Learn more about past events by year

• 2019

  The 2019 Global Brain Health and Performance Summit, hosted by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the Stanley D. and Joan H. Ross Center for Brain Health and Performance, took place June 4 – 7, 2019 in Columbus, OH.

  An Evening with Dale Earnhardt Jr.
  NASCAR royalty Dale Earnhardt Jr. will spend an evening with summit attendees and community members discussing his public journey recovering from the traumatic brain injury he suffered at the wheel of the number 88 Chevrolet SS. Joining Earnhardt Jr. is internationally renowned sports-concussion expert Micky Collins, PhD, who helped guide the driver through his recovery. Together, they will cover the effects of concussion, the "return to race" pressures faced by injured professional drivers and Earnhardt’s journey to recovery. Collins, a 2019 Brain Health & Performance Summit keynote speaker, also penned the foreword to Earnhardt Jr.'s memoir, Racing to the Finish: My Story, a chronicle of Earnhardt’s struggles with long-lasting concussion symptoms and how he managed to close out his career on his own terms.

  Day One: Brain Health and Sport: A Focus on Concussion and Mental Wellness

  How is new research changing the way we diagnose and treat concussions? How does the timing of physical therapy affect recovery? And how does an emphasis on sports psychology improve the emotional well-being and physical performance of student athletes? Experts from across the country bring their experience and analysis to the table in this comprehensive examination of traumatic brain injury and mental health

  Presentations

  • Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk: What Does the Treadmill Tell Us About Concussion?
  • Neuroimaging of Chronic Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
  • Management of Complex Sports Concussion
  • More Than A Clipboard: Navigating the Mental Health Continuum of Today's Athlete
  • Return to Learn: School-Based Concussion Management Program in Columbus City Schools
  • Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury: An Under-Recognized Cause of Concussion
  • "PINK" Concussion - Sex, Gender and Why Both Matter
  • Chatter: Dialogue on Mental Health of the Modern Athlete

  Day Two: Technology and Analytics

  Professionals in nearly any industry can benefit from these presentations on creative problem-solving, dazzling new technology and the ethics of data-gathering. What is the future of wearable technology? What ethical and legal responsibilities exist when wearables’ health data is collected? How are XR and AI influencing human potential for physical and cognitive performance? And how can “design thinking” improve our problem-solving skills?

  Presentations

  • Cognition and Technology
  • Design Thinking
  • Future of XR in Healthcare Disruption
  • Whose Data Is It?
  • Turning Data Into Insights Using Cloud-Based Data Management and Analytics
  • Virtual Reality Platform for Distraction During Pediatric Intravenous Procedures
  • Creating a "Third Culture" for the Human Domain? Artificial Intelligence and the Social Sciences
  • Creativity & The Brain

  Day Three: Pain and Performance

  While an opioid addiction epidemic sweeps the United States, we still face an epidemic of chronic pain, with some 100 million people in some form of pain management treatment throughout the country. How do healthcare providers, researchers and patients work together to find root causes and new, effective treatments for that pain? Internationally respected researchers and clinicians discuss how to give patients their life back through orthobiologics, neuro-visual stimulation, mindfulness and other treatments.

  Presentations

  • The Role of Orthobiologics for Pain Management
  • Opioids in Chronic Pain Management: “Wait a sec, is that still a thing?”
  • Interventional Pain Therapies – Tools in the Toolkit for Severe Pain
  • Enhancing Neuromodulation-Induced Analgesia Through Personalized Neuro Visual Stimulation
  • Role of Diet in Chronic Pain and Reconditioning
  • Giving Patients Their Lives Back: A Mental Health Provider’s Experience in a Specialty Pain Clinic
  • rTMS for Chronic Pain: It Works and It's Here
  • A Balanced Approach to Pain Management
  • Keynote Speaker - Cannabis: Therapeutic Use for Pain and Mental Health

• 2018

  The 2018 Global Brain Health and Performance Summit, hosted by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the Stanley D. and Joan H. Ross Center for Brain Health and Performance, took place April 4 – 6, 2018 in Columbus, OH.

  Day One Presentations

  • Neuroscience Gets Personal
  • Wearable Technologies Performance, Research and Clinical Use
  • Brain Performance in the Workplace
  • Ohio State Lightning Talks
  • Design Thinking
  • Combat 24/7 Fitness System: Genesis, Status and Future
  • Analysis of Wearables: From Validation to Athlete Performance Enhancement
  • NRI Research Award Recipient: Spinal cord injury-induced immunodeficiency is mediated by a sympathetic-neuroendocrine adrenal reflex
  • NRI Research Award Recipient: Modeling Phenogenetics of Neurological Diseases with patient-derived stem cells, the future is now
  • Truly Human
  • Thrive@Hilton
  • Bioelectronic Medicine Tools to Create Closed-Loop Systems for Therapy
  • Advances in Neural Bypass Technology to Restore Movement in People with Paralysis
  • Digital Health

  Day Two Presentations

  • Brain Food and Cooking Demo
  • Lifestyles and Brain Health
  • Tracking Neurocapacity with an Experiment and Modeling Ecosystem
  • Schulte Session: Light at Night- Edison’s Impact on Sleep and Human Performance
  • Schulte Session: Remote Monitoring of Motor Recovery Using Game-Based Motion Capture
  • Sport Science, Wearables and Analytics Applied to Some of the Best Athletes on Earth
  • Meeting Brain-Computer Interface User Expectations Using Deep Neural Network Decoding Algorithms
  • Big Data to Understand Brain Health and Performance
  • Central Nervous System Models for Enhancing Performance
  • Neuroplasticity in Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation and Performance
  • The Neurological Foundations of Flotation-Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique and Implications for Therapeutic Intervention
  • Neuro Ethics
  • Diversity in Neuroscience

• 2017

  The 2017 Global Brain Health and Performance Summit, hosted by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the Stanley D. and Joan H. Ross Center for Brain Health and Performance, took place April 27 - 29, 2017 in Columbus, OH.

  Day One Presentations

  • Socioeconomic Underpinnings
  • The Public Health Impact
  • The Scope of the Problem
  • The Neuroscience of Opioid Addiction
  • Challenges in the Management of Opioid Addiction
  • West Virginia’s Developing Model to Address Opioid Addiction
  • Technological Innovations: Seeking Game Changers
  • What is Brain Health?
  • Population Studies: Applications to Brain Health
  • Population Brain Health Studies

  Day Two Presentations

  • Partnering with Cutting Edge Neurotechnology
  • Modeling Progression in Neurodegenerative Diseases Using Network Connectivity
  • Cortical Control of the Autonomic Nervous System
  • The Proactive Brain
  • The Harry T. Mangurian Jr. Foundation Lecture: Athletic Applications
  • Third Offset
  • State of the Science Military Applications
  • Performance Roundtable
  • Blue Zones: Secrets of a Long Life
  • Brain Health Commercialization
  • Digitizing Neuroscience: Research and Development
  • Advances in Sweat Sensing
  • Neuroprosthetic Body Awareness: Sensing through the Eyes of a Brain-Computer Interface
  • Big Data Challenges in Decoding Cortical Activity in a Human with Quadriplegia to Inform a Brain Computer Interface
  • Non-invasive Physio Sensing Technologies
  • Noninvasive Monitoring of Intracranial Hemorrhage
  • Artificial Neural Networks
  • Extended Kalman Filtering
  • Endocrine-Brain Connections
  • Biomarkers of Stress and Performance: Special Operations
  • Fused Model Approaches for Assessment
  • Virtual Reality: Neuroprosthetic Clinical Applications
  • Neuroprosthetics-enabled Cortical Control of a Paralyzed Hand: From Restoring Individual Finger Movements to Functional Grasps
  • Examining Modifiable Factors to Prevent Post-op Cognitive Decline
  • Advances in Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
  • DARPA RAM: Developing Neurostimulation Therapies for Patients with Memory Disorders
  • Arts & Rehabilitation Roundtable Chronic Brain Injury Discovery Theme
  • The Cognitive Revolution
  • Schulte Lecture* Consistent Variability in Motor Recovery
  • Schulte Lecture* Sleep & Light
  • Concussion Spotting in Intercollegiate and Professional Athletics
  • HRV Wearables and the Future of Healthcare
  • Elaborate Interactions Between the Immune and Nervous Systems
  • fMRI Modeling of Functional Brain Connectivity
  • Cranial Cloud
  • Mindfulness Meditation for Behavioral Disorders and Chronic Pain
  • Treating Military PTSD
  • Sports Performance Roundtable

  *The Rudi Schulte Research Institute (RSRI), a 501c(3) charitable foundation located in Santa Barbara, California, was founded in 1974 by its namesake whose many inventions included the shunt for hydrocephalus. RSI has a long history of promoting better treatment for hydrocephalus, as well as other groundbreaking research on the intersection of technology and brain function.

  Day Three Presentations

  • Data as the Next Frontier of Commercialization in Neuroscience
  • Depression, Inflammation and Cognition
  • Immune Dysfunction and the Effects on Cognition
  • The Effects of Inflammation on Social and Affective Experience
  • Exercise and Cognition
  • Nutrition and Brain Health
  • Circadian Alignment and SleepMeditation, Mindfulness and Augmentation

• 2016

  The 2016 Global Brain Health and Performance Summit, hosted by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the Stanley D. and Joan H. Ross Center for Brain Health and Performance, took place in May 2016 in Columbus, OH.

  Breaking Barriers in Neuroscience
  The power of the brain to interface with technology is making it possible for people severely challenged by injury or disease to function more independently and accomplish feats they thought were impossible. This human and machine teamwork has allowed quadriplegic racecar driver Sam Schmidt to control his car with head movements that are converted into computer code. And Ian Burkhart, whose paralyzing spinal injury prevents him from performing many tasks of daily living, is now able to hold a phone to his ear and pour from a bottle thanks to a microchip embedded in his brain and connected to electrodes that stimulate his arm muscles. Researchers are working to make these and similar life-changing technologies more portable and wireless, as well as developing closed-loop systems that interface more seamlessly with individual users.

  Keynote Presentation: The Sleep Revolution
  “Sleep is non-negotiable,” says Arianna Huffington, President of the Huffington Post Media group. Discussing her book The Sleep Revolution, she cites scientific findings that sleep rejuvenates our bodies and brains and is a performance enhancer in all areas of our lives. Getting enough sleep improves our cognitive abilities, decision-making, judgment, creativity and resilience. And despite our societal belief that we should be available 24-7, making sleep a priority is the best path to productivity. Huffington asserts, “Your lives are too interesting to not be incomplete at the end of the day.”

  Optimizing Special Operations
  Research conducted using the Sense-Assess-Augment framework is supporting the training and operations of the most elite members of our United States armed forces. For example, researchers are able to assess stress levels in Special Operations forces using tools to measure brain function in a variety of real or simulated military situations. Their findings have the potential to not only enhance individual and team task performance, but to identify and help military personnel who are struggling with the effects of living and working in chronic high-pressure environments.

  State-Of-The-Art Sense, Assess, and Augment
  Neuroscientific discoveries in personalized physiological computer modeling, targeted brain stimulation and biomarker sensor technology are providing highly sophisticated data about our bodies and brains. “Virtual brain” technology also helps researchers study brain activity, and in addition engages the public in neuroscientific topics. Practitioners can use information from these technologies to make decisions about the best treatment options, and researchers are able to measure and evaluate brain activity and possible neuromodulation in previously unimagined ways.

  Taking Care of Your Brain: Fact and Fiction
  In studies of optimal aging and diseases such as Alzheimer’s, science is showing that we have the potential to positively impact our brain function even in older age. Prioritizing good nutrition, aerobic exercise and regular social engagement seem to influence whether and when some individuals develop conditions associated with aging. And there is also evidence that we can develop a “cognitive reserve,” influenced by factors such as education, that may increase brain neuroplasticity and make us less susceptible to the effects of brain changes that can be signals of cognitive decline.

  Virtual Reality, Neurogaming and Simulation
  Brain researchers are harnessing space-age technologies to create personalized therapies and treatments. For example, avatar science is helping people deal with chronic pain. Video games that function as “body-brain trainers” stimulate neural networks to improve conditions such as ADHD, depression and autism. And virtual reality simulation creates immersive scenarios so military personnel can learn to manage stress in chaotic, war-like conditions. These rapidly evolving, engaging technological tools are also enhancing knowledge of healthy brain performance.