Build Brains Better: Science-Inspired Investing for Brain Health and Skills for the Future

Aligned with ‘building back better’, a popular refrain for politicians around the world, humanity has a timely opportunity to build up our most enduring assets – our brains.

Sever-year-old Queenslander Molly Wright, one of the youngest-ever TED speakers, posed a profound question in her July 2021 viral talk, “What if a game of peek-a-boo could change the world?”. Peek-a-boo is certainly a way to support children’s healthy brain development, and we should all encourage brain building strategies for children – they will help them prepare to navigate an increasingly complex world. The size of a child’s brain reaches 90 per cent of an adult’s by the age of five. Early childhood is a time of rapid change – particularly for the development of a child’s brain – and vital foundation for lifelong learning and well-being.

The OECD Neuroscience-inspired Policy Initiative is exploring policy and investment approaches across the life course that could contribute to more resilient, productive and equitable futures. They could also innoculate against the panoply of brain-based issues increasingly impacting our societies and economies, from spiking rates of mental distress, to the enduring consequences of adversity, to science denialism and misinformation propagation, to the knowledge-intensification of the workplace and the relational skills required for life and work. All of these have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this presentation, Dr Eyre outlines new approaches to building brains better at global, national, state and regional levels, and the implications of the emerging ‘brain capital’ paradigm.