Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) Senior Manager Mr. Shunichiro Kurita contributed an article titled “Encourage Social Investment in Brain Health” to the Personal Opinion and Insight column of the Nikkei Morning Edition published on October 2, 2025.

The article focuses on the concept of the “brain economy,” which has been a topic of global discussions in recent years, and it advocates for recognizing various brain-related diseases as policy issues and addressing them with a more comprehensive, long-term perspective. In the concept of the “brain economy,” the health and capabilities of people’s brains are viewed as a social resource, and there is an international movement to link that value to growth for economies and sustainability for society. The foundation for this is “brain capital,” which refers to the wide range of capacities that originate in the brain. In addition to cognitive abilities like memory, learning, and creativity, these also include resilience, capacity for cooperation, and the ability to feel joy or connectedness. It will be important to transition away from the conventional view that devoting financial resources to brain health is a cost for social security to a more life course-based approach based on the premise that such spending is an investment that supports social sustainability and growth.

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