← Extend Podcast with Darshan Shah, MD
Extend Podcast with Darshan Shah, MD
151. Ramses Alcaide: Brain Wearables, EEG, and the Future of Brain Health Tracking
00:45:13
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- [00:03]
A
Welcome to xtend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah. A podcast dedicated to cutting edge science research tools and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results. When it comes to your health span, we are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world renowned experts offering you a step by step guide to proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span. Ramses, so glad to be here in Cambridge to talk to you.
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B
Yeah, I'm pumped. As a Boston local, it's nice to get some coverage for some of the local media and especially a group like yourself.
- [01:04]
A
Yeah, yeah. You know, we normally film in West Hollywood and I was like, there's so many smart people out in Cambridge and Boston, I gotta make my way out there. And I was really looking forward to this conversation because we're going to talk about something I haven't really talked about on the podcast yet, which is brain computer interfaces. A whole new world that we're diving into here, especially enabled by AI. And you're kind of like the expert, you've dedicated your life to this.
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B
That's right, yeah. Since I was about eight years old, I've been on this mission and really took off in grad school. But it's been a lifelong dedication to make sure that this field goes to where it needs to go.
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A
Right. So I trained as a surgeon in the hospital. I remember being in the neurosurgery suite and we would use very sophisticated tools while we were in surgery to see if we're affecting the brain as we're doing like a tumor removal. And I mean, this stuff was magical. You could have the person sing or, you know, play a song or something and you could do this while removing a tumor because you want to affect or you want to see how the effect of the tumor removal is on the actual brain pathways.
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B
Right.
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A
And so I remember we even had like someone playing a violin as removing a tumor.
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B
Wow.
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A
And I was like, this is the most incredible technology. But you know, it seemed like science fiction back then to ever have that as a consumer wearable device. Right. And so it's incredible that you've created these headsets for example, like these are one way that we can use this and actually get data about the brain in a device that we are commonly wear, like headsets and glasses and those kind of things.
- [02:42]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it took 14 years of research and development. Right. The technology like you mentioned has been around for a long time, right. Since the 80s. But the main issue has been that typically when you have to record from the brain, it's like these giant head cap devices. They kind of look like torture devices,
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A
honestly, with a million wires sticking out and connected.
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B
Exactly, exactly. And so that led to two limitations. One is that the form factors were not something you could scale. And then two is that normally to make it work well, you need hours of calibration data from an individual. And so what we really focus on at Neurable is how do we use AI to solve those key issues so that we can solve a form factor issue, bringing it to a device like this, noise canceling headphones.
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A
Right.
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B
With EEG sensors or brain sensors on the inside in our AI, but then also make it so that the value propositions are simple enough to use and scalable enough to remove the calibration issues, to remove the user experience issues and make it feel like a product and not a science project.
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A
Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. So let's take a step back and just talk about the technology, just so our audience understands for sure. What is an EEG and why is that helpful when you're looking at the brain?
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B
Yes, yes. So an EEG is just a fancy way of essentially saying like an ekg.
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A
Right.
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B
So like I have an EKG here on my wrist. Yeah, they're commonly known and used. Right. So you just put your finger here and it measures the electrical activity of your heart.
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A
Right.
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B
So K is for cardio.
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A
Right.
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B
EEG is encephalogram.
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A
Right.
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B
And so that just, it's a fancy way of saying brain, but it's, it's electrical activity from your brain versus your heart. Right. But as you can imagine, your brain getting access to that, you have to go through the skull, you have to go through the scalp. Much smaller signals, much fainter responses.
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A
Right.
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B
And that's where the challenge of making brain data usable comes in.
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A
Right. So with the eeg, you have multiple sensors. All throughout the times I've seen EEG being used is in the operating room also in like sleep labs. Right. Where there's multiple sensors all over the skull and wires hooked up to them. How does this device eliminate the need for multiple sensors that are tracking electrical activity through the skull as it flows through the brain.
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B
It's a great question. And it really goes back to that 14 years of research that we did. We started out with those multi electrode systems with wires everywhere. And then we started working our way down to fewer and fewer electrodes while trying to retain the same signal to noise. And then we used mathematics to essentially make it so that we can infer what the data looks like in different parts of the brain, even though we're collecting from one area, in this case around the earth. Right. And the best way of kind of describing how those mathematics works is let's say you think of something and your frontal lobe is really excited. Well, that electrical wave actually propagates across your whole head, but it gets weaker the farther away it is. But if you can use mathematics to say, okay, this weakened signal that I see in the background might be coming from another part of the brain, and I want to augment that signal, that's essentially how we do it. We look at those small fragments, but then we try to augment it to make it based off of the assumption that it came from another part of the brain.
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A
Got it. So you're still getting the signal, not as strong, but then using artificial intelligence to augment that particular piece of the signal. So it's kind of akin to like if you put a photograph into AI now and you say, upscale this for me, it can upscale the photo based on what it's seeing. Even if it's like an old photo, it can look like a new photo. For sure.
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B
For sure. It's like a combination of upscaling plus like noise isolation. Right. So when you put on your headphones and you start talking, they isolate where your voice is coming from when you're on a call, but they ignore the other things around you.
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A
Right, right.
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B
And so we try to say, okay, where is the signal coming from? So we isolate it, and then once we know what that isolated signal is, we augment it with what you're talking about, essentially like up resolutioning the image, or in this case, the voice of the brain. And then through those two combinations, we're able to boost the signal and also work with signals that come from other places, places of the brain. And you actually tried the demo yourself?
- [07:00]
A
Yeah, I do, yeah. I can't wait to talk about everything we learned there. And so just like the device on your wrist there, which is getting an EKG from just one spot on your wrist and your fingers touching it, it's kind of analogous to that too, because an EKG for the listeners. I mean, many people have EKGs. There's a bunch of wires. You put them on your legs and your arms, on your heart, and it's like a big process to get an EKG done. However, now, with modern technology, we can do it through little devices like the one on your wrist or something that you hold between your thumbs. And it's the same analogy. Basically, you're doing that for the brain.
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B
Exactly, exactly. And the EKG comes from your heart, Right?
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A
Right. It's electrical signals of the heart. This is electrical signals of the brain.
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B
Exactly, Exactly.
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A
Right. So what clinically useful information comes from an eeg?
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B
It's literally the most powerful sensing device in the world. Right. Everything from neurodiverse conditions. So think adhd, think depression to neurodegenerative diseases. So think Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia. It's been used for so many applications. The problem is, it's like this one joke that I heard when I was going to school at the University of Michigan for my PhD. We're really good at curing cancer in rats. Right. And EEG is, in a great way, we're really good at identifying brain diseases. But it requires this giant setup and tons and tons of data collected over months. Right. But if you can bring it down to something that's an everyday device and still make it reliable, now you're able to tap into those value propositions. And the thing is, this device is something that you wear every day. Like, most of our users wear this one to three hours a day. They're just sitting there, listening to music, watching podcasts. So now you have the scale of data, the time scale of data, but then you also have the accuracy. Because of our AI, you bring those two things together, now you're able to tap into this incredible wealth of opportunity that has been stuck in laboratories.
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A
Right? Absolutely. And to your point, like when you go to a lab to get this done, that's one moment in time. You're not getting the longitudinal data day after day after day to see the delta that's occurring over time.
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B
Exactly. It's called the snapshot problem.
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A
Right.
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B
And that's why we know so little about the brain, because we only have the snapshot when you go in.
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A
Right.
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B
But if you can wear it as something as simple as a Fitbit, right? Now we have days, weeks, months, years worth of data. Right. And we can see the brain evolving and how things impact you in real time. Right. And it completely changes the perspective of how we can even analyze the brain.
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A
Yeah, that's so powerful. Because to your point, like, you know, just like an EKG can diagnose a heart attack and diagnose arrhythmias, with eeg, you can actually diagnose multiple issues. And is it true also, or am I making a false statement here sometimes years before you see it come up clinically?
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B
Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the most powerful things about it.
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A
Right.
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B
Because something like an EKG is what's called a secondary method of detection.
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A
Right? Right.
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B
Another example of that is, for example, if you wear an apple watch and it picks up Parkinson's, it picks it up through the tremor, right? Through the shaking. But that's a secondary measure. Your brain has been fighting Parkinson's for over a decade.
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Right.
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B
And it's only until your brain has given up that you finally pick up that tremor. Now it becomes diagnosable by a clinician.
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Right.
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B
But if you can track something called the beta response from the brain, over time, it gets higher and higher and higher as your brain is fighting to prevent that tremor in your everyday life.
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A
Right.
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B
And it's actually an evolutionary thing. Your brain is trying to hide disease. Right. You don't want to be that animal in the savannah shaking. Right. They're going to get eaten. So your brain has been fighting that physical symptom in order for you to be able to survive.
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A
Right.
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B
But when you're recording from the brain, instead of getting a secondary signal, you're getting the primary signal of your brain fighting it.
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A
I mean, is it true then that this can find signs of even Alzheimer's disease earlier than you would in, like, you know, Alzheimer's progresses from, you know, you start forgetting things and goes to mild cognitive impairment and then dementia. And by the time you get to mild cognitive impairment, it's almost too late sometimes, you know, so you really want to start way before. Is it true that you can see signs of that with nurable?
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B
That's actually one of the biggest use cases for the technology that people buy it for. Like, we haven't necessarily, you know, because we're not going down the fda.
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A
Right.
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B
Right now.
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A
Right.
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B
We're taking kind of the apple approach, where Apple would tell you we see a heart variability issue, and then once they got fda, they changed that to heart arrhythmia.
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A
Right, right, right.
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B
So similar thing. We help you track the age of your brain. It's one of the key metrics that we track. If you see the age of your brain dramatically accelerating, it probably means you're trending toward a neurodegenerative disease. Right. In the future as we work with different partners. For example, right now, we are working with the US army to track traumatic brain injury. A lot of the symptoms that you see in traumatic brain injury, you also see neurodegeneration.
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A
Right. Okay.
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B
Which is you see a decrease in brain volume, you see a decrease in what's called total power, how much electrical activity your brain produces. So a lot of those same biomarkers we're able to track with the army were bringing, and they're actually a part of what's powering the. The consumer application.
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A
Okay, so other than brain disease, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, what about, like, psychological diagnoses, Things like attention deficit or anxiety, depression even, Are there electrical signals that correspond to those diagnoses?
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B
Yeah, I mean, so what I will tell you is. And I'll send you this picture.
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A
Yes.
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B
After this. But we actually did a study because we were trying to understand how to create a system that can help people focus. You know, and if they got distracted, we would essentially play a small audible tone to get them back into focus. Right. So we did this large study with over a thousand people to track focus. And in 20% of the population, the results were just absolutely backwards. We were like, what is going on? Like, normally we would see a person focus, they get tired, we tell them to take a break, they'd get back to focus. But in this 20%, they would just be all over the place. And when we went back to their demographics data, they had adhd. Right. And so something that has been very invisible in the past, like, how do you diagnose it? Well, it becomes so much more clear when you're able to look at data in real time. And then from there, how do you then impact it?
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Right.
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B
Well, those were the people that that biofeedback system that told them when they were distracted, they saw the most benefit because they were able to catch the moment when they got distracted where usually they wouldn't catch that for sometimes minutes later.
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A
Yeah. And so, you know, I want to really dive into more on the biofeedback, too, because a lot of people I know are going to these biofeedback brain training centers now to augment their treatment for ptsd, also anxiety disorders, for example, and attention deficit as well. And it's really powerful because over time, it's not just taking a medication to, like, mask the issue. It's actually getting your brain well by the biofeedback. Right. Because as you're using biofeedback, you are creating that neuroplasticity in the right direction to actually get your brain neurons to connect appropriately versus malappropriately. Right. And so, you know, biofeedback is incredibly powerful, but it's so hard to do because you got to go to a center and they hook you up to the whole device and then you have to like sit there for an hour and they have to go back the next day and the next day and most people become non compliant with it. It's very hard to stick to something like this. Right?
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B
Yeah, this solves it exactly. In the app, there's actually a biofeedback system for exercising your focus.
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A
Right.
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B
But I think what's the most exciting thing that we're going to be bringing to the market soon is this new biofeedback system we did with hp. It was a gaming biofeedback system that actually helps gamers decrease their reaction time so they're moving faster, but increase the target's hit.
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Right.
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B
And normally you have to pick between moving faster or hitting more targets because your accuracy goes down if you're moving faster. Right. But the key thing that the nugget you're getting at is that something like that would be game changing to performance athletes, to gamers, but it's so hard to access. Right. And when it's now something as simple as a pair of headphones or earbuds or AR glasses or whatever form factor you want that you just put it on, it's part of your normal daily activity. It enables all these incredible solutions that have been created to be accessible at scale.
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A
Yeah, yeah. Because with brain training, the more you do it, the more successful you are at it for sure. And so like if you can even put it into like a gaming device like what you're describing there and make it fun, and it's something you're gonna do anyway is do some gaming and now you can access your focus but also decrease your reaction time as well.
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B
Yeah.
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A
While you're playing a game like that can translate into better and better, like flow state creation.
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B
I think one of my favorite quotes was from Tom's Guide where he says, I felt 14 again.
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A
Right.
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B
And he says this is bullet time for your brain.
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A
Right.
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B
And the thing is, as somebody who I'm sure like yourself is overloaded with things to do, when I finally get some time to decompress, it's like I have so much stuff going in my mind, sometimes I can't even enjoy it.
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A
Right.
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B
And so being able to put myself in the right state to game better, but then not have all this Overwhelming stress in my mind before I go do something that I'm supposed to enjoy has been very liberating to me personally.
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A
Got it. So that's one aspect of brain training. What about the aspect of brain training? And there were some devices, I bought one of these in the past where if you're trying to learn meditation. Right. And so what this device would do would be as you're wearing it and you're trying to meditate, if you start getting distracted, it would have like little birds chirp in your ear.
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B
For sure. For sure.
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A
Do you have that type of training as well in your device or is that something in development?
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B
It's coming. But what I would say is the most powerful thing.
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A
Yes.
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B
Is that there is an API and an SDK.
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A
Okay.
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B
So that if developers want to build these types of solutions, they can.
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Right.
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B
Really like our main mission is how do we make the brain hyper accessible and really help on this kind of like health side.
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Right.
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B
But if somebody knows meditation really, really, really well, they should make the app. Right. And we just want to make sure that we can empower them with really good data and also a community. Right. These are selling like crazy right now. So there's your audience and that's really kind of been our perspective. So we have been doing some app stuff on our side. But really our main goal is how do we empower partners to build these applications.
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A
Got it. So if someone buys one of these neurable devices, there's also an opportunity to create your own app using the same device and using your technology.
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B
Exactly, exactly.
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A
That's massive. Yeah. There's so many applications can come out of this.
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B
Exactly.
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Right.
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B
I think of neurotechnology as essentially the next software. Right. Software can be used as something as simple as making a calculator to going to the moon. Right. It's crazy. And the same thing with the brain. Right. You can use it from brain training, meditation, to increasing your reaction time to in the future, even controlling devices. Right. It's just such a broad application field and it's how do we open that up for everyone? And that's really what our mission is at the company.
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A
I love it. And so, you know, a lot of news around Elon Musk and controlling computer applications by using just your brain, but it requires a surgery and insertion of nanoparticles into your brain. And it's a lot.
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B
It's a lot to ask.
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A
It's a lot to ask people to do. And look, I get it. If you're paralyzed, like you're gonna do whatever it takes. And he's had a lot of success with that, for sure. But do you see a world where a device like this, you can actually control a computer screen, for example?
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B
Yeah, I mean, we already have some forms of control that we have on the device. We haven't showed them off. Actually, we show off a very narrow slice of what we can do because we want to make sure that it's super reliable, that it's easy to use. Like we get it to a certain point of polish before we show it off. But there has been groups that have shown ways of controlling devices noninvasively. I think that the key thing is, though, that your hands and your eyes will probably always be faster.
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A
Right.
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B
And so the ways that I would suggest is like, only the people with the most need are the ones who need control from the brain.
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A
Right.
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B
But where I think the biggest value proposition is how do we make it so you're never surprised by your brain again.
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A
Right.
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B
You don't Want to know 10 years into Alzheimer's that you have it because like you were mentioning earlier, at that point it's too late.
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Right.
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B
Like, that's the problem with a lot of our ways of treating these diseases. If your brain is already lost 30% of its volume, you're not going to get it back. So let's find out that this is happening when you're at 2 or 5% and then take action then. Right. And that's really the value propositions that we're most focused on.
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A
It's a great value proposition. So, you know, I look at like the massive surge, like I'm wearing a whoop right now, Oura rings. There's so many wearables out there. Do you feel like it's now the age of the brain wearable?
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B
I would believe so, yeah. And it's not just me. We are working with a lot of different companies. HP is one of the next ones that we're working with, but we have other ones we haven't even disclosed yet it's happening. It's not science fiction anymore. And I think part of the reason is there's real tangible value in the short term. And instead of. Because here's the thing with consumer companies, they don't want value in the long term, Right. They know that there's value there in the long term, but they have to convince people to buy it now. Right. So there's real tangible value in the short term. But then on top of that, we finally have the form factors and the society that is welcoming of wearable Technology.
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A
Yeah. And also the biggest thing is the form factor. Like if you can put it into a pair of headphones or even into a pair of glasses. You know, I think that's. Or headbud earbuds. I mean that's, that's going to. People wear those all day long anyway.
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B
Right.
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A
So if you're collecting brain data at the same time, that's so powerful, for sure.
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B
And we're compatible across all those devices.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Right. We don't build the hardware, we license that technology to these headwear companies. Right. And so we have partners across all those form factors.
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A
Oh, you do.
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B
And very soon you're going to start to see more and more neurotechnology come out. Yeah. And you know, what we've seen is people are gonna be using it across different devices. Right. Maybe you'll use these headphones while you do focus work and you'll put on some like open ear earbuds when you're jogging, you know, around your city. Right. Or let's say you go to your construction job and now you're wearing a hard hat with brain sensors.
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A
Right.
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B
So you're gonna start to see brain sensing in, across multiple domains.
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A
Man, it's such an incredible world we live in where we have so much incredible data about our body consistently, and then we could actually take actionable steps and diagnose a problem years before it actually becomes a problem. And so that's, that's massive. So we did a test on me prior to this. I Wore the headset 30 seconds with my eyes open. 30 seconds with my eyes closed.
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B
Yep.
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A
Super quick. One minute. And you were able to get, what is this? Six different data points on me. Right. And so what are these six data points that you, that you found?
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B
Yeah, so this is essentially controlled by a ton of different brain data that we have on the back end. Right. So for example, alpha beta theta responses. And then we take that and we simplify it to, for example, wakefulness, or how awake or sleepy you are, calmness, which is how stressed you are, essentially, or how calm you are. Cognitive speed, how fast you're firing and focused attention is how good you are at maintaining attention on one task.
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A
Right.
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B
So you can imagine somebody with ADHD might have lower focused attention.
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A
Right.
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B
And then the last one is, the last two are physical stress, which is we can pick up essentially how much tension your body has. It's actually a noise that you pick up in the system, but we might as well turn into a feature. Right, interesting. And then anxiety resilience, which is how well, you're able to handle new stress coming into your life.
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A
Right, I see.
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B
But what I think is really cool is that not only can you track these metrics, but you can also track things long term.
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A
Right.
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B
Like, for example, we did an estimation of your brain. Right. And we got it pretty close. Essentially just a few years off your actual age and for like a minute worth of data. That's crazy.
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A
That's crazy. Right. And if you get that every day and you use brain training and some of the other things that you can do for your brain, just like normal things that everyone knows, like get more aerobic exercise, for example, you could actually watch your brain age come down.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Right?
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B
Yeah. And I've done that deeply and personally. Like, I'm on a quest to keep my brain age down.
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A
Right.
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B
And I've been able to reduce my brain age by about 10 years by taking creatine, sleeping better, doing exercise every single day, and being able to see the data actually reflect it. So powerful because it makes me create better habits. It's so easy to binge eat, for example. Right. But if I see how my calorie intake versus what I'm aiming for looks like every day having that real time data, it makes me binge eat less. Same thing with my brain. It makes me do better habits for my personal health and my brain when I have that data available in real time.
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A
Absolutely. Okay. So with my data here, it shows I'm a little bit older than my brain age, so I'm going to go on a quest to reduce my brain age. And like you said, there's creatine, there's better sleep. Does this work for sleep as well, or is that another app that someone can develop for the device?
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B
You can record your data while you're sleeping. We actually have a really cool algorithm that we're going to be releasing in the near future that helps you sleep deeper, which is really exciting.
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A
Very exciting.
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B
But. And it's just software updates to your headphones. Like, that's the coolest part. Right?
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A
Oh, wow.
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B
But yeah, I mean, and I wouldn't worry too much about it being a little bit higher.
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A
Right.
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B
Because it's only a few years.
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A
Right.
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B
And there's just noise in the system in general.
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A
Right. Yeah. I would think that you'd want to do this for a few days in a row before you get like a real baseline.
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B
Exactly.
- [25:34]
A
This is the clinical version. And you can actually compare yourself to other people that have like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's that you were showing me. How does that Work.
- [25:42]
B
So we have a data set of thousands of people.
- [25:45]
A
Right.
- [25:46]
B
And for some of them, we even have like MRI and blood biomarkers and other things like that. And that's how we essentially train the system. But then we can take your results, which you can see here in red, and we can compare it to other individuals. In this case, we're comparing you to other individual. Like our mean and standard deviation for. For average.
- [26:03]
A
Right.
- [26:04]
B
For normal neurotypical individuals.
- [26:06]
A
Right.
- [26:06]
B
But then we can, for example, cut the subset down to just people with Parkinson's or just people with Alzheimer's. And we can see are your markers, you know, in those zones. Right. Now, the key thing here is that with two minutes of data or one minute data that we use with you, we're not going to be able to detect that.
- [26:22]
A
Right, right.
- [26:23]
B
But if we have months worth of your data, we can average all that data together and see if you're trending in this direction. And this is more for the clinical version, Right, right. On the consumer side, we try to stay away from clinical because obviously there's far more regulation there. But, you know, you can start to essentially see these trends change.
- [26:42]
A
Got it. And so on the clinical versions. So at our clinics, at Next Health, yeah, we are going to lean into brain training and also cognitive evaluation so we can help people get better over time. And so this clinical version will be incredibly useful to us to see how are the programs actually working. For sure. And we can track people once a quarter, once even monthly as they come in to do this test with us. But then they can also, if they wanted to buy the consumer version for themselves.
- [27:14]
B
Exactly. And actually that's how we work with clinics right now.
- [27:17]
A
Got it.
- [27:18]
B
So they use the cognitive snapshot. That's what this is. When they come to the clinic, not only is it good, a record for where they're at right now, but it sometimes can even inform the treatment. So, for example, you can see here, your anxiety resilience was a little bit low. So what we can do is then say, you know what, you would probably benefit from using cryotherapy or an ice bath. Right. That's known to increase anxiety resilience. And then that informs the treatment for the day they take the treatment, they do a cognitive snapshot after, and then they say, did this treatment actually impact you beneficially?
- [27:50]
A
Right.
- [27:50]
B
And if not, then maybe that's not the right solution for you. Because our bodies are so different.
- [27:55]
A
Right? Yeah.
- [27:56]
B
And then on top of that, they take. They buy one of the systems, they take it home, they Use it day over day. And when their markers go out of range, that's actually when they go back to the clinic. So instead of getting like, instead of going back every three months, they might go back when their markers are out of range. And that's when you, the clinic are getting the best results. Like, hey, maybe that's when their blood sugar is out of range. And so taking a blood sample today is probably the best thing. Right. Maybe that's when they're pre symptomatic for migraines. Right. And so that's a good time to take an mri, see what's going on, what happened recently. And so it gives more information to the user and to the clinic for better treatment.
- [28:34]
A
Yeah, for sure. And then the consumer version, which is the same device, but there's an app. Right. And this app gives you your brain age. So it also. What other metrics does this one give you?
- [28:46]
B
Yeah, so it gives you your brain age, which is the one that's the most popular right now. Cognitive strain, or how much intensity your brain has gone through throughout the day. Your cognitive speed, which is how fast you're thinking. Right. So are you a little foggy today or are you really sharp and that lets you reflect back on like what has happened recently that is changing this cognitive state.
- [29:07]
A
Yeah.
- [29:08]
B
And then the last one is mental recovery. How much did your brain recover from essentially the sleep that you did last night?
- [29:14]
A
Yeah. And this can also be done. All those metrics from a one minute test. Yeah, got it. And then say you want to train your brain. What are the different training protocols that you have in the app?
- [29:25]
B
Yeah, so we have two kind of like training protocols. The first one is a system that essentially lets you control this little rocket with your brain.
- [29:32]
A
Right.
- [29:33]
B
So whenever you focus, it exercises. Kind of like you were saying, you know, you want that plasticity to move in the right direction. So this helps the plasticity for focus move in the right direction. The second one is a meditation system so you can meditate. It helps track your focus as you're meditating, tells you where you're out of depth and need to come back into it. And then that way you can iterate and continue to improve your meditation session.
- [29:57]
A
Got it. And you're saying soon there'll be a deep sleep protocol as well Added.
- [30:01]
B
Yeah.
- [30:01]
A
So you're just adding protocols as you come up with the algorithms to see what is really working for people.
- [30:07]
B
Exactly, exactly. That's the coolest part because it's software. So you get one product, you're paying for a Premium headphone. But then you're getting new updates every month, right? It's, you know, I mean, I'm happy I got them.
- [30:21]
A
And they're pretty nice headphones too, for sure. This episode was brought to you by nextel, a health optimization and longevity clinic located in Los Angeles, Manhattan and soon to be opening in Montecito, Nashville, Miami and and many other cities in the United states and Canada. NextHealth is the apple store of wellness where you can optimize your health span and lifespan using cutting edge technology. I actually founded NextHealth eight years ago to give my patients a place to go, get extensive biomarker testing done and provide them with all the tools that I use to get my health in order. The longevity circuit and NextHealth using hyperbaric oxygen, sauna, cryotherapy and LED light is a game changer. In addition, the doctors at NextHealth measure thousands of biomarkers and put into place a longevity optimization plan using advanced tools like ozone plasma exchange and peptides. Go to www.nexthealth to check it out. Where do you see, you know, in 10 years, maybe even five years, where do you see kind of this world headed of brain sensing and technologies like this? Do you think it's going to be as ubiquitous as like Fitbits and Apple watches?
- [31:40]
B
I think it's going to be more ubiquitous, right? Maybe not in five years, but in 10 years. And the reason I say that is I already see it happening with our partners, right? Like with the dod. They want to do something that is, you know, pre deployment all the way to veteranship, right? So pre deployment, you know, you have a person who's a recruit, they're using their nurble powered headphones just as their normal headset, right? Then they go into service. And then while in service, they're wearing helmets. It's the same account, right? So we can see their brain before they went in, we can see it as they're in service. In service, it protects them from traumatic brain injuries. We know how much shock damage they received and we can pull them out of the field before it becomes permanent. And then as they become veterans, they might have AirPods that have Neurable technology in it. And now it's tracking their brain health as they're becoming veterans, Are we seeing early signs of dementia? Are we seeing early signs of depression? And it's essentially your entire life and value chain. We're able to track these key conditions of your brain.
- [32:45]
A
Is the device able to also pick up concussive head injuries or even non concussive head injury. Because I'm thinking about kids sports. I mean, there lots of kids are in football, soccer, they're getting hit in the head constantly, and it's, should we take them out of the game or not? Like, people don't know. Right. Unless they have a concussion, usually the kids just go right back into the game. Do you think a device like this could help on the field?
- [33:12]
B
Absolutely. I mean, not right now, just to be honest with you. Right. But the work we're doing with the Department of Defense is for that. Right. So even just an artillery shot creates shockwaves that impact your brain. It's called a blast pressure event. Right. One step further of that is a concussive event for somebody on the field. Right. Or CTE in combat sports. Right. And so you can imagine in the future, you have combat sports individuals just wearing, like, a patch behind their ear. Right. Or a. Or your child wearing a football helmet that has brain sensors in it. And when we see a certain amount of damage occurring, which is what we're doing right now with these soldiers, we can tell them, all, right, now's the right time to pull them off the field. Then we can track the recovery and say, okay, we don't want them doing hip practice. They can do other types of practice. They can throw the ball. They can. You know, there's a lot of other drills they can do until these markers reach their normal baseline again.
- [34:03]
A
Right.
- [34:04]
B
And then that way we're able to keep athletes. Or in the case of soldiers, Right. We're able to keep these individuals at their highest performing level for longer.
- [34:13]
A
Right.
- [34:13]
B
Because you spend so much time, money, into their skill set, you don't want to ruin that. Plus, obviously their livelihood, which is even more important.
- [34:21]
A
Right, right, right. Okay. So technology is incredible. How does the person listening to this get started with this? What's the kind of the protocol that they would do to, like, get set up with this? And how would they start using it practically?
- [34:36]
B
Yeah. I mean, first thing is you just go to our website, pick up a device. Right. Nurble.com and then you go home and you just use it like a normal headphone.
- [34:44]
A
Okay.
- [34:45]
B
That's the coolest part. Right. We recommend people to do a cognitive snapshot every morning.
- [34:49]
A
Okay.
- [34:50]
B
But then the rest of the day, you just put it on, listen to music, you do podcasts, you do work as you're doing work. It'll give you a notification to take a break.
- [34:58]
A
Right.
- [34:58]
B
If you want biofeedback to keep you focused, it does that automatically, et cetera. Right.
- [35:03]
A
So as you're just doing your normal everyday stuff, it's still working in the background.
- [35:07]
B
Exactly.
- [35:08]
A
It's picking up signals. It's adding to its data set. It's giving you feedback.
- [35:12]
B
Yep. You hit start session when you're about to use them, records all that data, and then we give you all that feedback after your session, essentially.
- [35:21]
A
Okay. And then say someone wants to do what you did, which is reverse their brain age by 10 years. You mentioned a few techniques there. I'd love to kind of give people a protocol or a list of items that they can do for sure. Creatine. Right. So, you know, from my research, it's about 8 grams of creatine a day. Is that what you're taking?
- [35:39]
B
Yeah. I mean, so I was normally taking five. Right. And the other thing I discovered too, is that it's very customized per individual. Right. So, you know, I created a list of all the things that I could try out.
- [35:50]
A
Okay.
- [35:50]
B
I went from 5 grams to 10 grams, and that dropped my brain age. It was awesome. Right.
- [35:55]
A
That's incredible.
- [35:56]
B
I then started taking lion's mane. Didn't do anything for me.
- [35:59]
A
Right.
- [35:59]
B
But then I took Reishi and it dropped it even more. Right. But lion's mane worked really well for my roommate. Right. And so what we found out is that there, you know, and people have known this. Your biology is very unique.
- [36:11]
A
Right.
- [36:12]
B
And so I was able to essentially try these different things out and see how they affected me personally. You know, I started doing. Exercise was a huge one. Sleep was an enormous one.
- [36:21]
A
Right.
- [36:23]
B
I've been managing my sleep a lot more than I used to in the past. Right. But these are all things that help my brain age.
- [36:28]
A
Yeah. What are a few of the other ones? I would love to give people more. More things to try. Big believer in mushrooms and creatine. What about omegas? Did you test those?
- [36:38]
B
Since I already take omegas, I haven't tested them from the delta, the change.
- [36:44]
A
Right.
- [36:44]
B
But omegas is something that I've heard of before. Some people use melatonin before they go to sleep, or magnesium. I haven't tested those things out, but every couple weeks I try to change the protocol. And then that way I see what is helping, what isn't helping.
- [37:01]
A
Yeah. And there's a whole world out there of nootropics that people are trying now. There are peptides for your brain, like sealank and cmax that people could also try as well. And what I love about this is n of one you're knowing and you're getting data on what's working for you so you don't keep wasting time and money on things that don't work.
- [37:21]
B
Exactly.
- [37:22]
A
Right. And so although omegas probably have other benefits besides just brain health and reducing inflammation as well, there's other things you can be tracking. But if you're gonna spend a lot of money on a peptide for your brain and it's not creating any positive movement in your brain age, I would say maybe you don't wanna do that.
- [37:38]
B
Right. And I think that's the direction that we're going in with medicine.
- [37:42]
A
Right.
- [37:42]
B
I think there's two core directions. One is that we're finally moving to preventative care. The reason preventative care didn't work is because no one wants to go to the doctor enough times for it to
- [37:52]
A
matter and the doctor doesn't have enough time to really even talk about it.
- [37:54]
B
Exactly. And wearable devices can tell you when to go to the doctor because you see your baseline changes. So I see that thing happening. 1. But then the second thing is that we're going toward medicine that is now instead of N of a thousand to n of 1, it's like we're truly personalizing it. Right. And that's the right direction. It sounds kind of backwards, but like the honest truth is like your biology is yours. Right. People react differently to different peptides, we have different receptors in our body, et cetera. So I'm a big believer that medical will catch up to wearables because that is the future of how we're going to design medicine.
- [38:31]
A
Yeah. And it's going to happen whether, you know, the traditional medical establishment does it or not. Because when people have access to devices and their own data, they're going to do exactly what you did, which is these end of one experiments. And they're going to move the needle for themselves and they're going to tell other people about it and it's going to keep happening. It's a virtuous cycle and we're seeing that a lot with wearables, also with AI. Now people are asking, you know, chatgpt or Claude, what should I do with this data? And they're doing it and then they're seeing movement in a positive direction. And I think it's a great world that we're living in now. Finally you have control over your own biology. Right?
- [39:07]
B
Yeah. It's completely going to flip the head of like, you know, AI is going to eat the world. But sometimes in ways we don't even
- [39:13]
A
know exactly, exactly is there with your applications. You said there's An API and an SDK. So your brain data is basically available to you as well. Right. So you can even access this through the SDK and the API.
- [39:29]
B
For sure. For sure. It's called Research Kit. We are already working with tons of research organizations and clinics to give access to essentially your individual brain data within the individual. So the research doesn't. They don't have access to everyone's data. They just have access to the data they consented with and are part of their users. But that's a big part of our mission.
- [39:51]
A
Right.
- [39:51]
B
Because once again, how do we remove these surprises from our brain?
- [39:55]
A
Right.
- [39:56]
B
And we're not experts in Alzheimer's, we're not experts in Parkinson's, but let's go find people who are. Let's use our strength and let's use their strength and then let's bring them together to really solve some of the biggest problems that we have out there.
- [40:09]
A
Yeah. This is gonna be fantastic because it finally gives even the field of neurology another tool to use now to see if there's gonna be improvement in the right direction. And, you know, I'm really excited about a world where you add even more data to the consumer devi the consumer app, because I think consumers would want to know, like, are they headed towards Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, and are the routines and habits and things that they're doing moving them away from that as well? And so I think that's going to be an incredible world that we live in where people finally know that they're making a difference in their own health for sure.
- [40:46]
B
And actually a lot of that is with individuals like yourself.
- [40:49]
A
Yeah, right.
- [40:50]
B
Like, it is the clinics that we work with.
- [40:51]
A
Right.
- [40:52]
B
Those are the people who are informing. What are the valuable biomarkers that we should be tracking? What are the protocols people should be testing? Right. And so we try to work closely with clinicians to really make sure that what we're building actually provides value.
- [41:09]
A
Right.
- [41:10]
B
So we couldn't do it with individuals like yourself.
- [41:12]
A
Yeah. You know, in fact, at our clinics in Mex Health, we're leaning into brain health now. And one of the technologies that we are offering is called transcranial magnetic stimulation. Are you familiar with it?
- [41:23]
B
For sure? Yeah.
- [41:24]
A
It can be very powerful for ptsd, anxiety, depression. And I could see a world where that is combined with home monitoring and home testing and home training as well, and also putting into place routines and habits to improve someone's brain health. Even fixing their metabolic health improves their brain health for sure. And they'll self see the value of this as they move forward in these protocols.
- [41:50]
B
Absolutely. Couldn't have said it better myself.
- [41:54]
A
This is fantastic. And I'm really excited about what you're doing and I really feel that people should get on the program. It's time to start looking at your brain data. Right. And if you're wearing aura or you're wearing a whoop or any type of tracking device and you're tracking your physical data, we live in a world where you can track your brain data. Now, it's just, this is mind blowing. So I'm really looking forward to doing this on myself, offering it to our patients. And yeah, I'm a huge fan of
- [42:22]
B
your work and I look forward to collaborating through that process.
- [42:26]
A
Right.
- [42:26]
B
Because honestly, it's through that collaboration, your strengths, our strengths, that you get the best results.
- [42:33]
A
And what's the cost on a device like this?
- [42:35]
B
It's $500.
- [42:36]
A
Yeah.
- [42:37]
B
I mean, it's a no brainer, honestly.
- [42:39]
A
Right, right. It's such a, it's not super expensive. And especially the value to the expense of this is like, is there a fee for the app? Is there a monthly fee? No app is free.
- [42:51]
B
Yeah. So we make our money through licensing to hardware companies.
- [42:55]
A
Right.
- [42:56]
B
So because of that, the app is free and it gets updated consistently. I mean, it's like, like I said. Yeah, it's a no brainer.
- [43:05]
A
And is there a world where these sensors get even put into like meta Ray Ban glasses for for example?
- [43:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's up to, you know, and this is, I guess my, what I would say is like my call out, you know, if you have like a headphone company, an earbud company, an air or glasses company, like reach out to us.
- [43:22]
A
Yeah.
- [43:23]
B
Like we work across the band and we want to put neurotechnology in the devices people wear.
- [43:30]
A
Right.
- [43:31]
B
Because it enables this to solve these problems faster.
- [43:36]
A
All right, so Zuckerberg, if you're listening out there, let's get these in the glasses. I'm a big fan of their glasses as well. I find them to be incredibly useful. And so this would be great to just have the neuro sensing technology in the same glasses. It would be fantastic.
- [43:52]
B
Absolutely.
- [43:52]
A
In the meanwhile, I'm getting the headset. So this is great. I'm really looking forward to working with you in the future. And I really appreciate you coming on the podcast to tell people about the work you're doing and making this type of technology, which is, I would have thought for years this would not be available or only available in the hospital, for example. Or clinics that it's available in the home device. So this is fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today.
- [44:17]
B
Thank you. Thank you. I'm honored too.
- [44:18]
A
Yeah, thanks. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps us support all of our efforts. I also to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to see seek their guidance.