Changing the Way the World Heals the Mind.
About NeuroNova
NeuroNova began as a deeply personal quest to find a better way to heal. It started inside the Addiction Lab at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. There a research team led by Dr. Scott Steffensen was driven by a tragic loss: one of his graduate students, JoAnn Petrie, had lost her son to an opioid overdose. That pain turned into purpose. The lab began asking a new question—what if we could restore dopamine and rebalance the brain without using more drugs? As pharmacologists, they knew how limited current treatments were—especially those that substituted one addictive substance for another. But when their experiments revealed a way to naturally boost dopamine levels and suppress GABA neuron activity using non-invasive stimulation, they knew they had discovered something groundbreaking.
Over the next eight years, they published multiple peer-reviewed studies, received millions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, and achieved one of the most significant breakthroughs in mental health tech: a 60% reduction in anxiety symptoms during opioid withdrawal—without a single pill.
But NeuroNova didn't stay in the lab.
Tom, now NeuroNova’s founder and CEO, first heard about the research after a long personal journey of his own. As a child, he watched his older brother—his protector during an abusive upbringing—slip into addiction. His brother entered a methadone clinic for treatment, but the substitute drug took his life. Years later, Tom’s own struggles with anxiety, OCD, and medication dependency left him searching for another way—something that didn’t just numb the symptoms but actually healed the brain. When he discovered NeuroNova’s research, he was stunned. Skeptical but hopeful, he tried the technology—and within a week, he had safely tapered off anxiety medications he hadn’t been able to quit in over a decade. It was life-changing. That experience turned into a mission: to make this healing tool available to everyone who needs it.
Today, NeuroNova is a team of neuroscientists, professors, entrepreneurs, students, and friends united by a shared belief—the future of mental health doesn’t have to come in a bottle. Backed by science, built with care, and born from real stories, NeuroNova exists to help clinicians, practices, and people across the country access a new path to wellness. We’re here to restore hope, to provide drug-free alternatives that work, and to remind the world of something simple: healing is possible.
Our Journey
