Keeping the Brain Happy: Technology to Monitor and Maintain Brain Health

The current tech revolution will have the greatest societal impact since the Industrial Revolution. Smartphones are part of daily life. AI is used from internet searches to self-driving cars. Applied carefully, this revolution can transform the care of people with dementia, from apps to detect early Alzheimer’s disease through to virtual and augmented reality to support people at home. This talk will paint a vision of this future.

Brain chemistry influences our well-being, and our well-being influences brain chemistry – while this seems obvious today, it hasn’t always been this way (at least not in Western culture). In this presentation, we will show in which way our brain chemistry impacts us – and how to improve our well-being, using both ‘healthy habits’ (such as sports and meditation) and drug treatments (and everything in between) as examples.

Stress, anxiety and depression are some of the biggest health challenges we face. Unlike blood pressure or cholesterol, we don't routinely measure mental health. But our electronic gadgets hold plenty of data about our mental health, and can play a role in helping us all to manage it.