Making the Invisible Visible: The Future of Brain-Computer Interfaces

Richard Zwicky: Hi everyone, it's Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we explore them all. And actually, just before we get going, as a quick note to listeners, who often have heard me say something around this phrase, I have a new book that's coming out today on the day this podcast airs, June 20th, which is entitled, I am the only normal person in my universe. And its perspective on relational intelligence which is something we cover frequently on the show and in fact touches into every area of mental health. Look forward to people reading it giving you feedback and continue to learn more and share more. So on to the topic of today one it's an issue which is really close to where my interest lies which can we finally measure the mind and today's guest is really interesting for me to talk to you about this because Dr. Dr. Ramses Alcaide sits at the intersection of several themes that we've been exploring which is behavioral prediction, emotional context, mental health measurement, agency and the future of self-standing. And so one of the things that we're going to be discussing is how do we move beyond technology and whether better measurement ultimately makes us more aware. Welcome aboard the show Ramsey's.

Ramses Alcaide: Hey, Thank you for having me, Rich Really excited to be here. Big fan of the work that you've done and really understanding, the emotional wellness and mental wellness of an individual and how that all comes together. We're all one big system, And so, how do we take care of that? Mhm.

Richard Zwicky: That is fundamentally it. We are one big system. We're part of it. Even though we're autonomous and I go by the philosophy I own me and you own you and it's our responsibility capability of each other that governs how we inter operate. We are part of one system. And throughout history you've measured health through observable signals blood pressure, heart rate, sugar, oxygen levels.

Ramses Alcaide: I can totally hear it.

Richard Zwicky: But mental health is the black box. It's that piece inside of us that we really don't understand because it is ourselves and we can't stand outside of ourselves to measure it that comfortably. We can Did I Sorry. I'm going to take a few second pause because my screen came up as mute. Do you hear me? Okay, I'm going to go back to that. For most of human history, we've measured physical health through really easy to measure signals blood pressure, blood sugar, oxygen levels, and when it comes to mental health though, it's a black box. We can't stand outside of ourselves and measure these signals easily. Your work and your work at Nurible, which is the company you've ounded and run, is looking at ways to understand what if the brain does provide or can provide a more direct signal to measure. Tell me a bit about that work and how you're applying it.

Ramses Alcaide: That's a great question. So truly the biggest thing, we have heart rate trackers, we got eye trackers, we got all these systems for tracking our body. But the really interesting part is that the most invisible organ in our body is our brain. And we have nothing to track that, And I'll give you an example. You can, for example, pick up Parkinson's in an individual with the Apple picks up their tremor. But, that's only 10 years into the disease. With the brain, you can actually see something called a beta response, which gets worse and worse year over year, a decade before you even start to get the tremors. And what that is that's your body actually fighting the tremor. Your brain is a system designed to hide disease because you don't want to be the animal in the savannah that's limping or that's showing these kinds of symptoms. And so during that battle of it hiding, that's what you can pick up with a brain computer interface. And I'll give you just one more example, which is we did this study. It's a nature paper that you can look up, but they were able to pick up u eyetracking data, heart rate data, all these kind of sensors. And they were trying to detect when a person was about to get into an accident due to fatigue. They were able to pick it up within one to five seconds with these other sensors. But with the brain, they were able to pick it up 30 minutes, sometimes hours beforehand, right? And it's that battle that your brain is going through that is what gives us super predictive capabilities that no other wearable has. Making the invisible visible Yeah,

Richard Zwicky: We had Todd Coleman from Stanford on a couple of months ago, and he was talking about how the brain gut connection and the signals that get passed back and forth, especially during sleep, are able to be indicative of a lot of the conditions and information which measuring the brain alone sometimes doesn't surface. How do you contemplate looking at the other organs and inputs?

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Ramses Alcaide: I mean what I would say the interesting thing is that the most invisible organs are the most important organs to look at, there is a gut brain connection very difficult to understand in real time. And same thing with your brain, these other systems that we see our heart rate, our movements, our voice changing. That's really what happens like I said after the issue, right? Your brain can't compensate, I think that they're both highly important to look at. It's just how do we develop systems to be able to track those and be predictive? And now we're starting to finally because they've been so invisible, people haven't really thought about it, right? Everyone has heard of I'm sure in your podcast u health span right how healthy you can live lifespan how long you can live right but very few people I'm sure have even heard of the word brain span and the first one to go out of those three is your brain right it doesn't matter how healthy you are if you're starting to get early memory loss dementia all these kinds of conditions that are impacting you at the end of the day nothing else matters

Richard Zwicky: Because we think of our brains as ourselves. We can't think apart from our brains even though our bodies are actually the input and the senses that are bringing it all there. It's a list. And that's one of the challenges where people have with mental health is when we're examining the wound that is the result of let's say an abuse or a trauma earlier on. We can't see that injury but we can feel it inside our brain. But confronting it is the harshest thing because it confronts our sense of self. Now many people assume they know themselves because know that becomes a whole philosophical debate. Do they know their thoughts? Let's for a moment think we go with the angle that they know their thoughts at least in the conscious pattern. As a neuroscientist though, much what drives human behavior is actually happening outside of consciousness and how much of that is measurable?

Ramses Alcaide: That's a great question. And I would say the majority of what happens outside of consciousness. Most of what consciousness is coping. We have trauma we have things that happen and coping doesn't necessarily need to be a bad word right it's just we cannot function as human beings if we carry our traumas consistently as you see with people who have to deal with those traumas in order to become functional human beings. It's very difficult right challenges can go in one of two directions. They can either be things that hold us back or things that make us grow, And so our brain is designed to cope, to heal. And the unfortunate truth is that doesn't always work out for people, And so how much of it is trackable? If you look at the work that's been done with a ton of, research labs across the world you can look at PTSD with something called electronphilography or MRIs or fMRIs, all these different brain imaging techniques. You can see there's so much that you can see, right? I mentioned PTSD, blast pressure, like explosions that happen that damage the brain, right? You have depression anxiety. There's a lot of things that you can start to capture with these types of devices. But there's two kind of key problems that have really prevented the technology from delivering change. One is that people don't go to a laboratory consistently enough to get one of these device on their head. Requires gel, all this other stuff.

Richard Zwicky: Most aren't even aware they could do that,

Ramses Alcaide: That's true, too. And even

Richard Zwicky: Do you think it's inconvenient or

Ramses Alcaide: But even if you could like the honest truth is that you're not going to because it's so inconvenient, It's like we create this barrier that prevents that from happening, right? That's a good question.

Richard Zwicky: Do you think it's the fear of knowing? A lot of people don't go to the doctor because they're afraid of knowing, Right.

Ramses Alcaide: I think it's obviously both, but at the end of the day, if it's not convenient, you're always and especially when you're in a vulnerable mental state, you're going to find the excuse not to do it, and I don't remember what book it was, but the key takeaway is obviously you have to be motivated enough to do it, which if you are worried about even knowing is already going to be a blocker, but you have to have the means to do it. And that also means the technology, even just getting into a car, driving somewhere, being open enough to talk to your professional about something that's very vulnerable to you.

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Ramses Alcaide: And that's where I really believe that wearable technology has a huge benefit because it can be delivered to you. It's private to you and then it can give you the potential to have a little bit more courage once you have that data. Obviously, you have to be open to receiving that data. But give you the courage once you receive that data to help you continue to take steps forward.

Richard Zwicky: And giving people the hope though that taking the step forward is a path towards betterment and improvement because for some a lot of people are afraid that knowing means it brings the end. Right? They know they're ill. They know they have this pain, but they're afraid of confronting it because as soon as they confront it, it becomes real and it's tangible. It has to overcome. And I'm not speaking against it. I'm actually saying how do we help demystify that? Because again, when we get to the brain, we get to the mind, we get to ourselves, right? My arm could be broken, it could be something happened, but there's a finite my brain is a different matter. I don't know how to quantify it. How do we help that?

Ramses Alcaide: That's a great question. I can just give you a story, but at the end of the day, that's hopefully like psychologists are the ones who are better able to tackle that type of issue, But all I know is that when I was in grad school, we created this sensor for helping people track their water usage. And if we first off, they didn't even know about the sensor. Nobody asked, "Am I using a lot of water?" Right? And the concept here is like nobody asked, "Is my brain am I being healthy? Am I burning myself out?" Right? And then we had them be able to see the data once a day. And that data, showed people how much water they were using and how wasteful they were being. And it dropped water usage by about 20%. Which is good. We're happy. And then we started showing them that data in real time. Every time they turned on the water, we could show them essentially how they're going beyond their limits, So essentially for our brains, that's like our brain battery, how many days are you overexhausting your brain battery, your mental wellness, your mental well-being, right? And what we saw is that we saw water reductions between 80 to 90%. Right? And it's just one of these things where I believe that the way we do it is because a lot of fear that comes from individuals is the fear of not having enough data and feeling that data is going to cause them more pain, And so how do we communicate it in a simple easy way in a friendly way where it's private and then from there let them see that data in a way that's real time so they also understand the impact of the choices that they make. That's the best I could do. But that's a fantastic question. And we're probably going to need three glasses of wine and four other people on this call,

Richard Zwicky: I'm always a game. But you raised something there which you use waters analogy but with the digital explosion that's been happening the opportunity for 24/7 digital stimulation is there right even during our sleep there is still the buzzing the noise the impact the reminders going off the alerts you name From a neuroscience perspective, what's this doing to the brain? Right.

Ramses Alcaide: I mean it's just one of these things where it depends on the notification is what I would say, So if it's like a ping in your pocket because friends are liking it, and you're engaging with that content, you're just getting overstimulated by dopamine, It feels good, but it's not necessarily good for your brain. And then if it's just these constant buzzes of alerts and things that you have to do in your life, it's one of these things where it ends up creating a huge amount of stress and cortisol response. We have this key problem in society right now. And this is actually why I turn off my notifications most of the day because our bodies are not meant to be in a high stress state continuously. We're meant to, be in the savannah. We see something scary, we run away, we fight it, and then from there we go back into rest and digest, right? And so we're creating these worlds right now where over stimulation of our mental state whether it's through dopamine or whether it's through cortisol or whether it's through any hormone that's affecting us it essentially builds resistance in our brains and then when we don't have that stimulation happening it causes longer impact issues across our body the way we think.

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Ramses Alcaide: Hormones are how your body changes, and so that's really where I see the biggest issue happening and at least what we're trying to do with product that we have in the market is how do we let you at least see the consequences of that so you can make slightly better decisions and it even if it just means for one hour you're going to put your phone down and maybe do a meditative session on the app or something like that's better, And then how do you keep slowly walking your way in that direction?

Richard Zwicky: And on that top on that aspect we often talk about the brain as a muscle. We have to use it to explore it to develop it to make it stronger and when we have the const our bodies naturally have evolved to having that period of sleep and rest which is low activity but not as you touched upon it we used to be on the savannah once the fear when the danger was gone we could relax we don't really have that relaxation anymore which is our brains are being worked more could this make them stronger and help fight off certain effects of aging or is it likely we'll wear out sooner through overuse.

Ramses Alcaide: I mean fantastic questions and just even if you bring this off the record your questions have been just incredible stellar huge prop been on a lot of podcasts and

Richard Zwicky: Thank you.

Ramses Alcaide: This is definitely production Yeah,

Richard Zwicky: We have to take a pause because I'll ask Brasa to edit it out.

Ramses Alcaide: You can ask it again. I'm just genuinely impressed. So, yeah.

Richard Zwicky: No, we can answer the question. I can edit out that little that tribute. Thank you.

Ramses Alcaide: Problem. So the thing about the brain and the body and this is something that a running coach of mine told me once. He said there's no such thing as overrunning. There's only under resting. Your body can handle so much. It's truly a miraculous thing. I mean, you can see individuals like David Gogggins or there's individuals who do expeditions in polar caps and everything like that. It's truly amazing what our body can handle and do. Not saying you should go do that. I'm just saying that it is possible, But the only way that you gain strength is through rest, Whether that's learning, the best learning happens when you're sleeping, right? The best growth of your body when growth hormone gets released happens when you're sleeping. And so I think that the issue is not so much that people want to improve and reach bigger goals. It's that we've gotten to a direction where rest is the missing component to that performance growth long-term. That leads to burnout, depression, anxiety, all these other issues because our entire nervous system is just shot. So can it lead to growth? Yes. Actually, that's something I care a lot about my own professional growth. So, I do try to push my cognitive capabilities, but I also understand that I need to give myself the time to recover Mhm. Yeah.

Richard Zwicky: For anybody who wonders about that, some days you sit in the chair, you're working hard on documents or anything, and you walk away exhausted, but you haven't did anything physical. And other days you're outside, chopping wood, piling, doing building something, and you're physically exhausted. They're both signals that we need that recovery. And we don't recognize that constant low-grade stimulation is driving us towards burnout which how is there a way do you see a way in the future where those sensors that you're working on help people understand when they're reaching that level of burnout just like we have signals let's say for sound which you're exceeding the maximum threshold for your capacity. Or some people with ADHD like me can't do them for five minutes

Ramses Alcaide: No, for and just to touch on that analogy, one thing that we always ask people is how many push-ups can you do? Probably 10, 20. We're all right, so how many push-ups do you think your brain do? It's like, you can't do push-ups forever. Your brain can't continue executing at a high performance level forever, right? Exactly.

Richard Zwicky: Because something will float by and distract me.

Ramses Alcaide: And that's actually one of the core value propositions of the product, which is it helps you monitor your well- helps you monitor your focus. You can see, hey, it actually one of the best things is that we can detect when your brain is starting to get tired. And normally, you don't feel tired until hours after your brain has been tired because when you feel tired, that's your physical tiredness, right? Your brain has been tired for hours beforehand. So, we can pick it up right when your brain is tired. You go for a 10-minute walk, clears the adena sign from your brain, which is what makes you feel tired and is your body essentially responding to continuous activation. And then you come back and you actually have more capability, more performance, But the thing is, how do you identify that? When do those moment happens? Because they're invisible to you. And that's really what we designed this product to be. It's like a productivity tool for your well-being, right?

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Ramses Alcaide: And instead of just a productivity tool to get more hours out it's how do you use being to actually give you more performance?

Richard Zwicky: Do you see that being something that people will have let's say integrated and just using as the analogy into the Apple Watch where we have our three rings around activity and there'd be a fourth ring which is our signal of we're reaching our threshold. Right?

Ramses Alcaide: I mean, and that's kind of what we have inside the app right now. If you use the headphones, they track something called your cognitive strain throughout the day. So, how much strain are you accumulating? And once you reach a certain level, it's actually better for you to So, we take a break notifications. We have cognitive strain tracking. We can even see what is your mental recovery the next day. So, should you use today to do emails or should you use today to work on your hardest project, these are all things that can help you better manage and

Richard Zwicky: And that can be incredibly informative and

Ramses Alcaide: And then which days were the ones that created the most difficulty for you, How do you manage yourself? We manage athletes, but you're an athlete for the brain.

Richard Zwicky: Helpful to people also. But do you find it's more applicable for people at certain ages certain groups, or is it really reflective of at the stage you are, this is your optimal state? Yeah, it's productivity,

Ramses Alcaide: You mean productivity wise or personas? Yeah.

Richard Zwicky: Learning ages. So let's say secondary school versus university versus somebody who might be coping with early stage dementia.

Ramses Alcaide: I mean I think we see three main personas that are most attracted to the product. The first one is individuals who want to be the best cognitive executors out there and at the end of the day they know that data is going to help them do that. And what we do is we give them a lens of the data that they don't have which is when do you need to recover right and at the end of the day that makes them better at executing but then they feel better they don't feel depressed they don't have all these kinds of bigger issues the second persona is individuals who care about their wellness just where is my mind at right now should I be pushing or should I be pulling right should I take a two-minute break for myself right now because it's so hard to really your own mental state. For example, we have a ton of people who will tell us " I don't feel stressed and they just have chronic stress." they're just so used to it that they don't even process it, It's crazy. And then the third persona is individuals who just care about their brain health and they just want to know if something is wrong with their brain when it's wrong. And so those are kind of the people that have been attracted to the product and we try to position it the best we can for each one of them.

Richard Zwicky: And one of the challenges for any analytics which is basically where this lies is the baselines establishing what is a normal for an individual relative to everyone else. Health. We're not really trying to measure intelligence or that aspect of it because it's the brain health and performance relative to your normal or current state. But to ascribe a state of normal, we have to get some measurements done to create that baseline. How you do

Ramses Alcaide: I mean I would say There's baselines that you can get across populations and then baselines that are individual, right? So we start with baselines that are across population. So for example, this brain response called the alpha peak frequency. It's like the heart rate variability or HRV, but for the brain, It's essentially like your brain speed. It's highly tied to the health of the age of your brain, things like that. And on average, higher is better, right? But two people might have completely healthy brains. One person's alpha peak frequency will be lower and another person's will be higher. It's genetically tied too. But what we do know is that on average this is the zone that represents healthy and this is the zone that represents Are you at the bottom of the frequency or the top of the frequency range? And so we start by first looking at these global variables to understand where you are healthwise. But at the end of the day, for example, in our app, we can tell you what we believe is the age of your brain, but we only do that after a week's worth of data, That's a lot of data, right? You need to baseline it. You need to track it. We need to remove all the moments where there's tons of noise because that's going to create issues. And then only after a week's worth of data are you able to provide somebody that level of value. So, one of the key things that we try to do is just put on your headphones, use them like normal headphones, right?

00:25:00

Ramses Alcaide: Listen to a podcast, watch a movie, do what you normally do with your audio equipment and then just make sure you sync it to your phone. It's going to take a while. Sometimes for some of the things we're looking at, sometimes it can take a month. And you want to track that as a rolling average because that rolling average is what tells you, am I rapidly trending toward neuro degeneration or am I doing completely fine, right? And so there is a habit that you have to build with this type of tech. Yeah, I mean we've been fortunate.

Richard Zwicky: To get enough the comparative data and being able to also find the individuals within the data sets that you've got to be able to refine those baselines further must be fascinating.

Ramses Alcaide: We get to work with the US Army and a whole bunch of different labs and we've gotten thousands of people worth of data at this point and it enables us to establish these baselines help with calibration because each individual's brain is you got to calibrate the algorithms for them individually. So all of these kinds of things we've been able to work with and build because of the partnerships that we have not I would say as deeply as we would like to, right?

Richard Zwicky: No. Are you able to discern a difference between the emotional and the mental activity?

Ramses Alcaide: Picking up emotions tends to be far more difficult with technology like EEG primarily because it's a lot of the same responses that you see in your brain for excitement are the same ones that you see for being anxious or because think about it when you're excited for something you're looking into the future you're essentially anxious for that moment to happen versus anxious for that moment to not happen Right. And so a lot of the same responses happen in that way. But I think that's where some of the new techniques are coming out that are going to help differentiate these things or hybridizing some of the data. I know that you're working on some technology on that as well. If there's a potential for us to collaborate, that would be incredible, too. Yeah.

Richard Zwicky: No, it's not going that's great and I'll wonderfully happily follow up on that. I was thinking more from the perspective of you referenced earlier about burnout and different levels of stress and those are both mental and emotional states that change. And so I was wondering how you discern between the two or does your data set allow you to discern between the two?

Ramses Alcaide: What we can of discern with is three things, So one is how anxious you are or how resilient you are to anxiety, right? Two is the stress levels that you're dealing with. Anxiety is being worried about something in the future. Stress is what's affecting you right now. Right? And then the next thing is your cognitive speed. How well is your brain processing? So what is really interesting is that you can have a stressful day where you're anxious about things and if you're in the right mental state and in a high performance state, stress isn't necessarily a bad thing. It gives you energy. It helps you execute. It lets you complete things. And so by tracking your cognitive speed, we're actually and looking at those variables, we're able to see are you managing it in a healthy way or are you managing in an unhealthy way? Is it turning into burnout or is it right now turning into motivation? Right? And eventually motivation turns into burnout

Richard Zwicky: And you mentioned that you've done some work with the US military and

Ramses Alcaide: If you don't throttle it, If you don't create that rest. But that's how we're looking at those variables right now.

Richard Zwicky: That you got data sets from thousands of individuals. When people see objective measurements of their brain performance does it validate what they feel or challenge it or does it open up doors for them to understand this is where I could explore more? Mhm.

Ramses Alcaide: It's usually the third one which is like this is I want to explore more right invalidates them the majority of the time where they say what you're right my sleep was poor right but then what they don't connect with is how does sleep connect with my performance or my being, right? And that's why we present things like you're at the age of your brain or your cognitive speed. It's like, my sleep has been poor, so my cognitive speed and my brain age are also showing up poor. And so, my age is 10 years older than my normal age, right? And that makes people realize, hey, these decisions have consequences because sometimes you don't see those decisions until much farther out, right?

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Ramses Alcaide: And that's where I think the biggest value comes, which is how do you take the data that you have now and understand how it's going to impact you in the future. And I think the biggest value comes from that site forward, the part that is invisible. You don't see your own aging until you look back at a picture from 10 years ago, and you're surprised. You're like, "Wow, I didn't notice that." It's like the frog boiling in the water. Never heard of that,

Richard Zwicky: And yet they've proven that's not true.

Ramses Alcaide: The frog doesn't know it's being cooked alive, right? Yeah.

Richard Zwicky: The frog knows to hop out. It's

Ramses Alcaide: That's why it's a story. Frogs aren't that dumb, right?

Richard Zwicky: They did some scientific chess and the frogs jumped. But I mean, I love this and I'm a big proponent of AI. I think it's an absolutely phenomenal tool and because of the work I did in analytics over the years, I look at and big data. I look at it as it's just, a better interface in many ways to what we've had already for 20 years. Just couldn't it took longer to get the information out. But people in general are afraid of being reduced to a collection of metrics in their predictability in their behavior. The re reality is we are predictable. We're a set of combinations and when you understand enough of them more and more things become predictable. What's nice about that is technology and AI can be trained to respond to us based on the individual. But there's also that fear of if we know too much about if they know too much about us, what happens? With the work you're doing, where does that concern lie?

Ramses Alcaide: I mean at least from our perspective so just one background here, my co-founder is a neuroethicist and data policy expert. So, we at least take privacy really seriously. We follow HIPPA standards. I think we're more than GDPR compliant at this point. I mean go through that audit fully but we work really hard to make sure that the identity of the data are kept separately and we do everything we can from that perspective from a grander point of view is I think that when it comes to the wearable space we've definitely evolved more than what we did with our phones we messed up we had privacy issues everywhere But at least in the wearable space, your aura ring or your Whoop doesn't go to your boss, we've really created this situation where your wearable becomes a personal device. And that's how we see it too, which is these are personal devices. They're meant for you to have the data, for you to make better educated decisions. And at the end of the day, it is going to make you a better employee because you're better at your mental health is better, right? But that's the fringe benefit of you taking good actions for your brain health. And that's essentially like how we want to keep positioning the technology.

Richard Zwicky: But I'd also argue that there's value in the organization knowing the group are stressed because we can't fight toxicity if we ignore it. And you as the individual may learn to cope, but if it's continuing to be inflicted, it's a problem,

Ramses Alcaide: And some of the organizations that we work with that we're doing pilots with for example, they'll ask a cohort of individuals and they'll say, "It's totally optional, but if you want, you can share your data anonymously, right? And we can get a third party to look at it." and it's just aggregated data and you can see, hey, the majority of your employees are sleepd deprived, highly stressed, and then the organization's able to make different decisions. But we try to make sure we do it in a way that once again deidentifies the individuals.

Richard Zwicky: And you touched upon your partner with ethics and what ethical lines cannot be crossed when interpreting brain activity.

Ramses Alcaide: I mean what I would say is luckily with non-invasive or non-surgical systems, you're not picking up thoughts like it's not thought reading. It's very much just large-scale changes in electrical activity that are associated to things like stress, cognitive load, etc. And obviously, there's a lot of sensitive things that can be pulled out of that. And at least for us, the lines that we're not going to cross is, nothing that harms people, So for example, the work we do with the US Army is really tracking a soldier's mental health and understanding, for example, if a shock wave impacts their brain, how much damage does that shock wave do? Those same biomarkers are in individuals who have Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and in combat sports with CTE and other things like that.

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Ramses Alcaide: And so to us it's like if we were going to do this in a normal population to do good for humankind, that's okay for us But as soon as it becomes something like kinetics or, something that can actually cause harm to another individual, that's where we draw the line.

Richard Zwicky: That's good. So, we are running out of time, but just two last questions I want to ask. In the work you've done, what have you learned? And this is philosophical as much as neuroscience. What have you learned about free will that's completely shocked you?

Ramses Alcaide: It's the crazy thing about free will is that I truly don't believe you're free to have that will. It's our brains who control us. But at the end of the day, the powerful thing is that the way you bring some level of control back is You have to present new data to your brain, We are an input system. Our nose, our hands, everything just inputs data continuously. And so, for example, if I have a bag of chips here on my table and a pile of carrots to the left of me, without data, I'm always probably going to grab the chips. They taste better. But if you just put the amount of calories next to it and then you show me how that's going to impact me five years from now, I'm going to make more times I'm going to make a better decision than I would if I didn't have that data. And that's where I think that the feedback system because of You get the probability system inside your brain changes because of that input and then you make different decisions. And so having that type of real-time data is really empowering.

Richard Zwicky: Then lastly, do you think we're closer to understanding what intelligence is? That's a different form of int,

Ramses Alcaide: Hopefully with AI I think there's with human intelligence I mean I wish people don't even know how memory gets formed fully these days. So, I mean, I don't know. We're still a long way out, but hopefully tracking every day data will help move us in a better direction.

Richard Zwicky: And hopefully we'll heed that information. So Ramse's people who want to learn more about your work and what you're doing in Neural and maybe get the chance at some point to try out the technology, how can they reach out

Ramses Alcaide: So, the best way is there's a LinkedIn for Nurable also an on top of that, my Instagram is just my name, Ramsay's Alcade, and I do some really fun experiments there. I'll walk on fire while recording my brain activity. I'll do a sauna or a different types of longevity type treatments and see how that affects my different markers. And just on top of that, if you are interested in the product, go to our website, join our weight list. The last batch sold out. We're about to get ready to release the next batch and so join it and looking forward to getting everybody's feedback as well.

Richard Zwicky: Very cool. It's an exciting project and exciting data and information what we'll be able to do with it. Thanks so much for joining us today on High on Healthy, Ramsey's.

Ramses Alcaide: Thank you.

Richard Zwicky: And thanks everybody for listening.

Ramses Alcaide: Thank you.

Richard Zwicky: I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy and we'll be back again with you soon.