CAN DIGITAL NEUROPHENOTYPING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TRANSFORM THE EVALUATION OF CRANIAL OSTEOPATHIC INTERVENTIONS

Cranial osteopathic interventions remain scientifically contested, not because the question is unanswerable, but because the measurement tools applied thus far have been inadequate. This commentary argues that digital neurophenotyping, encompassing ambulatory electroencephalography, heart rate variability analysis, actigraphy-based sleep monitoring, and smartphone-based cognitive assessment, combined with machine learning frameworks capable of processing multimodal physiological time-series, now offers a credible pathway toward objective evaluation of neurophysiological changes associated with cranial osteopathic practice. A phased translational research roadmap is proposed, alongside a frank assessment of the challenges of reproducibility, signal interpretation, and ethical governance. The goal is not to advocate for or against cranial osteopathy, but to argue that the measurement gap is the tractable problem, and that the interdisciplinary tools to address it now exist.