith­mic Bias. Will these five Neu­roR­ights help har­ness emerg­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies for the com­mon good?

#10. “Today, the sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ences is, in my view, one of the most excit­ing fron­tiers in the sci­ence of well-being.” Tran­scend­ing Maslow’s famous “hier­ar­chy of needs” through Maslow’s own research on Peak Experiences

#11. You CAN have your cake and eat it too: Here’s a brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

#12. Ques­tion: My first thought after con­grat­u­lat­ing myself on being so clever about some­thing? Tease your brain with these eight fun rid­dles…

 

Wish­ing you and yours a great month of May,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Transcending Maslow’s famous “hierarchy of needs” through Maslow’s own research on Peak Experiences

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Heav­en, so to speak, lies wait­ing for us through life, ready to step into for a
time and to enjoy before we have to come back to our ordi­nary life of striving.
And once we have been in it, we can remem­ber it for­ev­er, and feed ourselves
on this mem­o­ry and be sus­tained in times of stress.

—Abra­ham Maslow, Toward a Psy­chol­o­gy of Being (1962)

After com­plet­ing Moti­va­tion and Per­son­al­i­ty in 1954, Maslow turned his atten­tion to a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter­is­tic of self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple that long fas­ci­nat­ed him. Many of the self-actu­al­iz­ing peo­ple he stud­ied tend­ed to sound like tra­di­tion­al mys­tics, describ­ing unusu­al moments of height­ened joy, seren­i­ty, beau­ty, or won­der. He was sur­prised, hav­ing begun his research under the impres­sion that mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ences were rare, some­thing that per­haps “hap­pened to one saint every century.”

Instead, Maslow observed that peak expe­ri­ences occurred in a wide range of peo­ple and seemed to have many triggers—whether an excel­lent ath­let­ic or music per­for­mance, cre­ative expe­ri­ence, aes­thet­ic per­cep­tion, the love expe­ri­ence, sex­u­al expe­ri­ence, child­birth, moments of insight and under­stand­ing, reli­gious or mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, or over­com­ing a pro­found challenge—“any expe­ri­ence that comes close to per­fec­tion.” What’s more, [Read more…] about Tran­scend­ing Maslow’s famous “hier­ar­chy of needs” through Maslow’s own research on Peak Experiences