This Portable Brainwave Scanner Shows What Cannabis Does To Your Brain Or If You Are Impaired

As Europe becomes more open toward embracing legal cannabis, one Canadian company is getting prepared for some of the challenges that may arise with this progress. A neurotechnology firm Zentrela is working on harnessing brainwave research for delivering data-driven insights into cannabis effects.

The company's CEO Israel Gasperin explained the process in a recent interview with Novobrief. He said that his passion for understanding how the brain works and how psychoactive substances affect it led him to co-found Zentrela. The company, which recently confirmed expansion to Europe, is looking to make brainwave analysis accessible to everyone through its patented neurotechnology platform, Cognalyzer.

"When cannabis started to be legalized, either for medicinal or recreational use, we saw an opportunity to serve as a tool capable of detecting people's mental state," Gasperin told the outlet.

Standard tests to determine if a person is impaired such as blood, urine, or saliva analysis are not reliable when it comes to cannabis. These tests don't really show if one’s cognitive functions are still altered and by how much and therefore cannot determine impairment.

Read Also: Breathalyzer For Weed? It’s Tied To A Car’s Ignition To Prevent Stoned Driving, Is This For Real?

Utilizing AI

Gasperin's company turned to artificial intelligence (AI) for help. Its platform, Cognalyzer, is a combination of hardware and AI-powered software that collects brainwave data and delivers objective, science-backed data on cannabis’s effects on the brain. The device scanning brainwaves is portable, and is the first commercially viable brainwave test on the market, according to the company's website. The product is IRB (institutional review board)-approved and GDPR (general data protection regulation)–compliant.

"It's the only scientifically-proven test that converts raw EEG data into a psychoactive effect level from 0 to 100," reads the description. In addition to cannabis effects, the device could also analyze the effects of other products like anxiety medication.

Gasperin says that further cannabis legalization across the globe will create more challenges in the industry, due to the complexity of saliva and urine tests and their inability to measure impairment.

"All of these options have certain limitations, and none of these avenues has created a solution that allows us to quantify a person's mental state," Gasperin said.

"This is the true disruptive value of our proprietary AI and our portable EEG technology. We have created a new way of conducting human trials for cannabis effect research that can be completed in three months instead of 18-month studies, including clinical trials. Most importantly, our EEG-driven research model is standardized and already approved by independent ethics research boards and Health Canada for C3 non-therapeutic cannabis research (NTRC) studies, which are the non-clinical version of research in Canada."

In addition to determining if an individual is unimpaired while driving, or checking a worker's mental state before they operate heavy machinery, Zentrela's product could help scientists better understand cannabis' and other substances' effects on the brain or formulate drug products with desired effects.

Continue reading on Novobrief.

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Photo: Zentrela’s website