Not a day goes by with­out a sig­nif­i­cant depression-related announce­ment. Yes­ter­day, one could read that Older Women More Likely to Suf­fer Depres­sion (than Older Men; in the Wash­ing­ton Post). Today, we see that St. Jude Start­ing Trial On Brain Stim­u­la­tion For Depres­sion (CNN). A few days ago, Blue Cross of Cal­i­for­nia Launched Mater­nity Depres­sion Pro­gram (press release).

Time to step back and ask our­selves ques­tions such as, “What is going On”, “What is Depres­sion”, “What Treat­ments Work, and What is the Lat­est Research”. For­tu­nately, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine, Jill Sut­tie offers a fas­ci­nat­ing answers to those questions-and more. Enjoy.

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Clos­ing the Circuit

Helen Mayberg’s research could rev­o­lu­tion­ize depres­sion treatment.

— By Jill Suttie.

At some point in their lives, 5 to 12 per­cent of Amer­i­can men and 10–25 per­cent of women will suf­fer an episode of depres­sion, mak­ing it the most com­monly diag­nosed men­tal dis­or­der today. Unlike nor­mal sad­ness, which passes with time, depres­sion feels unstop­pable and causes peo­ple to lose inter­est in nearly all activ­i­ties. Because it affects a person’s abil­ity to eat, sleep, work, and func­tion nor­mally, it exacts a huge cost on the econ­omy, esti­mated at $30 bil­lion dol­lars annu­ally. The cost in human suf­fer­ing can­not be measured.

Mil­lions of peo­ple diag­nosed with depres­sion turn to med­ica­tion as a treat­ment, and many of the most pop­u­lar Read the rest of this entry »

Very good arti­cle in Mar­ket­Watch titled Beat­ing for­get­ful­ness and boost­ing the brain. Prob­a­bly the best we have seen so far pro­vid­ing an over­all indus­try per­spec­tive on a nascent field. I rec­om­mend read­ing the whole arti­cle, but here you have some teasers:

• “As boomers age, the drive to cor­rect such dis­com­fort has impli­ca­tions for health and well­ness, employ­ment and cor­po­rate train­ing — even sports. It’s giv­ing rise to a bur­geon­ing busi­ness of brain-boosting prod­ucts and ser­vices, as well as explo­ration into “cog­ni­tive enhanc­ing” pre­scrip­tion drugs.”
• “The mar­ket for brain-fitness soft­ware tar­get­ing U.S. adults is esti­mated to be $80 mil­lion to $100 mil­lion this year, up from $60 mil­lion last year and $2 mil­lion in 2005, accord­ing to Sharp­Brains, a San Francisco-based por­tal that helps indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies nav­i­gate brain-training infor­ma­tion, prod­ucts and services.”
• “It’s also easy to con­fuse age-related mem­ory prob­lems with the effects of undi­ag­nosed depres­sion or anx­i­ety, which are reversible, said Dr. Gene Cohen, direc­tor of the Cen­ter on Aging, Health & Human­i­ties at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Center”
• “The busi­ness of brain train­ing started tak­ing off after Read the rest of this entry »

We were very happy to dis­cover that Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Mind has high­lighted Sharp­Brains in their June/July 2007 issue!

Here’s what they had to say:

“Every­one knows the impor­tance of stay­ing phys­i­cally fit. But what about stay­ing men­tally fit? Research in the past sev­eral years has shown that men­tal “work­outs” may improve mem­ory, relieve stress and even help stave off Alzheimer’s. This new site is an online gym for the mind, offer­ing a blog about the sci­ence of brain fit­ness and links to rel­e­vant research. It also sells “exer­cise” soft­ware and offers per­sonal training.”

If you are here due to that intro­duc­tion, we’d like to wel­come you and show you around a bit. You might enjoy:

• The Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series in our brain health blog, in which we inter­view some of the lead­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tists in brain fit­ness, including:
  • Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams and Cog­ni­tive Train­ing,
  • Cog­ni­tive Sim­u­la­tions for Bas­ket­ball Game-Intelligence: Inter­view with Prof. Daniel Gopher,
  • Work­ing Mem­ory Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg,
  • Mem­ory train­ing and atten­tion deficits: inter­view with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gib­son,
  • and an upcom­ing inter­view with Yaakov Stern, the lead­ing researcher behind the Cog­ni­tive Reserve theory
• Our col­lec­tion of Brain Teasers and Puzzles
• A selec­tion of Hot Top­ics in Brain Health and Fitness
• Or, sign up for our free monthly brain fit­ness newslet­ter that keeps you up to date with the lat­est arti­cles and events in brain fitness

But most of all, enjoy your­self, learn some­thing new, and let us know what you think!

Zack Lynch from Neu­roIn­sights reminds us that the early­bird reg­is­tra­tion for the Neu­rotech Indus­try Invest­ing and Busi­ness con­fer­ence is about to expire. You can reg­is­ter by April 13th to save $300.

Con­fer­ence Details:

Date: May 17 — 18, 2007
Loca­tion: Westin San Fran­cisco, Mill­brae, CA

Highly rec­om­mended con­fer­ence for any­one work­ing on biotech, med­ical devices, diag­nos­tics and neu­rotech­nol­ogy in gen­eral, and with added value for any­one inter­ested in learn­ing more about science-based Brain Fit­ness thanks to what we hope will be a ground­break­ing panel:

Title: Brain Fit­ness Through Soft­ware and Neurofeedback

Thurs­day May 17th, 4.45–5.30pm

Descrip­tion: Spurred by the dis­cov­ery of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, the aging baby boomer pop­u­la­tion and demand for safe treat­ments for child­hood ADHD, soft­ware com­pa­nies, large and small, are ven­tur­ing into the realm of Read the rest of this entry »