“What Is ‘Neurotech,’ and Why Does Connected Care Already Belong There?”
I went back through my own book recently, and noticed something. I’ve never once called this chapter “neurotech.” Not once. It’s always been “brain stimulation and neuromodulation” — which is accurate, and also exactly the kind of phrase that makes a caregiver’s eyes glaze over at 11pm.
So let’s talk about the word I should probably start using.
“Neurotech” is the broader umbrella — implants, stimulation devices, wearables, brain-computer interfaces, anything that reads or changes what’s happening in the nervous system. I’ll be straight with you: even the research press covering this exact field still says “neuromodulation,” not “neurotech” — I checked two brand-new studies specifically to see. So this isn’t me chasing a trending hashtag researchers are already using. It’s me noticing that “neuromodulation” is a word built for a conference room, and “neurotech” is a word built for a person trying to understand what’s happening to their kid’s brain.
And the field itself is moving, whether or not anyone’s using the catchier name for it. Two things came across my desk this week worth knowing about:
Dr. Stavros Zanos and his team at Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes just completed the first comprehensive human map of the vagus nerve — imaging it in a level of detail nobody’s had before. Why that matters: current vagus nerve stimulation devices can only reach a fraction of the nerve fibers actually available. Zanos found that over 80% of the fibers in that nerve are sensory fibers that today’s devices simply can’t touch. His map opens the door to a next generation of VNS devices that could target specific organs and functions instead of blasting the whole nerve — with applications already used for epilepsy, depression, and post-stroke recovery, and more on the horizon for inflammatory conditions, heart failure, diabetes.
Separately, a research team using the EBRAINS infrastructure found something that could make brain stimulation itself more predictable: by analyzing brain activity in the moments right before a stimulation session — across more than 10,000 individual stimulations in 36 epilepsy patients — they could cut the variability in how the brain responds by up to 24%. That’s the difference between a treatment that works differently every time and one a clinician can actually calibrate.
Here’s the thing: everything in that last sentence already lives in Connected Care. NeuroStar and Brainsway’s TMS. Ampa Health’s accelerated protocols. Attune Neurosciences and Sanmai Technologies working in focused ultrasound. Humanity Neurotech going after neuroinflammation directly — its name is the one place “neurotech” already snuck into the book, and I never even noticed. Muse and Elite HRV, for the parts of this you can start tonight without a referral.
I don’t think the science changed. I think the name I’ve been using for it just hasn’t caught up to how people actually search for this stuff. Worth asking whether Connected Care should say the word out loud.
📖 Connected Care — available now on Amazon. https://a.co/d/010Pe2ls
