Speaker Biography
Dr Adam Gazzaley M.D., Ph.D. is the David Dolby Distinguished Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at UC San Francisco and the Founder & Executive Director of Neuroscape, a translational neuroscience center engaged in technology creation and scientific research of novel brain assessment and optimization approaches. Dr. Gazzaley is also co-founder and Chief Science Advisor of Akili Interactive, a company developing therapeutic video games, Sensync, a company creating the first Sensory Immersion Vessel, and JAZZ Venture Partners, a venture capital firm investing in experiential technology to improve human performance. He has been a scientific advisor for over a dozen companies including Apple, GE, Nielsen, Deloitte. He has filed multiple patents, notably his invention of the first video game cleared by the FDA as a medical treatment, authored over 150 scientific articles, and delivered over 675 invited presentations around the world. He wrote and hosted the nationally televised PBS special “The Distracted Mind with Dr. Adam Gazzaley”, and co-authored the 2016 MIT Press book “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World”, winner of the 2017 PROSE Award. Dr. Gazzaley is the recipient of the 2015 Society for Neuroscience – Science Educator Award.
Talk Abstract
A fundamental challenge of our global healthcare system is the development and distribution of effective treatments to enhance cognition for those suffering from diverse psychiatric and neurological conditions. Dr. Gazzaley will describe his use of custom-designed, closed-loop video games to achieve cognitive benefits in both healthy individuals (Nature 2013; Nature Human Behavior 2019) and patients (Lancet 2020). This approach has now yielded the first FDA-cleared digital treatment for ADHD, and the first video game cleared by the FDA as a medical device for any clinical condition. He will share with you the next stage of his research program, which integrates digitally-delivered interactive experiences with the innovations in machine learning, virtual reality, physiological recordings and non-invasive electrical brain stimulation to enhance cognition.