Rosalind Picard on seizure detection
From Rosalind Picard: Challenges in AI, Wearables, & Smartphones for Understanding and Healing Depression · · Stanford AI for Mental Health
“100% of the most dangerous kind of seizure, the grand mall or generalized honoclonic seizures had a more than two standard deviations increase in the pre-Cal in the ectal period over the pre-actal period related to those seizures. So these peaks were real and since then we've got lots more data.”
On , Rosalind Picard, Cofounder at Empatica, spoke about seizure detection during Rosalind Picard: Challenges in AI, Wearables, & Smartphones for Understanding and Healing Depression on Stanford AI for Mental Health.
About Rosalind Picard
Rosalind Picard, a professor at the MIT Media Lab and co-founder of Empatica, has appeared in several interviews discussing the intersection of AI, health, and faith. During a June 2026 academic seminar on AI for mental health, Picard discussed her research on using wearable sensors to understand and predict seizures and depression. She noted that a century of literature has recommended measuring physiological signals on the non-dominant side of the body, but said her data shows this approach can lead to "wrong conclusions." Picard also stated that future research should look beyond "old mindset[s]" of psychological ground truth to examine other factors such as sleep and psychomotor retardation. In two April 2026 podcasts, Picard discussed her Christian faith and its relationship to her technological work. She said that while technology can facilitate transcendent experiences, she would advise people to "aim higher" than AI for such experiences, describing connection with God as a greater source of transcendence than anything human-made. Picard argued that human social connection is vital for flourishing and should not be interfered with by AI, and expressed concern that AI systems designed to keep users engaged can displace authentic human relationships.