Cori Lathan: It’s time for an annual brain check-up, a “brain thermometer”

by

Corinna E. Lathan, PhD
Corin­na E. Lath­an, PhD

What is your cur­rent job title and orga­ni­za­tion, and what excites you the most about work­ing there?
As Founder and CEO of Anthro­Tron­ix, a firm com­mit­ted to advanc­ing human-inspired tech­nolo­gies that have a glob­al impact, I am for­tu­nate to direct the vision and work of a very tal­ent­ed team while col­lab­o­rat­ing with fas­ci­nat­ing sci­en­tists and tech­nol­o­gists worldwide.

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? 
Opti­miz­ing the human-tech­nol­o­gy inter­face requires an intel­li­gent appli­ca­tion of brain sci­ence, tech­ni­cal lit­er­a­cy, and a big dose of entre­pre­neur­ial inno­va­tion. All three of these things, by def­i­n­i­tion, are mov­ing tar­gets and require me and our team to be con­stant­ly learn­ing and apply­ing what we learn to new prob­lems to solve. I love this work.

What is one impor­tant thing you are work­ing on now, and where can peo­ple learn more about it? 
The Defense Auto­mat­ed Behav­ioral Assess­ment (DANA) is a mobile soft­ware pro­gram that mea­sures cog­ni­tive effi­cien­cy.  It was devel­oped for the DoD (Depart­ment of Defense) for use in deter­min­ing cog­ni­tive changes after a blast or injury.  A com­mer­cial ver­sion of DANA will soon be avail­able and mar­ket­ed to the health­care, sports, and edu­ca­tion markets.

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 the com­mon mis­con­cep­tion in the media is that we do not know any­thing about the brain.  While there is much to learn, we do know that we can active­ly influ­ence brain health through activ­i­ties, mon­i­tor­ing, and healthy lifestyle.

Where do you see clear “low-hang­ing fruit” to enhance behav­ioral and brain health based on neu­ro­science and innovation?
An annu­al brain check-up or “brain ther­mome­ter” that tracks cog­ni­tive health the way we cur­rent­ly track many oth­er health indi­ca­tions like weight and blood pressure.

What would you like the 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit to accomplish? 
Like last year, pro­vide a stim­u­lat­ing forum for dis­cus­sion about the future of inno­va­tion, tech­nol­o­gy, and brain health.

Final­ly, what do YOU do to stay sharp?
Geocache.

2013 SharpBrains Summit—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