Neural Compass

The number of repetitions has zero influence on overall learning when spaced out over a fixed period. This gap in our scientific understanding has limited how we design everything from educational curricula to AI training protocols. The guest on this episode, Prof. Vijay Mohan K. Namboodiri, leads a research lab at UCSF where he investigates the biological implementation of learning algorithms and...

Psychedelics may increase apparent disorder in the brain, but beneath that disorder, Adeel Razi’s research found structured brain trajectories shaped by the quality and context of the experience. Those trajectories were also associated with changes in mindset the following day. Razi leads computational neuroscience research at Monash University, where his work combines brain modeling, machine lear...

Think about the last time you were really sick. You didn't want to eat, you stayed in bed, you lost interest in everything. That's your immune system talking to your brain. For roughly one in four people with depression, that circuit never fully turns off. Dr. Naoise Mac Giollabhui, Director of Research on Inflammatory Depression at Harvard Medical School and Mass General, joins Neural Compass to...

Have you ever thought about the way medicine supplies are managed? Changing a computer default setting can stop a patient from getting a month-long supply they do not need. Small adjustments like these in medical systems are often the most effective way to prevent widespread health crises. Dr. Debra Houry led the CDC as its chief medical officer and came up with the first national rules to streaml...

Overdose deaths dropped 27% in a single year, the largest decline ever recorded. Most people have no idea it happened. Keith Humphreys, Stanford addiction expert and adviser to three US presidents, figured out why. The answer involves China, Reddit, and a supply shock nobody saw coming.

People are already going to ChatGPT as their doctor. Not occasionally, habitually. Andy Slavitt ran Medicare and Medicaid under Obama, helped rescue healthcare.gov, and now invests in companies rebuilding how care gets delivered. His read: this is not a crisis. It is the first technology wave in healthcare that people actually want.

The National Institute of Mental Health funded 900 new research grants by this point last year. This year: 109. That gap is bigger than a budget number. Tom Insel ran that institution for 13 years, oversaw over $20 billion in research funding, and has spent the decade since trying to understand why the outcomes for patients still haven't moved nearly enough.

You’ve likely heard that psychiatric progress is often stalled by subjective results. What is less understood is why the field remains slow to adopt in objective measurement even as other medical specialties thrive on hard data. Psychiatry faces a measurement gap. Dr. Arpan Parikh and Dr. Amit Parikh discusses measurement based Care, virtual health, and AI data synthesis. This is their honest acco...

Neuroeconomics, leadership, and brain health are essential for modern performance. Professor Michael Platt from UPenn explains why digital glass creates cognitive exhaustion. You have likely heard that our modern environment is destroying our focus. The scientific reason is that our evolutionary biology clashes with the digital tools we use every day. Professor Platt joins NeuralCompass to provide...

What if healthcare’s biggest AI breakthroughs aren’t about new science—but about finally fixing systems that were never built to scale? In this episode of Neural Compass, Jacob Effron, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to explore where AI is already delivering real value in healthcare—and where hype still outpaces reality. Drawing on his experience at Flatiron...

What if the hardest problems in psychology aren’t about data or statistics—but about how we talk, think, and decide what counts as truth? In this episode of Neural Compass, psychologist, writer, and internet favorite Adam Mastroianni joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein for a wide-ranging conversation about conversation itself. Drawing from experimental psychology, improv, and lived experience with anxi...

What if fixing mental healthcare isn’t about replacing clinicians—but finally giving them the systems they’ve always lacked? In this episode of Neural Compass, Dr. Harry Ritter, founder and CEO of Alma, joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to explore how technology, insurance alignment, and new business models can unlock better mental health care at scale. Drawing on his experience as a physician, lawye...

Why do some people emerge from trauma resilient, while others carry its effects for decades—or even generations? In this episode of Neural Compass, Harvard neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Nikos Daskalakis joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to unpack the biology of stress and PTSD. Drawing on decades of research spanning animal models, post-mortem human brain studies, and cutting-edge multi-omics,...

What if the answers to mental health, aging, and disease have been encoded inside us all along? In this episode of Neural Compass, geneticist and entrepreneur Dr. Yaniv Erlich joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to explore how data science and molecular biology are converging to reshape precision medicine. Dr. Erlich discusses everything from decoding the human genome to stabilizing RNA for next-genera...

What if the next breakthrough in mental health isn’t a molecule—but a mindset? In this episode of Neural Compass, PsyMed Ventures co-founders Greg Kubin and Matias Serebrinsky join Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to trace their journey from tech founders to frontier investors betting on the brain. They share how personal experiences with therapy and psychedelics reshaped their view of healing, and why th...

What happens when the tools we build to understand us start to change what it means to be human? In this episode of Neural Compass, Stanford’s Dr. Nick Haber—computer scientist, educator, and co-founder of the Autism Glass Project—joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to explore how AI is entering some of the most human spaces: learning, emotion, and mental health. From wearable devices that help childre...

In this episode of Neural Compass, Mike Kopko—CEO and co-founder of Pearl Health—joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to explore how value-based care, provider enablement, and intelligent incentives could finally help us build the system we deserve. They cover:- Why physicians—not hospitals or payers—are the key to real health care transformation- How value-based care forces a shift from rear-view to wi...

What happens when decades of groundbreaking neuroscience challenge everything we thought we knew about depression? In this episode of Neural Compass, Dr. John Krystal—Chair of Psychiatry at Yale and the scientist whose lab discovered the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine—joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to explore how novel treatments are reshaping the future of mental health. They cover:- Th...

What does it actually take to deliver high-quality behavioral health care to hundreds of thousands of people? In this episode of Neural Compass, Dr. Stephanie Eken—Chief Medical Officer at Acadia Healthcare—joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to talk about what works (and what still doesn’t) in the real-world mental health system. They cover:- Why navigating care is still so hard—for patients, families...

In this episode of Neural Compass, David Eagleman—Stanford neuroscientist, bestselling author of Livewired, and one of today’s leading communicators of brain science—joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to explore the astonishing adaptability of the human brain and its implications for therapy, technology, and society. They cover:- Why Eagleman calls the brain livewired—not “plastic”—and how it constant...

What happens when a McKinsey alum with a personal history of OCD turns his analytical superpowers toward fixing mental health care? In this episode of Neural Compass, Steve Duke—founder of the Hemingway Group and author of the must-read Hemingway Report—joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein for a compelling conversation on the present (and future) of behavioral health. They cover:
- Why the mental health...

In this episode of Neural Compass, Dr. Seth Feuerstein, Founder & CEO of Oui Therapeutics and Yale faculty member, joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein for a compelling conversation on why our mental health system overlooks what the data actually says—and what we can do about it. They cover:- A surprising model that redefines how we understand suicidality- Why talk therapy often works—but also often...

What do you get when a leading AI safety innovator, systems thinker, and open-source champion sits down to talk product, philosophy, and the future of LLMs? A conversation that redefines what it means to build responsibly in the age of generative AI.In this episode of Neural Compass, Shreya Rajpal—CEO of Guardrails AI and former self-driving systems engineer—joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein to explo...

What happens when a legendary VC-turned-leadership coach brings radical self-inquiry to the startup roller coaster? A conversation that rewrites what it means to lead—with grit, honesty, and a whole lot of heart. In this episode of Neural Compass, Jerry Colonna—CEO of Reboot.io and author of Reboot and Reunion—joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein for a powerful reflection on mental health, emotional res...

What happens when a precision health researcher reimagines cancer screening from the ground up—and then builds the AI to make it possible? In this episode of Neural Compass, Dr. Adam Yala, Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley and UCSF, joins Jimini’s Mark Jacobstein for a deep dive into the future of personalized medicine. They cover:- Why traditional cancer screening is too coarse—and how AI can ch...