Neurolabs

What’s normal? When it comes to the brain, it’s hard to say, and that’s why we need to study global neurodiversity

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In a small vil­lage in India—a place so remote it has no elec­tric­i­ty, no telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem, and no cars or buses—a research work­er pre­pares to place an EEG head­set on a female villager’s head. The woman, who earns $3.75 a day labor­ing in a near­by rice pad­dy and who has nev­er ven­tured out­side her vil­lage, eyes the futur­is­tic device with trepidation.

“Is it going to hurt my head?” she asks.

Sathish, the research work­er, has heard this ques­tion before. In fact, he’s heard sev­er­al sim­i­lar queries from anx­ious vil­lagers who have got­ten scared when they saw the brainwear.

“Will it give me a headache?”

“Is it going to give me an elec­tric shock?”

He assures the woman the head­set is pain­less and explains that all she has to do is sit qui­et­ly and allow her mind to wan­der. Sathish gen­tly adjusts an array of elec­trodes on the woman’s head and [Read more…] about What’s nor­mal? When it comes to the brain, it’s hard to say, and that’s why we need to study glob­al neurodiversity

Tara Thiagarajan, Founder of Brainnovations Winner Sapien Labs, on building a global platform for brain research that truly captures the diversity of humanity

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What sur­prised you the most from the Judges’ ques­tions and feed­back dur­ing the Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test?

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to see the sig­nif­i­cant range and depth of knowl­edge shown by the judg­ing pan­el, lead­ing to very spe­cif­ic and use­ful ques­tions around the key chal­lenges to build our glob­al research platform.

In a nut­shell, what is the core idea behind Sapi­en Labs?

The core idea is to fur­ther our under­stand­ing of the large dif­fer­ences between indi­vid­ual brains in order to man­age our brain health and brain states bet­ter. [Read more…] about Tara Thi­a­gara­jan, Founder of Brain­no­va­tions Win­ner Sapi­en Labs, on build­ing a glob­al plat­form for brain research that tru­ly cap­tures the diver­si­ty of humanity