What if brain science no longer stopped at the laboratory door? Axite, a Leiden-born technology company, is developing new ways to understand brain health in everyday life by bringing neuroscience into our daily routines.

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Working at the intersection of neuroscience, data science, and human behaviour, the 100% female-founded team aims to make brain activity measurable beyond controlled research settings. By combining wearable EEG technology with digital behaviour tracking, Axite enables continuous monitoring of cognitive activity as it unfolds in daily life.

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Measuring the unmeasurable

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At the heart of Axite’s work is a clear mission: “making the invisible visible”.  As community manager Joline van Praag explains, “We want to give people and their healthcare providers objective insights into how their brain functions over time, beyond what happens in the clinic or lab.”

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Axite develops NeuroJournal, a digital journal application that combines self-reflection with real-time brain activity measurements. The societal challenge it addresses is a familiar one: mental and cognitive health assessments often rely heavily on subjective reporting, which can be incomplete or influenced by bias.

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Rather than depending solely on sporadic clinical assessments, Axite’s approach enables brain activity to be monitored during daily life. This allows cognitive processes to be observed over time, capturing fluctuations and patterns that would otherwise remain unseen.

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NeuroJournal allows users to tag moments, experiences, or behaviours while their brain activity is measured simultaneously. By linking these self-defined tags to objective neurological signals, the platform aims to provide a more balanced picture of how the brain responds to everyday activities.

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At the technical level, Axite uses electroencephalography (EEG) to record the brain’s electrical activity during smartphone interactions. The platform focuses on event-related and spectral potentials — neural patterns associated with specific events, such as touch or interaction — enabling analysis of cognitive states as they unfold in real time.

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From lab bench to pocket

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What distinguishes Axite is its focus on studying brain activity in the context of everyday digital behaviour. Traditional EEG research is largely confined to laboratory settings, which can limit the extent to which findings translate to real-world settings.

By combining wearable EEG technology with smartphone interactions, Axite extends brain monitoring beyond the lab. This enables continuous, context-rich data collection, offering new insights into cognitive states as people go about their daily routines.

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The potential impact spans both science and society. For researchers, the platform supports large-scale investigation of brain–behaviour relationships in real-world contexts. For individuals and professionals, it offers more objective ways to observe cognitive patterns alongside self-reported experiences.

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Born at Leiden University

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Axite describes itself as “born at Leiden University,” reflecting its origins in the university’s research environment. The company’s co-founder, Ruchella Kock, earned her PhD at Leiden University, building on decades of scientific work exploring how EEG-measured brain activity relates to behaviour and cognition.

Today, Axite operates from PLNT, Leiden’s centre for innovation and entrepreneurship, and forms part of the broader local startup ecosystem supported by Leiden University and its partners. The team has also participated in unlock_, an incubator programme designed to help transform academic knowledge into viable ventures.

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Looking ahead

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As NeuroJournal moves towards its public launch, Axite is particularly interested in how people will use the platform to understand their own cognitive patterns. “Every brain is different,” Van Praag notes. “When users can combine their personal experiences with objective brain data, they gain insights that were simply not available before. That’s powerful both for individuals and for science.”

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With a planned release in February 2026, current efforts focus on refining the platform for reliable everyday use, ensuring that brain activity monitoring can take place outside clinical and laboratory environments. Beyond product development, Axite is exploring collaborations in areas such as epilepsy and Long COVID, where objective insights into brain function could support both research and personal health monitoring.