The 3 big things in Spirit Tech this week

Vermont became the fifth US state to classify neural data as sensitive

Vermont's S.71, the Data Privacy and Online Surveillance Act, takes effect January 1, 2028 and classifies the data from consumer EEG headbands and neurofeedback devices as sensitive, the same legal tier as biometric and genetic information. That means companies must get explicit consent to collect this data and cannot sell or repurpose it beyond what a user signed up for, ending the familiar playbook of free apps quietly monetizing the data they gather. The rules apply to any company handling neural data from 3,000 or more users, triggered by data volume alone with no revenue floor, which sweeps in consumer brain-tech like Muse, Sens.ai, and Neurable. Vermont is the fifth state to do this, after California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Montana - a real step toward neural data sovereignty: the data your own brain produces belongs to you, not the business models built around it.

A UCSF randomized trial found Calm's meditation app eased anxiety and depression in patients with a serious eye disease

The trial, published in the journal Ophthalmology, tested whether a digital mindfulness program, Calm Health's app, could ease the mental-health toll of non-infectious uveitis, an inflammation inside the eye that can threaten sight, across 100 adults over eight weeks. Those who used the app carried less anxiety, depression and stress than a waitlist group, even as their vision itself did not change. What shifted was not the disease but the suffering around it, the fear and heaviness of living under threat to one's sight. The study authors pitch digital mindfulness as a scalable adjunct to specialist care, most valuable where therapists are scarce and waitlists long. Could mindfulness be part of treatment plans for eye diseases and other conditions soon?

A single dose of DT120, Definium Therapeutics' LSD pill, sharply and durably cut depression in a 149-patient Phase 3 trial

DT120 is LSD, engineered into a fast orally dissolving tablet for quicker onset and fewer stomach side effects. In the EMERGE trial, a single dose cut depression scores by 13.3 points on the standard MADRS scale, more than double the placebo's 5.2 (p<0.0001). Relief arrived the next day and still held three months on, with side effects almost all mild and no rise in suicidal thinking. The real shift is the model: instead of the daily pills most of the 21 million US adults with depression take for months, this is one guided session of about eight hours, with a trained attendant as a grounding presence. That set, setting, and integration is what contemplative traditions have refined for centuries, now written into a clinical protocol. The FDA has already granted DT120 breakthrough status for anxiety, a second disorder Definium is developing it for, with more late-stage results due this year. Definium says it is positioning for reimbursement so psychiatrists can prescribe it regardless of means, leaving open whether a costly, clinic-bound psychedelic reaches everyone in distress or hardens into a two-tier system and who guides patients through it - a clinician, a therapist or a spiritual-care provider.

New from the Community

1. Mind Magic: A deck to help adults teach kids core attentional skills.