Stephanie Korszen: Let’s improve mental self-awareness, starting with the role of fatigue

Please tell us about your inter­est in applied brain sci­ence. What areas are you most inter­est­ed in? What moti­vat­ed you to pur­sue work in your field?
I’ve always been pas­sion­ate about the inter­ac­tion between tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions and the human body.  As the brain is often con­sid­ered the “final fron­tier,” I’m most inter­est­ed in gain­ing insight into the neur­al under­pin­nings of cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing and behavior.

What is one impor­tant thing you are work­ing on now, and where can peo­ple learn more about it?
One ongo­ing project that I’m excit­ed to be work­ing on is a mul­ti-modal plat­form called Team Neu­ro­Dy­nam­ics, which cen­ters on map­ping the neur­al cor­re­lates of effec­tive team­work and lead­er­ship.  Peo­ple can learn more by vis­it­ing the Advanced Brain Mon­i­tor­ing website.

What are 1–2 key things you’d like every per­son to under­stand regard­ing his/ her own brain and mind, that you think is com­mon­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed or not addressed in the pop­u­lar media?
I think that the effects of fatigue on the human brain are wide­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed — a cup of cof­fee can’t make up for chron­ic or acute sleep deprivation!

Where do you see clear “low-hang­ing fruit” to enhance behav­ioral and brain health based on neu­ro­science and innovation?
I’d say that the “low-hang­ing fruit” is more self-aware­ness regard­ing per­son­al brain health and men­tal acu­ity.  I see future poten­tial for more objec­tive mea­sures and use­ful, unob­tru­sive neurofeedback.

What would you like the 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit to accomplish?
I would like the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit to result in a bet­ter, more com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of the cur­rent state of applied brain sci­ence — as well as an idea of what we can look for­ward to in years to come.

Final­ly, what do YOU do to stay sharp?
I stay sharp by read­ing and writ­ing as often as pos­si­ble.  And lis­ten­ing to NPR on my commute!

—This con­ver­sa­tion is part of a new inter­view series with Speak­ers and Par­tic­i­pants in the upcom­ing 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Sep­tem­ber 19–20th). You can reg­is­ter with a 20% dis­count using pro­mo­tion­al code: sharp2020