Dimitra Dritsa, Francesco Moretti, Christina Schneegass, Lauren Lew, Champika Epa Ranasinghe, Jun Hu
Mental health problems are on the rise. Yet, access to specialised support and self-monitoring tools for cognitive and emotional well-being remains limited. Emerging neurotechnologies offer many new opportunities: from helping prevent burnout to facilitating healthy ageing through cognitive training, supporting self-reflection and overall wellbeing, or helping neurodiverse individuals understand the cognitive demand of their daily routines. Despite their potential, integrating these technologies into our everyday lives raises many questions and challenges: how will quantifying our cognitive states impact us? With whom do we want to share this information, and what are the risks of doing so? What can we learn by viewing the cognitive states of others, and how can we do this in a privacy-preserving and responsible way?
Can we track our brain activity like our steps?
Within the theme of Health and wellbeing, Tangible Mind bridges the research areas of cognitive tracking and neurotech with personal informatics and human-data interaction. The questions we discuss are relevant to various health-related domains, from healthy ageing to handling long covid or chronic fatigue. Through stimulating discussion on the benefits, barriers, and potential fears of externalising and sharing cognitive data, we aim to stimulate the audience to think about the implications of futures where cognitive data monitoring is as ubiquitous as physical activity tracking.