Firefly's AI-Driven Evoke System Powers Discovery of Novel Electrophysiological Biomarker for PTSD
– Comes just weeks after Firefly confirmed its active public-private partnership with the U.S. Department of War –
KENMORE, N.Y, June 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Firefly Neuroscience, Inc. ("Firefly" or the "Company") (NASDAQ:AIFF), an Artificial Intelligence ("AI") company advancing precision neuroscience, today announced the identification of a novel electrophysiological biomarker for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ("PTSD") using brain scans collected on its FDA-510(k)-cleared Evoke System.
The biomarker discovery emanates partly from Firefly's previously announced public-private partnership with the U.S. Department of War ("DoW") to support the assessment and treatment of active-duty U.S. service members and veterans suffering from PTSD and/or Traumatic Brain Injury ("TBI"). The identification of a novel PTSD-specific electrophysiological biomarker deepens the scientific foundation of that DoW deployment and positions Firefly as what it believes to be the only company with both an active government brain health partnership and a identified neural signal marker for the condition.
PTSD affects approximately 13 million Americans in any given year, and about 6% of the U.S. population will have PTSD at some point in their life.1 The disorder is disproportionately prevalent in military personnel; with 11–20% of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom veterans experiencing PTSD annually.2 The total U.S. economic burden of PTSD has been estimated at $232.2 billion, of which $42.7 billion is attributed directly to the military population.3
The biomarker discovery leverages Firefly's deep learning architecture running on NVIDIA L40S GPU-accelerated infrastructure, enabling high-throughput analysis of multi-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) and Event-Related Potential (ERP) waveforms at unprecedented scale. The Evoke System's dual-signal approach, capturing both resting-state hyperarousal patterns and abnormal cognitive ERP responses, is particularly well-suited to PTSD diagnostics.
"By applying our AI models to a dataset that we believe to be unmatched in scale, we have identified a consistent and reproducible electrophysiological pattern distinguishing PTSD patients from healthy controls," said Gil Issachar, Firefly's Chief Technology Officer. "Given our previously announced DoW deployment, this discovery holds potential for providing military healthcare providers with not just a powerful assessment tool, but a scientifically grounded neural signal to anchor it."
Greg Lipschitz, Firefly's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Our proprietary database is an important asset that continues to generate breakthrough cognitive brain biomarker discoveries. The convergence of this PTSD biomarker finding with our previously announced DoW partnership represents a significant milestone: we are deploying FDA-cleared technology to support the assessment and treatment of active-duty U.S. service members and veterans while, at the same time, generating the neuroscience that could support how PTSD is objectively assessed for both them and civilians going forward. Our NVIDIA L40S GPU-accelerated foundation model architecture creates a potential competitive advantage in biomarker discovery that we believe positions Firefly well across defense health, pharma partnerships, and clinical psychiatry."
The identification of a PTSD-specific electrophysiological biomarker could potentially open commercial pathways across three channels: within the existing Firefly-DoW partnership, where an objective neural marker could deepen and expand Firefly's government engagement; in pharmaceutical clinical trials, where it could serve as an objective efficacy endpoint addressing a longstanding bottleneck in CNS drug development; and in clinical psychiatry, where the Evoke System's objective signal data could inform more personalized treatment decisions for the millions of people living with PTSD.
This discovery further advances Firefly's mission to build the world's first EEG/ERP-based brain foundation model, a large-scale AI architecture trained across all disorder categories to serve as a universal brain health intelligence platform for neurology, psychiatry, and drug development.
Sources
1 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. "How Common Is PTSD in Adults?" https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_adults.asp
2 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. "How Common is PTSD in Veterans?" https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_veterans.asp
3 Davis LL, Schein J, Cloutier M, et al. "The Economic Burden of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the United States From a Societal Perspective." The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2022.
About Firefly
Firefly Neuroscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIFF) is an Artificial Intelligence ("AI") company advancing precision neuroscience, applying AI and large-scale electrophysiological data to give clinicians a more complete, objective picture of how an individual patient's brain is functioning. Firefly's proprietary database now consists of over 200,000 EEG/ERP brain scans, making it the world's largest known standardized EEG/ERP repository. Firefly's EEG-based, AI-driven, and FDA-510(k)-cleared Evoke System has the potential to transform diagnostic and treatment monitoring methods for conditions such as depression, dementia, anxiety disorders, concussions, ADHD, and PTSD.
Please visit www.fireflyneuro.com for more information.
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Investor & Media Contact
Stephen Kilmer
(646) 274-3580
stephen.kilmer@fireflyneuro.com
