AI is already playing a transformative role in the field. Scientists are leveraging powerful AI models to analyse huge neural datasets and to create predictive models that mirror the brain’s own processes.¹ This fundamental understanding is the bedrock for ambitious goals like building functional digital twins of specific brain regions,² which could dramatically accelerate the development of therapies.

This synergy is a two-way street: insights into the brain’s remarkable energy efficiency are inspiring the development of next-generation, brain-like "neuromorphic" computer chips, promising to make powerful AI accessible on small, everyday devices.³

The immediate focus is on developing sophisticated closed-loop brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to treat conditions like depression by reading and actively regulating brain states in real time.⁴ This requires overcoming significant hurdles in materials science to create biocompatible, flexible electronics that can integrate safely and effectively with neural tissue.

Eventually, these technologies will extend our minds — both in cognitive capabilities and in the physical location of data-logging and processing. Invasive implants, such as those restoring motor function, and non-invasive wearables are already offloading and augmenting cognitive tasks. We are likely to become ever more reliant on such tools, and research will make their integration into our lives ever more seamless.

However impressive the advances, progress in this area also creates obvious ethical issues about permission to read from and write to the brain, ownership of neural data and inequities emerging in cognitive ability, to name just a few concerns. Navigating the landscape of data privacy, technological dependency and the integration of AI with human consciousness will be as critical as the scientific breakthroughs themselves.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The convergence of neuroscience, sensing technology and materials science is paving the way for unprecedented interventions in understanding, augmenting and repairing the functions of the human brain. Efforts to understand the Fundamentals of cognition are progressing through a range of technologies that can generate and analyse huge neural datasets. Researchers are also making progress in Decrypting the brain, using AI to understand how neural activity leads to thought, intention and behaviour. This is allowing the construction of useful Neuromodulation systems: precise, targeted interventions, often involving feedback loops, that can influence attention, learning, memory and affective states. As a result, we are moving into an era of Exogenous cognition that will integrate artificial cognitive systems with biological brains. Such developments are set to fundamentally alter human experience.