Foundation Model Series: Understanding Brain Activity with Dimitris Sakellariou from Piramidal

What if we could understand brain activity in real-time to better diagnose neurological conditions? In this episode, part of a special mini-series on domain-specific foundation models, I sit down with Dimitris Sakellariou, the founder and CEO of Piramidal, to talk about their groundbreaking work in automating EEG interpretation. Piramidal is focused on democratizing brain health insights, making interpreting brainwave data more accessible and accurate. With a strong foundation in neuroscience and AI, Dimitris and his team are developing models that could revolutionize how we understand brain activity and diagnose neurological conditions.

In our conversation, Dimitris explains the challenges of building a foundation model for brain activity, the role of data diversity, and the future potential for personalized brain health monitoring. Discover the implications of Piramidal’s technology beyond healthcare and its application in cognitive enhancement and stress management. Tune in as we explore how Piramidal is paving the way for personalized brain health monitoring and why this could be a game-changer for the future of medicine!

Key Points:

• Dimitris discusses his journey from physics to a career in neuroscience.
• Explore Piramidal's mission to automate EEG interpretation.
• Learn about the complexity and variability of brainwave patterns
• Hear how machine learning can better analyze brain activity.
• Uncover the challenges of building a foundation model for EEG data.
• Why diverse data sets are vital for training the foundational model.
• Piramidal's plans for making EEG analysis more accessible.
• Future use cases for Piramidal’s model in healthcare and beyond.
• Discover why domain knowledge for model building is essential.
• He shares advice for AI startup founders.

Quotes:

“Piramidal is primarily focused at the moment in automating, or otherwise democratizing the interpretation of these tests, these brainwave recordings so that patients and people that have issues with their brain can get access to the diagnosis much, much, much faster.” — Dimitris Sakellariou

“It's very important to have discussions with neuroscientists and clinical experts in order to understand what is the end-to-end pipeline from receiving data all the way to inference.” — Dimitris Sakellariou

“Finding the right person. Someone that is very keen to build together with you and make important and difficult decisions can change massively a trajectory of your company.” — Dimitris Sakellariou

Links:

Dimitris Sakellariou on LinkedIn

Dimitris Sakellariou on X

Piramidal

Piramidal on LinkedIn

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