Eric Veien, PhD, is a neuroscientist and systems thinker with a long-standing fascination for how the brain organizes and maintains itself. He earned his doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of Utah in 2009, where he investigated dorsoventral patterning during zebrafish eye development — research that deepened his appreciation for how precise molecular signals sculpt complex neural structures. Afterward, as a postdoctoral fellow at UMass Chan Medical School until 2012, he studied osteoarthritis using mouse models, gaining hands-on experience with mammalian systems biology and translational research. After leaving academic research, Eric spent a decade in scientific instrumentation sales and customer support roles, eventually becoming a Field Service Technician for Evident Scientific. Yet, throughout these career shifts, his curiosity about the brain’s deepest puzzles — especially the stubborn mystery of sleep — never faded.

SPIN (Sleep-Phase Induced Network maintenance) grew directly out of this enduring curiosity and a unique collaboration between Eric’s evolving ideas and real-time refinement with a next-generation AI. Through countless iterative sessions, they combined decades of fragmented literature — spontaneous firing, replay dynamics, synaptic decay, sparse coding, aging — into a single, unified systems-level model. SPIN reframes sleep not as a mere performance booster but as an evolutionary safeguard against the natural instability of plastic neural networks. This perspective bridges basic neuroscience, memory consolidation, and even strategies for robust continual learning in artificial systems. Eric’s goal is to invite researchers and engineers alike to test, challenge, and expand this framework — and to share an idea that has rekindled his deep passion for understanding the mind.