Welcome to BrainsConnected.com

by James Cavuoto, editor

Welcome to BrainsConnected.com. With the launch of this site, we hope to create the essential web portal for users of consumer neurotech products, including EEG headsets, brain stimulation devices, cognitive enhancement software, and a host of new tools we expect to hit the market in coming months.

Where Are We Going with This?

We believe we’re at the dawn of a new era in neuroscience, consumer electronics, and wellness. And progress in all three fields is intimately interconnected, opening the door for capabilities that have never before existed. For the first time, consumers will be able to use their laptops or smartphones to explore and control their own brains, without the need for a doctor’s prescription, health insurance approval, or a multi-million dollar research lab.

The convergence of the digital health, connected self, and citizen science movements will, we believe, create new opportunities for consumer neurotech users to learn about their own brainwave patterns and modify their brain’s function to achieve goals they set for themselves. We want to be there with you as these new capabilities emerge and we want to give you a forum for sharing your experiences with other users.
In the months ahead, this site will feature reviews and application articles covering many of the new consumer neurotech prouducts hitting the market. We’ll also host a lively forum where users can  share their thoughts on a range of topics related to consumer neurotech.

And down the road, we will host a one-of-a-kind interactive forum where EEG headset users can interact in real time to share brainwave data in games, experiments, market research, or collaborative brainwave data-mining.

Who We Are

We know there is a wealth of information available from other websites that cover consumer electronics, digital health, and advances in neuroscience. But we think you’ll find that BrainsConnected.com offers the most authoritative, up-to-date, and incisive coverage of consumer neurotech developments anywhere. Our writers and editors have dozens of years experience in neural engineering, consumer electronics, technology journalism, and science reporting. Neurotech Reports, the publishing company behind BrainsConnected.com, produced the first publication covering the neurotechnology industry in 2001. For 25 years, our reporters have been at the forefront of advances in neurotechnology, covering the key conferences and events in the field and interacting with pioneers in brain stimulation, brain-computer interfaces, neuroprosthetics, and neurosurgery.

Though much of the progress in the early days of neurotechnology was spurred by applications in healthcare and scientific research, those advances in medical devices have created a framework that now makes possible the advent of a vibrant consumer neurotech industry. Because we have that background covering the fundamental advances in neural engineering and neuroscience, you can can be sure that what you read here at BrainsConnected.com is based on solid scientific and engineering principles and not on hype, zealous marketing, or pervasive PR.

BrainsConnected.com’s editor James Cavuoto has more than 35 years experience as a technology journalist and neural engineer. A biomedical engineering graduate of Case Western Reserve University, he launched Neurotech Reports in 2001 and has authored thousands of articles plus several books and market research reports on neurotechnology, neuroscience, and neuroprosthetics. He is the co-author, with Jennifer French of Bionic Pioneers (Neurotech Press, 2014). Previously, he was the founder of Micro Publishing Press, which produced books and magazines covering electronic publishing, digital imaging, and computer graphics. He was the author of the first consumer book on desktop publishing, LaserWrite It! (Addison Wesley, 1986), the publisher of the first consumer magazine devoted to digital photography, Digital Imaging (sold to Cygnus Publishing, 1998), and a beta user/reviewer of products such as Adobe Photoshop, the Apple LaserWriter, and several first-generation digital cameras.

BrainsConnected.com’s director of technology Tony Gaitatzis is widely recognized as an expert in consumer neurotech. He was previously a cofounder of Personal Neuro Devices, a brain imaging and consumer neurotech company. He also founded an agency called BackupBrain that worked with professionals in industry and government. And he organized the ExG Consortium as an effort to produce standards in the EEG headset industry. He is the author of numerous articles for technology websites and the book Glass Programming in PHP. Tony studied software engineering, math, and psychology at the University of Ottawa.

We Want Your Participation

We’re looking for collaborators and contributors to help get this site off the ground. Interested in writing reviews, application articles, or opinion pieces? Send us your qualifications and links to any previous work. We'll also need moderators for our forums, as well as ambassadors to carry the message about BrainsConnected.com to other organizations, user groups, and websites.