One in four people in the world suffers from a neurological or psychiatric illness and within ten years, about 30% of the population between the ages of 40 and 65 will be diagnosed with a brain disease. The Brain Health for Life course. Preventing Brain-Related Disability, led by the scientific director of the Guttmann Brain Health Institute, Álvaro Pascual-Leone, and part of the XXXII edition of the Institut Guttmann Technical Symposia, presented the latest studies on brain health with researchers from first line as Yaakov Stern (Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and Aging Brain, Columbia University), Arthur Kramer (Center for Cognitive & Brain Health at Northeastern University), Emili Ros (IDIBAPS and Hospital Clínic), Nathalie Marchant (University College London) or Michael Valenzuela (Center for Healthy Brain Aging, Sydney), among others.

For two days, December 15th and 16th, nearly 300 people connected virtually to the various sessions in which it was revealed that brain disease is the leading cause of disability worldwide and therefore a challenge for global health. He also explained how lifestyle - nutrition, social relationships, exercise, sleep... - or environmental factors have an impact and condition these pathologies in which the neurologist Alvaro Pascual-Leone stressed that “acting on lifestyles can reduce (potentially) up to 80% the risk of disability due to a brain disease”.

12 startups took part in the Innovation Track, of which ABLE Human Motion, led by Alfons Carnicero, won the “Promising solutions for specific conditions” award and the “Diagnosis and treatment platforms” award went to Rubén López  from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona for the development of resolution-based therapies for the treatment of acute injuries or diseases of the central nervous system.

The closing of the conference was with the IV Meeting of Volunteers of the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative, promoted by the Institut Guttmann  and “la Caixa” Foundation, in which it was explained what has been done in the throughout 2020, the specific study on the impact of the pandemic and confinement on emotional health was presented, and finally the next steps of the project.

These technical conferences, which have been developed in a course format, have been co-organized with Biocat, promoted by EIT Health and with the collaboration of the  ​​Institut de Neurociències de la Universitat de Barcelona and Meditecnologia i Medicen Paris.