The Mindful Body argues against mindlessly accepting age-related decline in cognition and health as inevitable
In 1979, Harvard researcher Ellen Langer invited elderly men to spend a week at a retreat designed to remind them of their younger days, surrounded by the art, music, food, games, décor, and more from the late 1950s. Afterward, the men were tested and found to have made significant gains in hearing, memory, dexterity, posture, and general well-being. It was as if being in a place signaling their younger days made them physiologically “younger.”
Maybe you, too, have had an experience where your mind seemed to affect your health. It turns out there’s a reason for that, according to Langer, author of the new book The M...
Source: SharpBrains - October 9, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greater Good Science Center Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Education & Lifelong Learning anti-anxiety medication anti-depressants book cognition cognitive change cognitive-abilities Ellen Langer mind mindfulness-meditation mindlessly physiology placebo studies Th Source Type: blogs
Beyond the clinic: Can digital therapeutics (DTx) help boost mental health in the workforce at scale?
Hoping to Avoid Pear’s Fate, Behavioral Health-Focused DTx Companies Look to Employer Market (Behavioral Health Business):
The digital therapeutics (DTx) industry is at a crossroads after one of the most prominent companies in the space, Pear Therapeutics, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. The turmoil comes after DTx began catching on in the behavioral health field.
Despite Pear’s setback, some believe there’s now a chance for other digital therapeutics companies to learn from their competitor’s mistakes and pave the way for DTx. One of the most challenging questions for the burgeoning sector remains payment ...
Source: SharpBrains - October 2, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Technology & Innovation Calm digital therapeutics DTx FDA Pear Therapeutics Wondr Health Wysa Source Type: blogs
Four reasons to question “new generation” monoclonal antibody Alzheimer’s drugs such as aducanumab (Aduhelm), lecanemab (Leqembi), donanemab
New Alzheimer’s Drugs Don’t Deserve the Hype (Being Patient):
A prominent childhood memory is of my grandparents living with and then dying from dementia. As is universal with dementia, there was a double blow: watching my grandparents lose their identity and seeing the suffering of those closest to them.
… Enter three drugs, tentatively FDA-approved aducanumab (Aduhelm); fully FDA-approved lecanemab (Leqembi); and donanemab … currently in clinical trials and soon to be considered for FDA approval) that remove amyloid, the protein thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease… But how useful are these drugs going t...
Source: SharpBrains - September 25, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health aducanumab Aduhelm Alzheimer's drugs brain bleeding brain swelling dementia donanemab hype lecanemab Leqembi monoclonal antibody Alzheimer's drugs MRI-scans Source Type: blogs
Non-invasive Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (TES) shows early promise to treat ADHD symptoms in children
While tDCS uses constant current intensity, tRNS and tACS use oscillating current. The vertical axis represents the current intensity in milliamp (mA), while the horizontal axis illustrates the time-course. Source: Wikipedia.
Many children with ADHD benefit from medication treatment, behavioral treatment, or their combination, but others do not. In addition, parents are often reluctant to start their child on medication and high quality behavioral treatments are not readily accessible in many areas. The long-term efficacy of these treatments is also less than desirable. Thus, despite these evidence-based ADHD treatments, t...
Source: SharpBrains - September 19, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Dr. David Rabiner Tags: Attention & ADD/ADHD Technology & Innovation ADHD behavioral treatment ADHD medication treatment ADHD rating scale Cognitive-Training Cognitive-Training-Program Computerized-cognitive-training transcranial electrical stimulation Source Type: blogs
“To do nothing is not an option”: The NHS Confederation releases digital mental health whitepaper
This report highlights practical and achievable suggested discussion points that aim to bridge this gap and make a difference. They include a call for a wider and deeper national conversation on digital mental health and its future and consider developing effective ways of scaling digital mental health solutions in local and national solutions.
Why digital mental health?
Improved access: Digital mental health solutions can overcome geographical barriers, making mental health services more accessible to people in remote areas, those with limited mobility, and those who would prefer not to have in-person visits…
Early ...
Source: SharpBrains - September 12, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Technology & Innovation digital digital mental health mental health services mental healthcare NHS Confederation technologies Source Type: blogs
Next: Harnessing Neuroplasticity, Medication AND Psychotherapy to treat mental health conditions
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
To Learn More:
Does ADHD treatment enable long-term academic success? (Yes, especially when pharmacological and non-pharma treatments are combined)
Survey of 2500 families finds what ADHD treatments seem to work/ not work as applied in the real world
What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
The post Next: Harnessing Neuroplasticity, Medication AND Psychotherapy to treat mental health conditions appeared first on SharpBrains. (Source: SharpBrains)
Source: SharpBrains - September 6, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Conversation Tags: Brain/ Mental Health antidepressants anxiety Cognitive Neuroscience Combination therapy depression neuroplasticity psychedelics psychiatry Psychology Psychotherapy Source Type: blogs
Time for a universal “exercise prescription” for kids and adults to boost cognition and mental health?
Welcome to a new edition of SharpBrains e‑newsletter, featuring this time a range of brain research findings, tools and controversies plus some brain teasers to challenge your (and our) working memory.
#1. Major evidence review supports an “exercise prescription” for most adults to boost mental health
“Higher intensity physical activity was associated with greater improvements” and “Effectiveness of physical activity interventions diminished with longer duration interventions.”
The sweet spot was four or five half-hour effortful sessions per week. Are you hitting it?
#2. (Separate) Evidence review: Ph...
Source: SharpBrains - August 31, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Attention & ADD/ADHD Brain Teasers Brain/ Mental Health Education & Lifelong Learning Peak Performance SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter Technology & Innovation AirPods Apple boost mental health brain teasers for adults brain-activity Source Type: blogs
Evidence review: Physical exercise helps boost attention, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control in children and adolescents with ADHD
Conclusions based on a single study –no matter how strong the study design and execution may be– are necessarily limited, however. This has led researchers to combine results from multiple studies using a statistical technique called meta-analysis so that more robust and reliable estimates of a treatment’s impact can be determined.
Meta-analyses also have limitations, however. Decisions made about which studies to include vs. exclude, how to adjust for potential biases in individual studies, etc., can lead different meta-analyses of the same issue to reach somewhat different conclusions, even when the studies examine...
Source: SharpBrains - August 23, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Dr. David Rabiner Tags: Attention & ADD/ADHD Brain/ Mental Health Education & Lifelong Learning ADHD-symptoms cognitive-abilities cognitive-function executive functioning Physical-activity Source Type: blogs
Hopes and Questions raised by Alzheimer ’s drug Leqembi (lecanemab)
The FDA has approved Leqembi, the first disease-modifying treatment for early-stage Alzheimer’s and a precursor condition, mild cognitive impairment. Medicare has said it will pay for the therapy. Medical centers across the country are scrambling to finalize policies and procedures for providing the medication to patients, possibly by summer’s end or early autumn.
It’s a fraught moment, with hope running high for families and other promising therapies such as donanemab on the horizon. Still, medical providers are cautious. “This is an important first step in developing treatments for complex neurodegenerative disea...
Source: SharpBrains - August 17, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Judith Graham at Kaiser Health News Tags: Brain/ Mental Health cognition early-stage Alzheimer’s Eisai FDA lecanemab Leqembi Medicare mild-cognitive-impairment Source Type: blogs
Neurotech, neuroethics and brain data in context: Are “neurorights” the way to mental privacy?
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
To Learn More:
Brain Data in Context: Are New Rights the Way to Mental and Brain Privacy? (AJOB Neuroscience). From the Abstract:
The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy … To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows th...
Source: SharpBrains - August 10, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Conversation Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Technology & Innovation brain data brain privacy Brain-Computer Interfaces contextual integrity mental privacy neural data neurotechnologies Neurotechnology Source Type: blogs
Price tag for a questionable Alzheimer ’s treatment: $109,000 per patient, per year. Unclear yet: For how many years?
The real costs of the new Alzheimer’s drug, Leqembi — and why taxpayers will foot much of the bill (CBS News):
The first drug purporting to slow the advance of Alzheimer’s disease is likely to cost the U.S. health care system billions annually even as it remains out of reach for many of the lower-income seniors most likely to suffer from dementia.
Medicare and Medicaid patients will make up 92% of the market for lecanemab, according to Eisai Co., which sells the drug under the brand name Leqembi. In addition to the company’s $26,500 annual price tag for the drug, treatment could cost U.S. taxpayers $82,500 per pati...
Source: SharpBrains - August 2, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Alzheimers-disease amyloid plaques brain hemorrhaging brain scans brain swelling dementia lecanemab Leqembi Medicaid Medicare PET-scan taxpayers Source Type: blogs
