Alphabet ’s X shares Amber EEG system to expand the quest for mental health biomarkers

Amber’s final EEG prototype: Headset, sensor strip and bioamp Alphabet’s X details Project Amber, a quest for a single biomarker for depression that fell short of its goal (TechCrunch): Alphabet’s X (the Google-owner’s so-called “Moonshot Factory”) published a new blog post today about Project Amber, a project it’s been working on over the past three years — the results of which it’s now making available open source for the rest of the mental health research community to learn from, and hopefully build upon. The X project sought to identify a specific biomarker for depression — it did not accomplish that (and the researchers now believe that a single biomarker for depression and anxiety likely didn’t exist), but X is still hoping that its work on using electroencephalography (EEG) combined with machine learning to try to find one will be of benefit to others … What is perhaps most notable about this pursuit, and the post today that Alphabet released detailing its efforts, is that it’s essentially a story of a years-long investigation that didn’t work out — not the side of the moonshot story you typically hear from big tech companies. In fact, this is perhaps one of the best examples yet of what critics of many of the approaches of large tech companies fail to understand — that some problems are not solvable by solutions with analogs in the world of software and engineering. The announcement: Sharing Project Amber with the mental health communit...
Source: SharpBrains - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Technology & Innovation Alphabet biomarker depression digital phenotyping EEG electroencephalography machine-learning med-tech mental health research Moonshot Factory open-source predictive Project Amber Source Type: blogs