Professor Gemma Calvert in her contribution to The New Optimists raises the somewhat scary prospect of brain prostheses — but sometime ahead in the future.

Meanwhile recent developments in non-invasive techniques to ‘see’ inside the working brain will lead to many developments. Some hold very real promise of new understanding and therefore better treatment of mental illness. Others may lead to the design of devices that may even help the mute speak, the blind see and the lame work. We’re likely, too, to have better understanding of how to enable desired behaviour change, such as giving up smoking.

Professor Gemma Calvert is the Chair of Applied Neuroimaging at the Warwick Manufacturing Group. She began her career in the marketing and advertising industry, working for FKB-Carison (1987-1991) before returning to academe.  She has a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the LSE, and DPhil in Functional Brain Imaging from the University of Oxford where she subsequently established and directed a specialist neuroimaging lab until 2004.  Her unique career path led her to found the world’s first neuromarketing company, Neurosense Limited, in 1999 and she has over 15 years experience in the commercial application of modern brain imaging methods for marketing and manufacturing.