Drew Pierson, L.Ac., DAOM, M.Sc.

Dr. Drew Pierson, L.Ac., DAOM, M.Sc., is a clinical neurofeedback therapist with 25 years of private practice experience. He holds a doctorate in Traditional Chinese Medicine and has spent years researching entire-network neurofeedback training, working with clients ranging from clinical populations to peak performers. He is a former submariner and professional chocolatier.

Presenting: “Brain Years: EEG as a Functional Biomarker of Neural Aging.”

Aging is accompanied by progressive changes in neural oscillations, information processing, cognitive control, and neuroplasticity. Yet our conventional measures of brain aging are often expensive, anatomically focused, and poorly suited to repeated measurement. What if the EEG could provide a functional clock of the aging brain and, more provocatively, allow us to observe whether that clock changes in response to intervention? This presentation examines emerging research on brain years: an EEG brain-based age model developed from 643 electrophysiological, behavioral, and demographic features spanning oscillatory activity, event-related potentials, cognitive performance, and interactions among neural variables. Using machine learning methods, the model predicted chronological age with high accuracy, suggesting that aging leaves a measurable distributed electrophysiological signature rather than a single EEG marker.