Dr. Casey Halpern

And we believe they do because they just can't control it, as aware as they are of it.

And it's probably because they're the most severe.

So I think if we can improve awareness, not just the societal awareness that I was talking about earlier, but the patient awareness around their problem, I think that could be a powerful way to help so many of these patients.

And that's sort of the role of cognitive behavioral therapy.

The problem with cognitive behavioral therapy, or I should say the limitation of it, I actually don't have any problem with it.

I think it's a wonderful treatment.

is that if you stop it, many of these patients go back to their old behaviors.

I don't want to say old habits, but it might be a habit, but the old behaviors.

And so that's the problem is it's not necessarily lasting in the absence of continued cognitive behavioral therapy.

Some people can benefit from it long-term, but some can't.

But I think in the less severe patients, improving awareness is key.

But in these really refractory patients, this is kind of like this is the disease.

Despite the awareness, they can't control themselves.

And that's what we're trying to restore is that improved ability to control their behavior.

Yeah, I think so.

I've always said we have to get in the brain before we get out of it.

And if we get in the brain and understand what these signals look like, we'll know what those non-invasive signals are.

I think it's possible that we are scientifically sophisticated enough to use machine learning and sort of this kind of bot technique to anticipate when somebody is going to be highly impulsive.

You know, suicide is the most dangerous impulse.

It's something that is immensely a focus of the lab is impulsivity.