BrainHealth Calendar
Back-to-School Anxiety: How to Identify and Overcome School Stressors
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As a new school year approaches, many students face more than packed schedules — they're navigating real emotional and social stress. Start the fall semester with insights from our upcoming Charisma Community Town Hall. A licensed therapist and expert in anxiety, relationship dynamics and crisis management, Brandi Sinclair, MACP, LPC. opens a toolkit of innovative ways to support students during moments of uncertainty. Sinclair is founder of Heritage Counseling & Consulting.
Charisma: A Case Study in Measurable BrainHealth Outcomes at Scale
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Charisma™ began as a research toolset built to deliver structured, game-based coaching and role-play to strengthen social cognition. Over a decade of iteration, from VRSCT (Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training) to Virtual Gemini to the current unified Charisma platform, the program has consistently facilitated measurable gains in emotion recognition, perspective-taking, and self-confidence. Aaron Tate discusses the software’s evolution and shares key learnings about what it takes to move from research to a scalable product, while staying true to the science behind it, highlighting how intellectual property and building for scale can preserve research integrity and extend real-world impact.
Neuromodulation: The New Era for the Treatment of Depression
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Specializing in neurology, psychiatry and geriatric medicine, Dr. Mustafa Husain's research interests include general psychiatry, aging and geriatric issues, new applications of lead placement in ECT and novel treatments of major depressive disorder including magnetic seizure therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, deep brain stimulation, and vagus nerve stimulation.
Toward AGI: Automating "Slow" Thinking in AI
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Despite advancements in generative AI and large language models, the holy grail of AGI (artificial general intelligence) — AI as good as humans — still seems elusive. Dr. Gopal Gupta presents a goal-directed answer set programming system that automates human (commonsense) reasoning in order to discuss how AI systems to match human capabilities can be built by combining learning and reasoning, including several practical applications of this approach, e.g., reliable interactive chatbots and autonomous driving.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation for Enhancing Plasticity and Brain Health
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Non-invasive stimulation of the auricular branch of the vagus nerve (taVNS) shows promise toward improving brain health and function, and human performance across a multitude of domains. Dr. William Tyler and Dr. Cristin Welle explore implications of new findings for neurorehabilitation in the context of pilot clinical investigations using reinforcement-based taVNS to improve fine motor ability in people with multiple sclerosis and executive function in people suffering from neuroinflammation.
Unleashing Imagination: The Creative Brain and AI
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"If your ideas are just AI ideas, you're replaceable. The future belongs to those who still think for themselves." Leader of a $2.5 million National Science Foundation project on creativity in STEM, Dr. Adam Green predicts the human ability to generate new meaning may be our creative advantage. A premier neuroscientist in this field, he seeks new ways to measure and understand innovative thinking and creative ideation. Dr. Green directs the Lab for Relational Cognition at Georgetown University and is co-founder of The Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity.
Using “Sidewalk Neuroscience” to Study Power Relationships
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“Sidewalk neuroscience” refers to gaining insights into the function of human behavior through simple observation; as a result, this form of scientific discovery is available to all and, if rigorously applied, can provide insights into human emotions and behavioral intent. In this presentation, political scientist Dr. Patrick A. Stewart discusses how observing and coding the behavior of public figures by using the Ethological Coding System for Interviews (ECSI) and eye blink rates can provide insights into power relationships.
Confident Aging
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Do you often find yourself thinking about getting older? Do you believe that aging inevitably means losing independence — or do you think it’s possible to maintain a rich, purposeful life as you grow older? Renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Ian Robertson explores the beliefs and behaviors that shape our confidence, and how, within the limits of illness or circumstance, we can age more actively, happily, and with greater purpose.
The Road to Recovery Among Cancer Patients: The Role of Resiliency and Neuroendocrine Profiles
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Directing a long-term study on the link between psychosocial factors and increasing cancer risks that could be mediated by cellular immune response, Dr. Massimo Bardi works with oncologists, geneticists, psychologists and neuroscientists to test the hypothesis that a more adaptive neuroendocrine physiological profile could be positively associated with a better cancer prognosis. Their main goal is to identify innovative and cost-effective methods to stimulate biopsychosocial enhancements in cancer patients to improve quality of life and reduce tremendous costs.
Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work
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An eye surgeon and cognitive neuroscientist, Dr. Mithu Storoni advocates for a new, hyperefficient way of working. The work that matters most in our technology-dominated workplace – generating brilliant ideas, solving complex problems, and learning – can’t be manufactured like outputs on an assembly line. Our brains function like a car’s engine, with multiple gears that put the brain in optimal mode for different mental challenges – to create, solve and learn.
Visualizing Molecular Events in the Brain with Hemogenetic MRI
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As director of the Li neuroimaging Lab (LNAB), Dr. Nan Li aims to develop novel whole-brain MRI imaging methods to integrate molecular and system neuroscience while solving brain science problems in health and diseases. She hopes that ultimately her work will broaden our capacity of functional brain imaging to better understand the fundamental mechanisms and develop treatments for better brain health.
Brain Health Starts with Brain Care: A Scalable Solution to the Pandemic of Age-Related Brain Disease
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The Global Brain Care Coalition (GBCC) is an international learning health care system grounded in providing people with the knowledge and tools to take action in caring for their brains — its mission is to make proactive, evidence-based brain care simple and accessible to communities worldwide to promote brain health and prevent disease. Anchored by the patient and family values, research and compassion of leading health centers around the world, the GBCC partners with communities to bring its personalized, compassionate, science-grounded approach to people everywhere.
Clinical Psychology and Executive Function
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Dr. Staci Warren's talk description is coming soon.