Neurologist, dad, husband. Interested in thinking through first principles and discovering solutions to complex problems.
Joined May 2021
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link.springer.com/article/10…
I wanted to share our latest study (last study fully completed at Phoenix Children's, before I left), now published in Neurocritical Care, where we demonstrated a method using EEG to detect signs of covert conscious processing in comatose-appearing critically ill children.
Access to the full article can be seen here: rdcu.be/e3xW3
This study was difficult and challenging - probably the most challenging study I've done at this point in my career. Everything that could've gone wrong did go wrong. There were many points where I thought the study would halt, but it was seen to the end, and now it's complete and published.
Thanks to everyone who supported this work, especially my co-authors.
@PNCRGtweets @CuringComa @NeurocritCareJ @neurocritical
Brian Appavu, MD retweeted
Endless money printing is the source of most of your economic woes.
It's not 'billionaires', 'capitalism', or any particular race of people.
Your pounds, dollars, euros, naira, and yen are devalued daily.
And as long as the problem is misdiagnosed, it will continue forever.
The best decisions I’ve made in my life so far were the ones that made sense to me—but looked bad or 'weird' to others around me.
The worst decisions were the ones that aligned with everyone around me—when a quiet part of me knew something didn’t feel right.
Both kinds of decisions have shaped my life—in investing, relationships, and professional ambitions.
I think true progress in this beautiful, mortal life comes from asymmetric conviction—the courage to act when your intuition sees something the crowd doesn't.
Consensus exists for a reason—it’s not always wrong. But growth requires knowing when to listen, and when to break away.
See the flaws others overlook. Build where the world is brittle. Follow your gut and your passion, but make sure that you've searched deep within for the clarity you need to act with conviction.
What most Bitcoin OGs won’t always tell you is that when you first bought Bitcoin before 2013, it didn’t look like a sure bet at all. Of course you believed- but it required a certain knack for disbelief too. Because the principled will to go against consensus, to be ridiculed by the intolerant majority, to actively question your decision are all parts of the discovery process towards any regime changing shifts. Anyone who says otherwise today, about Bitcoin or any new exploratory metas, was either a latecomer or simply a living bot.
If I have one passionate mission that sits above Bitcoin adoption, it would be to help anyone who connects with me to become more “Riverian” in nature-able to see the world not as black and white, but as shades of probabilistic distributions in constant motion, with self-determination to realize your best potential by constantly fishing for new information in which truths are not facts. Life is full of intelligent contradictions, and it’s often in those moments combined with relentless trolling that a signal is born. There are self-accountable techniques to seeking perception, action, and will: to becoming free.
Being intellectually flexible about new opportunities is the asymmetric gift of the human mind. Cherish it.
Brian Appavu, MD retweeted
It's hard to truly understand how radical some of @DavidDeutschOxf theories are compared to much of modern scientific consensus.
One of Davids most controversial but valuable contributions to society is the rejection of probability (with the exception ex. card games) as an expression of truthiness or justified beliefs when applied to predictions or conclusions.
There is no probability of how likely we are to be hit by a meteor tomorrow.
There is no probability of how likely the stock market is going to be doing as well tomorrow as it is today.
There is no P(Doom), no percentage you can put on whether AI is likely to wipe out humanity or not.
Things either happen or they don't and we can either explain why they will and how or we can't.
All attempts at putting percentage on a prediction is really just guesswork dressed up as reasoning.
If a meteor is going to hit us tomorrow it's already on the way and the probability is 100%.
If the stock market is going to crash tomorrow the reasons for it's crash have already been put in motion maybe decades before.
If the AI is going to kill us all depends on what we decide to do with it not what some calculation says.
Davids primary critique is for the field of science but it goes beyond that.
Far too many of decisions done in modern society is based around the false certainty of using Bayesian probability. It's like a placebo for a society that demands certainty in an uncertain world. It's not just false it's regressive as it slows down knowledge creation.
The only thing that can change the outcome of the future is the creation of new knowledge. Knowledge based on good explanations that are hard to vary.
We can create knowledge that allow us to divert the meteor before it hits earth.
We can create knowledge that will allow us to hinder a crash of the stock market (both directly or indirectly)
We can create knowledge that let us evolve side by side with very powerful AI instead of enslaving it or be enslaved by it.
Like everything else in life there are no guarantees but there are definitely better or worse ways to deal with uncertainty, probability just isn't one of them.
Brian Appavu, MD retweeted
There are few things as professionally motivating for a young man as having children.
I have seen it time and again over the last few years. A friend has their first child and they seem to go into beast mode at their job or company.
Part of it is probably a drive to provide financially for their family, but there is also a sense of pride to work hard as an example to their child.
Whatever the reason, give talented young men a child and they seem to amp everything up.
Pretty cool to see.
Reification: The Invisible Spectra Our Words Ignore
youtu.be/ll5rM3k5o4w
#Philosophy #Neurology #Neuroscience
Brian Appavu, MD retweeted
Many situations in life are similar to going on a hike: the view changes once you start walking.
You don't need all the answers right now. New paths will reveal themselves if you have the courage to get started.
Great comprehensive article from Dr. Mark Stephany (@Mark_MNLocal) looking at bitcoin from the thought process of a clinician.
Bitcoin Through a Clinical Reasoning Lens: Differential Diagnoses and Cognitive Biases #Bitcoin
linkedin.com/posts/mark-step…
If you have to make a hard life decision, play with your kids the night before you do. You'll know what you need to do.
I felt compelled to write an article in response to the recent New York Times article from @sjauhar regarding redefining brain death. As a neurologist with my own experiencing working in this domain, I have thoughts I wanted to share.
“The truth or falsehood of a belief depends upon whether the belief corresponds to a fact, not upon any other circumstances, however useful the belief may be.” - Bertrand Russel (The Problems of Philosophy, 1912)
nytimes.com/2025/07/30/opini…
Acute Necrotizing Encephalopathy in Children #NeuroPICU @PNCRGtweets
#Influenza-associated acute necrotizing encephalopathy in US children during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 influenza seasons showed high morbidity and mortality.
ja.ma/4fbIzrn
Beautiful thread on critical closing pressure by @icmteaching . I think there's a gold mine opportunity to explore this in neurocritical care.
