When the Mars Rover was in production in the '90s, NASA senior computer scientist Rich Levinson noticed a limitation in its ability to make reactive decisions. The Rover could avoid falling off a cliff, but it didn't have the capability to backtrack or plan other routes of navigation. That's when he learned about a little-known term and much-needed brain process called executive function.

According to the National Center for Disabilities, executive function is a set of mental processes needed to perform activities such as planning, organizing, strategizing, paying attention to and remembering details, and managing time and space. Ranging from mild to severe, the cognitive impairment of executive function affects more than 16 million people according to the most recent CDC report. The growing senior population is particularly at risk as they are expected to comprise 20% of the total U.S. population by the year 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

At the time, executive function wasn't talked about much among clinicians, let alone the public, yet Levinson connected the dots.

"I was looking at the brain's operational properties at the same time as we were studying autonomy for robotics and realized there was a connection between executive function and the robotic systems that we were trying to combine planning and reaction to Artificial Intelligence," he recollects.

If you increase your planning time, you can explore more possibilities and then compile them down into reflexes. Then when you get into a situation where you have to make a very quick reactive response, you actually can do a little more. In 1996 Levinson started NASA spin-off BrainAid to address those very problems.

Enter Planning and Execution Assistant and Trainer (PEAT), Brainaids customizable smart-planning software. Unlike other task managing systems, PEAT automatically reorganizes a person's schedule based on their real-time task approval and customizable app integration. PEAT's cloud-based dashboard allows clinicians to view and share data collected from users' actions. The clinical integration helped teachers of autism organization PACE log outbursts and behaviors of autism students.

PEAT's customizable plug-in strategies help patients in overwhelming situations by selecting icons that walks them through therapist-suggested prompts such as "Wait five seconds before you speak," or "take a walk."

"We log when the patient presses the reaction icon and select a coping strategy so the therapist knows when they are doing the strategies on their own, Levinson says.

Entering its seventh year funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, PEAT is helping ameliorate another four-lettered cognitive killer--PTSD. The Palo Alto Department of Veterans Affairs clinical neuropsychologist Harriet Katz Zeiner says PEAT is a much-desired invisible aid for the vets. "We don't find PEAT being rejected like others [cognitive aids] because it's great at being unobtrusive in a social setting, she says. Its not like a cane and the world doesn't havent to know that it truly is an assistant.

PEAT began integrating with wearable assistance in 2007, with an experimental RFID reader bracelet called iBracelet that would fail but set the stage for a new wave of wearables. Today, BrainAid is working with the AFrame Digital smartwatch to monitor heart rates and send the data to PEAT, which will then automatically cue the user of coping strategies. Last summer, the company began integrating with the Pebble smartwatch, which acts as a leash for mobile devices and displays tasks on its simple interface.

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