Harris Eyre is an Australian physician, neuroscientist, entrepreneur, economic strategist, and author. [1] [2] [3] [4] He is most noted for his work on the brain economy [5] [6] [7]
According to the McKinsey Health Institute and the World Economic Forum, the brain economy is a new economic paradigm that prioritizes brain capital, encompassing brain health and brain skills, as its core asset. Driven by a neuroscience renaissance, it responds to the growing demand for brain skills — cognitive, emotional, and social — in the modern workforce.
Harris was the senior author of the first technical paper on the brain economy published in 2020 (Smith et al. Molecular Psychiatry) and co-led the early OECD Neuroscience-Inspired Economics Initiative.
Prominent organizations now believe the world is increasingly relying on brain capital, where a premium is put on brain skills and brain health (e.g., individual’s cognitive, emotional, and social brain resources), [8] and that investing in building brain capital is fundamental to meet modern societal challenges and to drive innovation. [9]
Eyre studies transdisciplinary or convergence science and was lead editor of the Oxford University Press book, Convergence Mental Health: A Roadmap for Transdisciplinary Innovation. In his work, he melds and fuses insights from precision medicine, [10] clinical care, [11] entrepreneurship, [12] convergence science, [13] consumer participation, [14] workforce development, [15] economics, [16] public policy [17] and diplomacy. [18]
Eyre is a migraineur and wrote a short story titled "My migraines are a super power" for the European Federation of Neurological Associations. [19] [20]
Eyre grew up in Mackay, Queensland, Australia, [21] attended the Whitsunday Anglican School where he was awarded the 2024 Young Old Scholar Award. [22] He completed his undergraduate medical degree (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) with Honours) at James Cook University in North Queensland, Australia, where he was awarded the 2017 Early Career Alumni Award. [23] His medical education specialized in rural, remote, Indigenous and tropical health. [24] He then completed his PhD in neuroscience at the University of Adelaide. [25] During his PhD, he was awarded the W.G. Walker Fulbright Scholarship to study at UCLA. [26] The W.G. Walker Fulbright Scholarship is awarded to the top Australian Fulbright Scholar annually. [27]
Eyre works with leading think tanks including the McKinsey Health Institute, The Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, [28] the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, [29] the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association, [30] The Brookings Institution, [31] the Center for European Policy Studies, [32] and the Global Brain Health Institute. [33]
Eyre is the lead editor of 'Convergence Mental Health: A Roadmap Towards Transdisciplinary Innovation' with Oxford University Press. [34] The book description as outlined on the Oxford University Press website reads "Modern mental health issues are characterized by their complex, multi-systemic nature and broad societal impact, making them poorly suited to siloed approaches of thinking and innovation. Convergence science integrates knowledge, tools, and thought strategies from various fields and is the focal point where novel insights arise. Convergence Mental Health presents a blueprint for leveraging convergence science within the context of mental health in order to improve patient outcomes and health care systems." [34]
This book includes contributions from organizations including the Milken Institute, APEC, OECD, Harvard University, Stanford University and the Mayo Clinic. [34]
Notable chapter contributors include Julio Licinio, Vikram Patel and Reid Hoffman. [35]
Notable quotes of support come from Jeff Cummings, John Arnold, Peter C Farrell, Victor Dzau and Ernestine Fu. [35]
The brain economy model recognizes solving brain health challenges will require major transitions across most major sectors. [36] Each of these is complex and will require a systems approach. Incremental change will not be sufficient and there are few silver bullets. No single technology, policy, or actor alone can achieve these critical shifts. Rather, it will take a community of people working together across systems to employ innovative solutions and accelerate change.
Eyre led the development of the Brain Capital Grand Strategy. [37] [38] [39] This includes exploring and actioning Brain Capital in-all-policies, articulating and actioning the Brain Capital Investment Plan, [40] and developing a Brain Capital Index.
He co-led the OECD Neuroscience-inspired Policy Initiative. [41] This Initiative sought to advance brain-based policy and investment innovations. On January 27, 2021, the OECD held a Brain Capital Event on this topic. [42] Notable speakers included Angel Gurria (OECD Secretary General), Admiral William H McRaven, Thomas C Leppert, Megan Greene and Francesca Colombo. [42] On March 26, 2021, the OECD held an event titled 'Innovations to Address Women’s Brain Health Inequalities'. [43] Notable speakers included Juan Yermo (OECD Chief of Staff), Maureen Hackett, Antonella Santuccione, Sofia Noori, Sandra Bond Chapman and Megan Green. [43] On June 10, 2021, the OECD held an event titled 'Rethinking Productivity: Insights from Neuroscience'. [44] Notable speakers included George Vradenburg, Andy Keller, Husseini K Manji, Chiara Crisculo and Andrew S Nevin. [45]
He leads the Brain Capital Alliance. [46] This is an expanded, multi-national and multi-organisational programme.
The brain economy has been profiled in the following policy innovation fora:
- World Economic Forum [47]
- United Nations General Assembly [48]
- Wharton Neuroscience Initiative Summit [49]
- Women in Government Leadership and Innovation Summit [50]
- FENS Forum [51]
- Congressional Neuroscience Caucus [52]
- US House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth [53]
- Lundbeck position statement on brain health [54]
- WHO position statement on brain health [55]
- Brookings Policy Paper proposing a White House Brain Capital Council [17]
- European Brain Initiative [56]
- United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report [57]
- PwC [58]
Eyre is an advisor to the University of Sydney's Mental Wealth Initiative (MWI). [59] Notable members of the MWI Advisory Panel include former Australian Prime Minister, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, Businesswoman, Lucy Turnbull, AO, Economist and Lawyer, Professor Allan Fels, AO, economist and former Labor Party politician, the Hon. Dr Craig Emerson, and World Bank economist, Professor William Hynes.
Brain Capital Industrial Innovation Strategy
A global coalition of authors recently published on this strategy by a Rice University Baker Institute for Public Policy Research Paper titled '7 Steps for Igniting the Brain Capital Industrial Strategy'. This is a public private strategy that focuses on building economic resilience through an emphasis on cultivating citizens’ brain health and brain skills to contribute to an innovative and thriving economy. This strategy outlines how governments, academia and the private sector need to unite to tackle this goal of improving our brain function and enhancing our potential. Funding initiatives, research partnerships and open dialogue will be critical to drive this movement forward. By championing an industry focused on improving brain function, the authors argue that we have the chance to reshape industries, enhance lives and shape a future that works for people’s brains.
Eyre published 190 + articles and chapters. [60]
In his research career, he has co-authored numerous works including the 'Brain Capital Grand Strategy', [37] 'B rain Capital Industrial Innovation Policy', 'Comprehensive Brain Deal' [61] 'Green Brain Capital', [62] 'Neuroshield', [63] 'Brain Health Executive', [64] 'Sleep Diplomacy', ‘Responsible Innovation in Mental Health ’, [65] 'Brain-based Stakeholder Capitalism', [66] 'Brain Health Gap', [67] 'Measurement-based Cognitive Care', [68] ‘Mental Health Innovation Diplomacy’ , [69] the 'Brain Health Diplomacy' model, [70] the 'Mars Mental Health' model, [71] the 'Phase-specific Neuroimmune Model of Depression', [72] a meta-analysis of chemokines in depression, [73] a meta-analysis of pharmacogenetic-based decision support tools for depression, [74] a randomized controlled trial of yoga to prevent dementia [75] and the model of 'Convergence Psychiatry'. [13]
He maintains advisory roles with Baylor College of Medicine, [76] Houston Methodist, the Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative. [77] and the Latin American Brain Health Institute. [78]
His academic work has been profiled in The New York Times, [79] the Financial Post, [80] [81] neo.life, [82] STAT, [83] the Australian Financial Review, [84] the 'Financial Times', [85] Univision, [86] Dallas Morning News [87] and Les Echos. [88]
Eyre has been awarded various awards throughout his career including:
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is also characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior, often in a social context. Such disturbances may occur as single episodes, may be persistent, or may be relapsing–remitting. There are many different types of mental disorders, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders. A mental disorder is one aspect of mental health.
Mania, also known as manic syndrome, is a psychiatric behavioral syndrome defined as a state of abnormally elevated arousal, affect, and energy level. During a manic episode, an individual will experience rapidly changing emotions and moods, highly influenced by surrounding stimuli. Although mania is often conceived of as a "mirror image" to depression, the heightened mood can be dysphoric as well as euphoric. As the mania intensifies, irritability can be more pronounced and result in anxiety or anger.
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the biological sciences.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and behavior, and flat or inappropriate affect. Symptoms develop gradually and typically begin during young adulthood and are never resolved. There is no objective diagnostic test; diagnosis is based on observed behavior, a psychiatric history that includes the person's reported experiences, and reports of others familiar with the person. For a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the described symptoms need to have been present for at least six months or one month. Many people with schizophrenia have other mental disorders, especially mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders, as well as obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).
A mental disorder is an impairment of the mind disrupting normal thinking, feeling, mood, behavior, or social interactions, and accompanied by significant distress or dysfunction. The causes of mental disorders are very complex and vary depending on the particular disorder and the individual. Although the causes of most mental disorders are not fully understood, researchers have identified a variety of biological, psychological, and environmental factors that can contribute to the development or progression of mental disorders. Most mental disorders result in a combination of several different factors rather than just a single factor.
Neuropsychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with psychiatry as it relates to neurology, in an effort to understand and attribute behavior to the interaction of neurobiology and social psychology factors. Within neuropsychiatry, the mind is considered "as an emergent property of the brain", whereas other behavioral and neurological specialties might consider the two as separate entities. Those disciplines are typically practiced separately.
Helen S. Mayberg, is an American neurologist. Mayberg is known in particular for her work delineating abnormal brain function in patients with major depression using functional neuroimaging. This work led to the first pilot study of deep brain stimulation (DBS), a reversible method of selective modulation of a specific brain circuit, for patients with treatment-resistant depression. As of August 2019, she has published 211 original peer-reviewed articles, 31 books and book chapters, and acted as principal investigator on 24 research grants. Mayberg is coinventor with Andres Lozano of “Method for Treating Depression Mood Disorders and Anxiety Disorders using Neuromodulation,” US patent 2005/0033379A1. St. Jude Medical Neuromodulation licensed her intellectual property to develop Subcallosal Cingulate Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Unipolar and Bipolar Depression for the treatment of severe depression. As of 2018, Mayberg holds positions as Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery and Professor, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, both at Mount Sinai Medical School, and Professor of Psychiatry, Emory University; Emory University Hospital. Since 2018, she has served as Director, Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Psychiatric epidemiology is a field which studies the causes (etiology) of mental disorders in society, as well as conceptualization and prevalence of mental illness. It is a subfield of the more general epidemiology. It has roots in sociological studies of the early 20th century. However, while sociological exposures are still widely studied in psychiatric epidemiology, the field has since expanded to the study of a wide area of environmental risk factors, such as major life events, as well as genetic exposures. Increasingly neuroscientific techniques like MRI are used to explore the mechanisms behind how exposures to risk factors may impact psychological problems and explore the neuroanatomical substrate underlying psychiatric disorders.
Nancy Coover Andreasen is an American neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist. She currently holds the Andrew H. Woods Chair of Psychiatry at the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa.
Dan Joseph Stein is a South African psychiatrist who is a professor and Chair of the Dept of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, and Director of the South African MRC Unit on Risk & Resilience in Mental Disorders. Stein was the Director of UCT's early Brain and Behaviour Initiative, and was the inaugural Scientific Director of UCT's later Neuroscience Institute. He has also been a visiting professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the United States, and at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Neurolaw is a field of interdisciplinary study that explores the effects of discoveries in neuroscience on legal rules and standards. Drawing from neuroscience, philosophy, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and criminology, neurolaw practitioners seek to address not only the descriptive and predictive issues of how neuroscience is and will be used in the legal system, but also the normative issues of how neuroscience should and should not be used.
Jeffrey H. Meyer is a scientist and professor working with mood and anxiety disorders using neuroimaging at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. He is currently the head of the Neurochemical Imaging Program in Mood and Anxiety Disorders in the Brain Health Imaging Centre at the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute and is working as a Senior Scientist in the General and Health Systems Psychiatry Division at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He has also been awarded with the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Neurochemistry of Major Depression.
Steven Edward Hyman is Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Hyman was Provost of Harvard University from 2001 to 2011 and before that Director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 1996 to 2001. Hyman received the 2016 Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health from the National Academy of Medicine for "leadership in furthering understanding and treatment of psychiatric disorders as biological diseases".
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of deleterious mental conditions. These include various matters related to mood, behaviour, cognition, perceptions, and emotions.
Clinical neuroscience is a branch of neuroscience that focuses on the scientific study of fundamental mechanisms that underlie diseases and disorders of the brain and central nervous system. It seeks to develop new ways of conceptualizing and diagnosing such disorders and ultimately of developing novel treatments.
Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, is professor of clinical neuropsychology at the department of psychiatry and Medical Research Council (MRC)/Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge. She is also an honorary clinical psychologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. She has an international reputation in the fields of cognitive psychopharmacology, neuroethics, neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry and neuroimaging.
Daniel R. Weinberger is a professor of psychiatry, neurology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and Director and CEO of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, which opened in 2011.
Stanley Paul Kutcher is a Canadian Senator and Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Dalhousie University. He was appointed to the Senate of Canada on 12 December 2018.
Glenda Marlene MacQueen was a Canadian medical researcher and medical college professor and administrator. She was vice-dean of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary from 2012 to 2019.
Gemma Modinos, born 1980 in Castellar del Vallès, is a Spanish neuropsychologist. She works as a Professor of Neuroscience & Mental Health at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience of King's College London. She was a Wellcome Trust & The Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow (2017-2023) and is a Group leader at the MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at King's College London. She was 2020-2022 Chair of the Young Academy of Europe, where she directed European efforts to optimise science policy from a youthful perspective; and 2020-2022 Junior Member of the Executive Board of the Schizophrenia International Research Society. She is known for her work revealing the role of emotion-related brain mechanisms and the neurotransmitters GABA and glutamate in the development of psychosis, and investigating how targeting these mechanisms can help design new therapeutic strategies.