Field Journal #024: Open Neural Atlas
From the QIF Field Journal
Date: 2026-03-12, ~20:00 State: Was telling myself to focus on distilling the story and the work I have now. But going through everything I’ve compiled, the biggest gap hit me — there’s no fundamental tool that conveys and combines all of it. The research, NISS, TARA, the clinical mappings, the brain data — it’s all scattered across dashboards and JSON files and pages. It needs to be packaged as one open source tool that lets neurosecurity reach broader masses. Mood: That feeling when the product finally names itself.
I’m calling it Open Neural Atlas because it maps everything we need to understand and more — including custom tools to help understand the brain. I don’t want to build it like a traditional SIEM. That may introduce additional baggage of using a complex tool. Splunk is powerful but it’s also intimidating if you’re not already a security person. That’s where my design intuitions from building websites as a kid may come in handy. Normal security people familiar with SIEMs like Splunk should already be able to operate it, but it shouldn’t feel like Splunk. It should feel like something you want to explore.
It will improve over time as I gather more data and knowledge from my research. The trickiest thing is trying to find the best way to visualize the brain without too much lateral movement — it’s wayyyyy more complex than I can imagine right now. That’s where the QIF 7 layers are super helpful nonetheless. The hourglass gives you a fixed frame to navigate from, instead of drowning in the full complexity of neuroscience.
My goal is to one day hear from BCI users so I can redesign this product for them — so they can help protect those like them and help us innovate. Especially now that many people like veterans from war or those with nerve damage can control their mouse and screen using BCIs. What a beautiful world we’re living in.
This entry is part of the QIF Field Journal, a living, append-only research journal documenting first-person observations at the intersection of neurosecurity, BCI engineering, and neurorights. The journal exists because neural privacy is a right, not a feature. Tools like macshield protect digital identity on networks; this research works toward protecting cognitive identity at the neural interface.