AI can be powerful stimulant for brain health and plasticity – George Vradenburg
Brain health has emerged as one of the defining challenges of our time, driven by a double whammy of soaring rates of neurological conditions such as stroke, dementia, and Parkinson's disease linked to ageing populations, alongside a rise in mental health issues among young people. To confront this escalating crisis, an initiative called Brain House was launched earlier this year at Davos, Switzerland. The initiative seeks to drive a unified global effort, bringing together stakeholders—from mental health experts to philanthropic and for-profit investors—to prioritise brain health like never before. Leading this movement is George Vradenburg, chairman and co-founder of the Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative (DAC). Vradenburg told Biznews in an interview that it is crucial to reduce risk factors, build brain resilience, and harness technology and AI to transform brain health outcomes. He emphasised that new technologies, such as AI, have consistently been adapted to extend the capabilities of our brains. "These technologies are powerful stimulants to brain plasticity and to brain health," he remarked. A Health for Africa programme is set to launch at the G20 summit in South Africa this November.
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Edited transcript of the interview
Linda van Tilburg (00:02.876)
With me in the studio today is George Vradenburg, who is here to discuss a new initiative launched at Davos in Switzerland earlier this year called The Brain House, which is currently on a global tour. Well, George, thank you so much for joining us.
George Vradenburg (00:18.222)
Well, thank you for having me.
Linda van Tilburg (00:20.617)
Where did the idea for The Brain House come from?
George Vradenburg (00:25.442)
My brain. Where else? The idea was: can we bring together in one place at one time, those that are focused on the brain, the mental health community, the neurodegenerative community, the Alzheimer's, Parkinson's community, philanthropic investors, for-profit investors, the WHO, large health systems, all focused on the brain. We have one brain.
When we're born and we have the same brain when we die, and we call the differential impacts on that brain by different names. We call it autism. We call it anxiety, depression and psychosis. We call it mental health. We call it stress. All of those words are describing some impact on the brain. We said, well, why don't we just try and bring together people to see if there's any commonality? The answer was yes. People said, this is amazing.
This gives us a new way to think about how we can work together to generate increased investment in ending brain disorders. And it gives us a new way of thinking about how we can promote the power of the brain during our lives. Education, work training, how can we train the brain to be more creative, empathetic, so that what are the tools that we might have now in an age of AI and neuro-engineering where we actually can stimulate the brain to be much more powerful.
That is particularly important because of ageing demographics in the world. We have fewer people of working age population trying to support a larger global population. We'd better figure out how we can increase the productivity of working age populations in order to keep our material progress going through this century.
Linda van Tilburg (02:16.286)
So where does this interest in brain health stem from?
George Vradenburg (02:19.49)
Well, it came from a variety of different sources. It came from the mental health community to say, this is interesting. It came from the community that I serve, which is Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and related to benches. And it came from the investment community who, you know, they know the route by which they can invest in biotech or, or pharmaceutical companies that are focused on Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or mental health or whatever. But the investment community was intrigued by the notion.
That can we think about solutions to these different siloed brain diseases, which can also stimulate the brain and find new investment theses by which they can invest in brain promotion, brain resilience, brain capital. We regard the brain not as a liability, but as an asset. And so, think about this as brain capital and potentially a brain economy that's much more productive and much richer with opportunities to train our very plastic brain during the course of our lives to be much more resilient.
Linda van Tilburg (03:29.076)
Well, can we look at the degenerative diseases? I mean, you are also involved with Alzheimer's. So, you know, what kind of progress is being made there apart from this big research and this big effort you want? Because as you're saying, it's an ageing population, you know, the whole, and literally the entire world apart from Africa.
George Vradenburg (03:49.929)
Well, I will talk about Africa in a second. But the answer is I care a lot about Alzheimer's. Three generations of my family, this is clearly a disease that I want cured. But if there are other paths to get there, other than the ones that are currently popular, I'm prepared to try to stimulate the investment in these alternatives. But right now there are encouraging signs.
We now have 160 some therapeutic agents – potential medicines now in clinical trials. We have two approved drugs, although we learned today that in fact the Europeans again have decided not to approve Lilly's drug called Donanemab. They earlier had declined to approve Aducanumab, Biogen's drug, but we changed their minds, and they think that they are on a route to approve the Aducanumab Biogen drug, but they said today, they're not ready to approve Lilly's drug Donanemab. Now this drug Donanemab has been approved in the United States, in Japan, in China, and a number of other countries, but the Europeans are taking a fairly… I'll be polite and call it conservative. I might be a little more aggressive in calling it paternalistic view on the risk-benefit of these new drugs.
Linda van Tilburg (05:14.377)
Is mental health different from brain health? Does wellness tie into this?
George Vradenburg (06:07.67)
It is in the same group. There's no question that during the course of our life, if we eat well, exercise well, sleep well, and take care of our socialisation, as it turns out that our interactions with other people are so central to the strength of our brains, if we take care of all those things, that's wellness. It's not supplements per se, but it is in fact an aspect of wellness. There are just so many things that affect the brain during your life.
And it's one brain, the same brain you're born with, you die with. That brain in the first three years of life creates billions and billions of neurons and trillions of connections across those neurons, all in the first three years of life. You've got the same ones at the end of life as you had at the beginning, but they can be damaged by disease, and they can be damaged by stress. They can be damaged by mental illness.
So, we want basically to identify the means by which we can encourage the brain to be stronger against mental health and against neurodegenerative diseases.
Linda van Tilburg (07:20.626)
You wanted to share perspectives on Africa, what were they?
George Vradenburg (07:26.07)
We are launching a Brain Health for Africa program. We had our first task force call yesterday of people, researchers, the WHO, CDC Africa, public policy people from Africa, technology people from Africa, from all five regions of Africa – South Africa, English-speaking West Africa, French-speaking West Africa, East Africa, and North Africa – all of them on the phone to sort of say, let us develop a plan and implementation plan against six priorities by the G20 in South Africa in November. So we want to demonstrate on a continent-wide basis the feasibility of looking at this disease across the life course and with the incremental GDP that can be generated by looking at this with young people as well as middle-aged people as well as old.
Linda van Tilburg (08:31.195)
But the demographic is so different. So, you're not only looking at the ageing population, you're looking at a young population. But in Africa, societies are often just coping. They're not thinking of these things, of brain health.
George Vradenburg (08:45.46)
And therefore, somebody's got to take that on, right? So, somebody's got to say, this is a real opportunity for Africa to teach the rest of the world how to look at this, starting at a very, very young age. Because yes, we have a large bolus of young people in Africa. But if Africa is to achieve its destiny by 2050 of being 40% of the world's population and basically having the workforce that will supply to the rest of the world – the working-age people that will support the productivity of the rest of the world – they've got to get at this now. Africans really are excited about this notion that they can be the workhorse and the workforce of the 21st century if they take care of their young people.
Linda van Tilburg (09:32.077)
Do you think the whole issue of brain health is looked at differently now? Because there was a stage where people were just shoved away, and you wouldn't even acknowledge that you're depressed or that you're neurodiverse. Do you think there's a changing trend here?
George Vradenburg (09:47.68)
I think there is, although in the global south there's still an enormous amount of stigma attached to all these diseases. And to the global north there still is, to some extent, a lot of stigma. That is the first of six priorities that we're doing in Africa, is reducing stigma and enabling the Africans to talk about their brain in a positive way. Brain health, not brain disease, not dementia, not mental illness.
Those are words that are discouraging and people don't like to talk about them. But if you talk about brain health, what can I do to foster my brain so I can be a better worker, so I can be a son, husband, father, then you begin to get people to think about it differently. So, I think particularly in Africa where the stigma is so high, talking about this as a positive force in your life, brain health, is a way to think about it that tries to diminish, if not eliminate, the stigma.
Linda van Tilburg (10:53.542)
Well, this might be a different discussion, but we always talk about our bodies that is actually not equipped to cope with the diet we're feeding it right now, that we basically haven't evolved there. So, how would brain health be impacted by what AI?
George Vradenburg (11:08.386)
Well, nutrition is going to be of vital importance, by the way, in brain health. As we know, the relationship between the microbiome and the brain. So, the efforts to actually understand what nutritional elements of our food we should be encouraging and which we should be discouraging is an important component in our life's brain health. And indeed, a mother is, her nutritional health is important for the health of her brain health of a kid.
AI is a great opportunity to extend the power of our brain, to make us more productive. We have over the years gone through a wide range of new technology, starting with books, which people thought were destructive of the memory capacity of people, right? But now if you just look it up, why do you have to remember anything? So, people were afraid that that technology called books were going to damage the brain. They didn't. Computers, they're going to damage the brain. The internet, why would I need any additional stimulus to the brain? I've got the internet; I can just look things up on Google. Well, the answer is these new technologies have always been adapted to extend the reach of our brain, to make us smarter, to make us understand ourselves better, to make us understand the importance of friendships and love and empathy and creativity and imagination. These technologies are powerful stimulants to brain plasticity and to brain health.
Linda van Tilburg (12:45.615)
You're taking BrainHouse on a worldwide tour and you talked about Africa now. What are your next stops?
George Vradenburg (12:52.526)
The next stop is Houston, Texas to actually talk to the business community, large corporations, about what large corporations ought to be doing within their workforce to encourage greater productivity, to keep their employees motivated, to keep their employees socialised, and there are some leading-edge companies that are actually doing things that encourage brain health in companies. So we're bringing those companies together to talk about this issue.
Then we'll go to the G7 in Canada in June. Then we'll go to side events at the United Nations General Assembly in September in New York City. And then we'll go to South Africa for the G20 in November. And then we'll go back to Davos in 2026 in January to report out what we've learned during the course of 2025 and what plans we ought to lay to actually change how we as a society encourage brain health.
Linda van Tilburg (13:49.316)
At Davos 2026, if you look back, if you say we've been successful, what would have happened?
George Vradenburg (14:08.364)
I think we'll have identified the five or six major systems of the world that need to be brought together to encourage brain health. It may be nutrition. It may need focus on women's health, both maternal health, midlife health for women. Women have more Alzheimer's, as you know, it's twice as much for women as for men. So why is that? We haven't really studied that well. So women's health will be a major component of this. Technology will be a major component of this.
So, there are going to be these large segments of society that are otherwise developing or with women's health not developing where we need to focus in order to bring about a much more brain capital oriented, much more brain positive way of looking at brain health.
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