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Last week, something special happened in San Francisco. We brought together some of the world's most brilliant minds from neuroscience, design, technology, and investment for the Brain Health Summit, co-hosted with our incredible partners at IDEO and 1080 Ventures.
I walked away from the event with one, undeniable conclusion: we are at a global tipping point.
The era of treating the brain as a mysterious, unquantifiable black box is over. For decades, brain science has been trapped in the lab. Now, we are at the dawn of a new revolution—one defined by proactive, personalized, and continuous brain health.
The catalyst for this change, a theme that echoed in every single talk, is our newfound ability to see the brain "at scale, in real time and longitudinally." This single shift—moving from isolated snapshots in a lab to a continuous, living story of how our cognitive health—is the game-changer.
For those who couldn't join us, I wanted to share some of the most powerful insights from the leaders who made the day so unforgettable.
Keynotes: Setting the Vision
The day's keynotes set a powerful stage, defining the "why" and "how" of this new era.
Mike Peng, CEO of IDEO, opened the day by perfectly capturing this shift. He argued that while "we are still at its infancy" in brain research, "the game is about to change due to wearable technology." His talk was a masterclass on how human-centered design must evolve. As Mike put it, "Very soon all technology...is about to be integrated and adapted based on brain state."
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This was a perfect lead-in for Dr. Daniel Kraft, who painted a vivid picture of a proactive health future. He explored how "digital health twins"—built from our continuous wearable data—will become our personal early warning systems. In his words, Dr. Kraft, a Physician-scientist and the Founder & Chair of NextMed Health, said “Digital, connected data wearables will create digital health twins, which will drive decisions in a medical setting. Healthcare AI finally has the data and scale to transform how we do medicine."
I had the privilege of sharing my own vision, which is grounded in this exact principle. As I said in my keynote, "the future of health is continuous tracking." This is the only way we can establish a personal baseline for our health, which is the key that unlocks "earlier interventions and anomaly detection." This is how we will finally extend not just our lifespan, but our brainspan.
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Fireside Chat: The Future of Focus
Dr. Gloria Mark, Chancellor's professor in the Department of Informatics at UC Irvine and Dr. Adam Gazzaley, Professor of Neurology, UCSF and Founder of Neuroscape, participated in a session that resonated deeply with me. This session, moderated by Neurable’s VP of Marketing, Jessica Randazza Pade, tackled the attention crisis we all feel. Their message was a powerful rejection of old, failed productivity myths.
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Dr. Mark, a leading expert on workplace distraction, made it clear: "We have to be honest: in the modern workplace, multitasking is just multi-failing. The data is clear on this."
Dr. Gazzaley, a pioneer in digital therapeutics, offered the solution. He argued that focus is a skill that can be trained, stating, "The idea that our cognitive abilities are fixed is a myth. We must exercise our focus like we exercise our body. Neuroplasticity is a lifelong gift, and technology is the tool that lets us harness it."
The panel's core takeaway? The "easiest and most effective way to gain efficiency" isn't a complex hack, but "well-timed breaks." This is the very foundation of what we at Neurable call "brain hygiene."
Fireside Chat: Designing Resilient Futures
If science is the engine, design is the steering wheel. This panel, moderated by Arthur Woods of 1080 Ventures,included Maggie Stanphill, the Global Head of Design for Panasonic Well, and Sean White, CEO of Inflection AI, explored how we build human-centered products for the mind.
Maggie Stanphill highlighted that "customers want their products to consider their health." This is a fundamental shift in consumer expectation. She argued, "Health is no longer just a feature; it's a fundamental expectation. The next generation of products will win by designing seamless, invisible experiences that make well-being effortless."
Sean White, tied it all together, explaining why BCI is the key. As he put it, "Emotional intelligence is the future of AI, [and] BCI will be a key player" in providing that empathetic, real-time context that AI currently lacks.
Breakout Highlights: The Path Forward
In the breakout sessions, we dug into the "how"—the strategy, vision, and grit required to build this brain health focused future.
Adam Molnar, my co-founder at Neurable, delivered one of the most powerful insights for every builder in the room. He spoke on the lessons of being a deep tech founder, challenging the audience: "Learn to identify if who you were in the past is limiting who you can be in the future."
In her session on the future of wellness, Dr. Rachele Pojednic, Chief Science Officer of Restore Labs & Restore Hyperwellness, painted a long-term, audacious vision. "Our 2040 goal for humanity is for wearable technology to be everywhere, integrated with major health partners to create a truly proactive ecosystem."
Samantha Tambone, of XEIA Venture Partners, perfectly captured the immediate, strategic next step for our entire industry. Speaking on the gaps in BCI, she said, "The next big inflection point for our entire field is solving a mainstream use case. This technology will cross the chasm when it moves from a 'nice to have' to a 'need to have' for everyday problems like burnout."
We left the summit with a clear mandate: The "why" is no longer in question. The "how" is here.
Now, we build.
2 Distraction Stroop Tasks experiment: The Stroop Effect (also known as cognitive interference) is a psychological phenomenon describing the difficulty people have naming a color when it's used to spell the name of a different color. During each trial of this experiment, we flashed the words “Red” or “Yellow” on a screen. Participants were asked to respond to the color of the words and ignore their meaning by pressing four keys on the keyboard –– “D”, “F”, “J”, and “K,” -- which were mapped to “Red,” “Green,” “Blue,” and “Yellow” colors, respectively. Trials in the Stroop task were categorized into congruent, when the text content matched the text color (e.g. Red), and incongruent, when the text content did not match the text color (e.g., Red). The incongruent case was counter-intuitive and more difficult. We expected to see lower accuracy, higher response times, and a drop in Alpha band power in incongruent trials. To mimic the chaotic distraction environment of in-person office life, we added an additional layer of complexity by floating the words on different visual backgrounds (a calm river, a roller coaster, a calm beach, and a busy marketplace). Both the behavioral and neural data we collected showed consistently different results in incongruent tasks, such as longer reaction times and lower Alpha waves, particularly when the words appeared on top of the marketplace background, the most distracting scene.
Interruption by Notification: It’s widely known that push notifications decrease focus level. In our three Interruption by Notification experiments, participants performed the Stroop Tasks, above, with and without push notifications, which consisted of a sound played at random time followed by a prompt to complete an activity. Our behavioral analysis and focus metrics showed that, on average, participants presented slower reaction times and were less accurate during blocks of time with distractions compared to those without them.
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