 Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to simulation. I'm your host Alan Sackian very excited to be talking about digital meditation Improving sustained attention. We have dr. David Ziggler joining us on the show. Hello. Hello. Thanks so much for coming on Of course. Yeah, happy to do it really excited for this has been a while since we met about three ish years ago We were yeah, we were coming into the Neuroscape office to look over the technology that we have this, you know On HoloLens. We had this meditation Application and it was really cool to be using augmented reality technologies working Exploring working with you guys at that time. Yeah, and you were still building a meditrain and now you actually have it published in nature human behavior I'm so excited to be showcasing a demo with you today For those that don't know David Ziggler's background. He's director of multimodal biosensing at Neuroscape and associate professional researcher in neurology at UCS One of his latest projects meditrain improved sustained attention in young adults through digital meditation in partnership with jack cornfield adam gazelli And zinga and you can find the links in the bio below to david's neuroscape profile as well as the meditrain profile on Neuroscape and the full paper in nature and david's twitter and neuroscape twitter as well All right, david, let's start things off with one of our favorite questions to ask our guests What are your thoughts on the direction of our world? Yeah, well complicated right complicated confusing a little bit worrisome at times But still hopeful. I mean today, you know, I just heard in the news. We have new leadership in england, right? So big changes there were you know, these things are Are concerning but at the same time, I think that you know, we were at a point where we're making all this amazing progress and science at Yeah So yeah, I mean it's it's a complicated time. So I think that um, but You know while a lot of things are worrying in the world. I just you know as sort of a scientist and somebody doing, you know Medically relevant research you just kind of have to forge ahead and hope for the best So what are the main principles you think we can embody to help our trajectory be on a more positive direction? That's a good question. I think um Well, I as a scientist again, I you know, I come back to As close as we can get to ground truth, right really looking at data believing in data believing in that there are actual, you know Quantifiable falsifiable things that are real in the world and we have to figure out what are what things are real And what aren't real and stick to the stuff that is real, right? I think that that's That's one of the most worrisome, you know Sort of trends that's to me happening in the world right now that we're ignoring truth, right? Yeah, it used to be that we would tell stories to our tribe because of inclusive fitness to help each other and now there's Stories being told rampantly for self-dealing purposes. Yeah, um propaganda misinformation all these types of things so we need that inclusiveness on a global level again and Technologies like meta-train help people feel the interconnectedness. Well, it can There's a debate about that, right? So that's one of the things we approach this that, you know, as you said I work at Neuroscape and that's a center where we're very much Trying to bridge neuroscience and technology because we think that we can use technology To both understand the brain better and also improve brain function But at the other, you know, there's a there's a debate raging about whether technology is good or bad for society, right? So We think and you know as we'll get into some of the technology that we've developed We think that if you apply it in the right way, you can't actually improve, you know Brain function and then also, you know, this will have sort of ripple effects to society more generally Yeah, there's that To the two perspective on neuroscience plus technology the The one is everyone's using the smartphones and the laptops and the dings booms beeps taking us away from the periods of sustained focus on Right on the creative endeavoring that we want to pursue And then there's technologies like meta-train that get people deeper into those states of Of sustained attention and interconnectedness unity these types of feelings So how can we limit the ones that are distracting and increase the ones that help us flourish? Yeah, or at least balance them balance them better. You fix some of the business plans to corrupt the corrupted business plans with the bad ones. Yeah Okay, let's talk about your journey. Um, yeah, where were you born? Where were you born? Uh, michigan in michigan southeastern michigan And then who were you growing up in the small town in michigan? How did you get interested in neuroscience? Yeah, interesting, um, you know growing up and and when I actually first went to college I wanted to be anything but a scientist so I was adamant that I would not want to go into science In my head for some reason, you know, I had equated like Science with going to medical school and doing this very sort of traditional journey And I didn't want, you know, I wanted I was sort of rebelling against that in a way And um, so I started off as you know college as a german and history major Um, I actually I took my first neuroscience based class my freshman year And the idea was I was going to take this It was called biosocial dimensions of behavior And I thought it would be an easy way to get my science credit out of the way Lo and behold the professor was amazing and inspired me and I fell in love from that point on with how the brain controls behavior So I've been trying to figure that out ever since so massive switch, you know after my first semester, but Yeah, well, what a what a pivotal moment in life trajectory having a really good professor getting really excited about the brain and behavior And then so then what about that led you the phd was at mit And so what how did that then Get you inspired because the the p was the phd on this unmasking neural mechanisms that account for age related changes in cognitive control Yeah, that was pretty much my my thesis for for my phd And like let's yeah, let's talk about that for a little bit in those cognitive neuro therapeutic interventions So the the neuro therapeutic piece didn't come until more recently when I when I came here to ucsf What I did is as a graduate student in my my phd training was really basic Not entirely basic research, but more largely basic research trying to figure out Um, what kind of brain brain changes happen as people get older? Also, I did some work with patients with parkinson's disease trying to develop new MRI technologies to see what's going on in the brains of these patients and difficult to image areas um, and then you know from there I came out here to that that was in Cambridge, boston, and then I came out here for my postdoc with adam zali and It was sometime in that first year We really sort of started transitioning from basic research to more what we call translational research So taking the stuff that we learned from basic research and trying to apply it and turn it into some sort of therapeutic And that's kind of what I've been doing ever since we still have a very important basic research program, but we're always looking for those um new ways to to use both neuroscience and technology to come up with these Translational applications to try to help people which is really nice because you know, I often felt as a grad student It was you know curiosity Was great and I you know, I could there's tons to learn about how the the brain changes as people age but you know for Much of that the story is kind of a negative one, right? So there are a lot of bad things happening and we didn't have a lot of good advice to tell people How to you know improve their function and now it's really nice to kind of be sort of on the flip side of that Where that's the focus right trying to help people improve brain function when they have difficulties and what would you say is then a One of these core ideas of how the brain what happens to the actual neurophysiology inside the brain when the age related changes Are occurring as we're getting older. Yeah, what's what's going on up there? Well, I think It's hard, you know, we're still trying to figure it out, but there's definitely an issue of sort of Noise in the system. So a lot of what the brain does is what we call sort of signal detection There's a signal detection theory But a lot of what the brain is doing is picking out signals amidst noise, right and you want the right signals That becomes harder and harder as people get older because they're the sort of tuning of neurons and and neurocommunication There's a lot of noise that gets introduced and it becomes harder to sort of find that sharp distinction between signal and noise. So you get Part of that is you get more distracted by noisy things in noisy environments, right because there's tons of noise. So One of the big things that that we that we focus on now is helping people Figure out how to really hone in on the signal and avoid the noise, right? And there are a lot of different techniques for doing that. Some of them can be behavioral techniques Some can actually be sort of neural techniques, you know in training Different rhythms in the brain and trying to improve that as people get older because those those rhythms that are important This is something we actually we studied in the in the Mediterranean study They can get a little fuzzy as people get older as well. So trying to fine-tune those is another way of potentially improving that process So then as we get older there our ability to take in our neuroplasticities on the decline as in some ways as we get older So that's that's an ongoing. There's an ongoing debate about that. It used to be say 30 40 years ago It was really thought that plasticity or the you know the ability of the brain to change Only happened when when people were in their, you know developmental periods or adolescence Through maybe young adulthood and then there was largely, you know, the sort of Complete loss of plasticity. We now know that brains are plastic throughout until the day you die, right? That's that's when plasticity easier at but it is harder. Yeah, it does it gets it gets more difficult, but That's one of the things, you know One of the one of the things that we're really pushing out if we find really engaging Mechanisms or try to find really engaging mechanisms to really push the plasticity when it gets harder It's still possible. There's still a lot there and that can be done potentially offset some of those neurodegenerative Issues that arise. Yeah, that's a very interesting thing. It's like the more that you practice really tough cognitive exercises, especially in the In your 30s and 40s and 50s the less likelihood you'll have of having the onset of neurodegenerative diseases That's a very like don't just do the same repetitive activities Do things that are challenging do things that are new do things that move you outside of your comfort zone and you'll be able to Think better live longer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we call that cognitive reserve So you build up this sort of bank of cognitive reserve or brain reserve too, right? So because everything cognitive or behavioral comes from the brain Um, so yeah, the idea is if you bank a lot of that when you're younger As things decline later, you'll still have this buffer that will help you deal with with some of that But you know, it also needs to continue as you get older too. So yeah, yeah build up the cognitive reserve Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So then let's do Your okay, so you actually had the back the the interest spans through mind body approaches meditation yoga Other neuroplasticity based interventions to improve cognition and well-being in general And it makes sense because this kind of leads us into the What is this this closed loop digital meditation? Right. So how long has it been then? Yeah, how long has it been with meta-train now building this up? Yeah, it's crazy. I think from the point where we started building the app with the folks at Zynga To publication was just over four years. Yeah for the first study We have we have a you know, several other ongoing studies and studies that have wrapped up since then But for the first one that we're talking about today. Yeah about four years. So yeah, it's a delayed gratification You really have to They don't tell you that about science, but it's like you really have to be okay with late gratification. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, so the idea is that you can take a concept and That can usually take again this long amount of time. You have to make a formal hypothesis You have to come up with the way that you're going to try and prove it Through especially when you have to make something digital that then people have to interact with And then control for all the other variables and the experiment and then and then there's actually doing the design and the engineering of it and Getting the people in to do the testing with it over time. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. This is this tough stuff. Okay. Okay, so then Okay, so then a couple years ago you guys were in the process of working with Zingon taking what was in your idea and designing and engineering it And then you were piecing together the right people the people to come in for this randomized control. Sure. Yeah test. Okay Okay, and then now now. Yeah walk us through the process of then What is going on with the people that are coming in? What are they doing to improve their sustained intention through digital meditation? We have this demo too. Yeah. Yeah Well, let me back up a little bit and like talk about sort of the rationale behind why we even went down this road So we we were you know, again, we're we were a cognitive neuroscience group And we're really interested in mechanisms of attention. So how the brain pays attention Traditionally or up until sort of before the the area when we era when we started this meditation program Metatrain program A lot of what we studied was what we call external attention or externally oriented attention pain attention to things in your environment Right and from from sort of a science perspective Those things are easy to manipulate We can flash lights and we can make noises in the environment to try to distract people and divert their attention from some place But we really got in Interested in internally oriented attention as well, right? So directing your attention to things that are going on Either inside your own body or your thoughts and the process of how people got distracted from those as well So maybe you're you know, if you're tuning in to the this this This broadcast right now, but you're also trying to think about what you're going to make for dinner tonight You're you're you're you're sort of either multitasking or engaging it, you know having some sort of distraction So you have this internal distraction As we you know began to study this we wanted to come up with a way to sort of help people train Their internal attention to be more focused and less distractible, right? But you know as we were thinking about ways to do this it was it became clear, right? That that we didn't need to reinvent the wheel, right? There was this practice of meditation that's been around for for ages Yeah, but the idea was to create sort of a A modern version of it in a and sort of a you know, a technological delivery system So we had this idea of and also what we wanted to do we prior to this You know, we we had been doing a lot of work with cognitive training games. So we we have developed An earlier publication from Neuroscape and in nature was on the new eraser program which trained multitasking Yeah, so we've learned we had learned a lot over the years about what makes engaging cognitive training programs So the idea was well, let's try to make sort of a meditation game, right? Where we bring principles of neuroplasticity and cognitive training to the table and merge it with Sort of age old principles of focused attention meditation, right? So that was kind of the basis And so we had that idea and we tried to build something on our own Which you know is fine. We have we have developers, but then we did have this really nice opportunity to work with Zynga used to have An arm called a philanthropic arm called zynga.org Whose mission was to create games for positive social change Or or positive social Change I guess what happened to the philanthropic arm. Oh, I think it was a I actually don't know it just ran out of funding I think and and sort of evaporated unfortunately Yeah, I know it's really too bad. Yeah, but they yeah, they wanted to work with a project With us on a project and we brought this idea to them and then they basically pulled people who volunteered time from the company You know a few hours a week to put in on this project So we actually had this whole team of professional game designers who were you know doing a given a little bit of time, but It turned out yeah, so we ended up with a product that was a lot more polished and you know More bells and whistles than we would have done if we were developing it You know just on our own at least with with our resources So it was a real treat to be able to do that So then taking some of these principles from even like the neural racer days And then figuring out and even the meditation from From the origins of our species days, right and then Packaging those together in a way where you're like we're going to improve sustained attention Right. Okay, and working with Zynga on the way. Okay, cool. All right All right. Yeah, let's do this. So yeah, I mean and then as you said I kind of got us off the the track We did this randomized controlled trial in these in healthy young adults And the idea to the idea behind doing a study in young adults is more to sort of proof of concept Right young adults if you think about it for the most part, they're kind of at the top of their game cognitively Right, we don't at least you know in terms of when we think of cognitive decline It doesn't really happen until you get into like thirties and forties and that sort of thing So there these are people who are doing really well, but at the same time as we talked about earlier We have these sort of you know, myriad technological distractions that are happening all the time media multitasking is going on constantly in this age group And they embrace technology to you know, the greatest extent ever, right of any generation So yeah, um, it kind of makes sense that you know, maybe this would be a type of Delivery of meditation that would appeal to them And you know if we could then use that to improve attention that would be huge if we could see You know it attentional improvements in such a young healthy group It's a big deal right because then if we can you know, potentially take it to other populations who actually have impairments in attention We might even see you know Compounded benefits, you know much greater impact So that was kind of the idea behind you know doing a study in healthy young adults And what was the age group of the healthy young adults? They were 18 to 32 18 to 32. Yeah, so it's like tech almost your whole life type people Yeah, um and multitasking almost your whole life And yeah, so if you can see improvements and sustain your attention with them, then right yeah, then that's a big deal Yeah, exactly. Okay. Cool. All right. Let's jump into Yeah, you want to see a demo? Yeah, let's do it. So We'll try to All right, so this is okay. You can see it there. Yeah the home screen here and prior to any training We have these you know sort of these instructions here which are just How the how the app actually works? This is sort of nuts and bolts. Okay One of the key things though is this we we did We collaborated with jack cornfield. Who's a a leader in mindfulness training? He brought a lot of eastern techniques to the western world And he worked with us on this he he developed a very short about a five minute meditation lesson We can hear a little bit of it here And so he actually Narrated this recorded it for the app for us Which was was a real treat to be able to work with him and he consulted all along the way in terms of like what what aspects Should be in here. What were the key things that that should be in here in terms of the The actual meditation principles. We also in developed you heard that narration Okay, let's get okay. We'll get let's play the narration then During this training period Okay So yeah, and it goes on it's a fairly traditional Approach to Sustained attention focused attention meditation meditation and then jack does some of the narration or all or yeah He so this is about a five minute narration And then that really sort of sets the stage and then the the rest of the training I'll walk you through sort of what a person would do as they go through there When they when they enter into the app For their actual training, they would go and we have of course we're scientists. We ask some survey questions about That's an important, you know, we want to know how how How distracting the environment are you right now? Yeah, how distracting is your environment? Yeah, if you're in a roaring loud place, you only slept a little bit of time and you're caffeinated I mean that's exactly completely different. Yeah. Yeah, great. So we collect those data each time and then they go in And you can see down at the at the bottom of the screen there. There are these tips So each day they got a meditation tip again. We developed those with jack In terms of you know things that that would you know If you say went to a retreat or took a class with jack These are things that he would tell you during you know the course of your training as you sort of Advanced so we try to build those in beautiful music. Yeah, really nice. It's very important at Zynga. Yeah sort of setting the stage Malming relaxing very you think you're getting ready for a meditation. Yep That's good stuff. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then when you're ready when you feel settled You know, we tell them again in jack's narration He gives sort of a process to go through to settle your body find the the position that works well for you for sitting Where you can sort of maintain a comfortable position for a little bit of an extended period of time Um, one of the things that that does differentiate this from a more traditional meditation practice is that we do kind of chunk it into smaller segments To make it so for novices. We make it very easily digestible So there are little chunks of meditation and then as people get used to the practice and get more comfortable and Uh, improve their attention. We extend the amount that they they sustain that they engage in the practice It's only a couple minutes to start and then it's exactly actually the so they they start with a five minute Period, but it's broken up into the first Trial is only 20 seconds. So we just ask them just 20 seconds 20 seconds, which is actually really hard. It's hard. Yeah It's even hard for me still Can you not launder your attention? Yeah Focus on just your breath for 20 seconds And we recruited people who were complete novices, right? So they had no experience with meditation whatsoever that because that would have Actually complicated things if we had people mixed in who already had a practice Yeah, so we were very careful about that. So once you're settled you go in and The basic idea is to sit with the the tablet in your hand eyes closed. Okay And this will go on for I have this set up for a demo so Maybe 20 seconds right and so after you hear the chime after that was maybe 15 seconds You just indicate with the button press whether you were able to maintain Your attention or not. So I'll say yes, okay And then so it's self-reporting It is yeah in this in this version. We use self-report which is actually we you know, we've had Lots of discussions about this Interesting and then you go for another round and you do yeah, I have this set is a very short amount for demo purposes They would do they would continue that and it would be for five minutes They would continue those trials and then they would have a little break like this Oh, okay, and then they would go back in for another five minutes. Okay. Okay. Yeah Okay, so you do a couple of okay, so it's maybe about like yeah 20 seconds or 40 seconds per Per trial where you say yes or no, right? So basically if your mind wanders even one time then you say you didn't sustain your attention exactly And then that's where I know Okay, it's it's it's tricky and then that's actually where the the closed loop part of the equation comes into play So we have these in our good time if they say no if they can't maintain their focus We make it a little shorter if they are able to maintain focus. We make it a little longer And we use a we use a sort of standard algorithm from the psychophysics literature that that Adjusts it to keep people performing at about sort of 75 to 80 percent so that they're they feel Like they're able to do it, but it's still challenging them just a little bit and pushing them, you know each day into the flow state Yeah, exactly trying to get there But tailoring it to each person because some people just you know They're going to kind of hover down at pretty low numbers for a while until they move up Other people, you know just kind of take off right away So we can very quickly in the course of say the first day or two We sort of the algorithm tailors itself to where the persons at and then from there We just kind of gently nudge them up over the course of six weeks So that's how long they ultimately train six weeks and daily five days a week And yeah about so we start at 20 minutes a day for the first two weeks Move to 25 minutes for two weeks and then 30 minutes in the last two weeks. Yeah per day for exactly Yeah, okay, so not a ton of time, but it's It's kind of comparable to sort of a you know Some daily meditation practices that people would have Yeah, and self reporting is an interesting part of this as well in the future If we can actually get the biomarkers for right, we've talked about this years ago. Yeah, yeah some of this stuff, but yeah So that's there's actually a really interesting we have we've had a debate amongst ourselves about this as well Because you could use like the muse headband things like that. You could right and and other companies out there that they're out there that are trying to key in on Be at neural signals or some some physiological signal of relaxation or being in an attentive state I also have another collaborator at UCSF was trying to do that with fmri So, you know actually going into neural networks and figuring out Can we predict whether somebody's in an attentive state? Are they focusing on their breath or on another part of their body? And it looks promising fmri is pretty expensive. So that's not going to be an at-home technique Yeah, but one of the things that we decided with this is that The introspection is actually a really important property of it learning to introspect We think it's probably an important part of this as opposed to having an algorithm or or You know sort of um, yeah machine learning algorithm that does it for you and predicts where your brain is You learning to figure out where your attention is is something that people don't actually it's a skill that they don't sort of normally have right usually it's just a monkey mind Taking you around different places. Exactly. And so if you actually interesting. So the idea that you're even Being aware of your own attention, right that in itself could be even more important than everything else And we yeah, we think that that's a really critical component of this and that was something again That came through conversations with jack cornfield about, you know, like what do we want this to be completely self-report? What level of reporting, you know, do we They're different approaches, right? Do we interrupt people and ask them what they're What where their focus was or do we just kind of let this play out, you know At a self-paced way and we we just felt felt that that was closer to what sort of a more traditional practice would be like and that That's really kind of the foundation learning to be introspective about where your attention is Once you can do that then you can hone it and focus it to where you want it to be and avoid the distractions Yes, so yeah, we it's kind of like advancing through your practice. Yeah, yeah We're we're leveling up our ability to be in control of our own attention Absolutely And is is that is that all that we think is good to show there's more stuff show Okay in a moment. I just want to say one more thing because for so many people I think it's probably most relatable with The way that we now have these habits of women The technological devices have made the habits. I think uh a little bit more We're a little we're overindulging a little bit more than I think we even used to I think one of the main Overindulgences used to be things like food maybe where you would go and just kind of like all of a sudden You'd be at the fridge again, and you'd be like, I'm not even Why am I here? Yeah, you know, and so then like are you aware That you're being brought to the fridge and that you're going to eat. Yeah, that's a really good. Yeah And like with the technology devices now It's now it's like You had a moment of solitude and before you knew it you were opening up a social media platform on your phone Right, you can't and so are you aware that you're grabbing your device in your moment of solitude and opening up a social platform Instead of allowing periods of free association. Yeah to occur So yeah, those are probably the two most familiar I think for for tons of people so basically doing things like this like meta train can get you to To to be more aware of where your attention is going and pause Yes, be more aware and pause and say do I actually want to do that and that type of stuff. Yeah That's so valuable. Sometimes there are periods when you want to just sort of let your mind wander, right? That's where you know, so it's you but it's it's it's it's again being in control of Where when and where you allow that to happen, right? So you can control yourself of when and where you want to happen Yeah, okay. Cool. Let's yeah, let's so just a few other things So again, you know, you would you would go through that for about 20 minutes a day some of the other Aspects of the app are fairly, you know, we have a calendar for tracking whether you you know, which days That's so cute. The yin and yang is the Very nice. The days you did it. Yeah Yeah The other really neat thing which again really differentiates this from say traditional meditation practice Is that we have quantifiable metrics of your system? Oh, yeah. Oh cool So, you know when you you know if you go to a meditation retreat or to To some sort of class You might have sort of a sense for how you're doing But here we're actually able to quantify it because we're collecting the data and you know, this You know has never been done before and within sort of a meditative practice So it's pretty exciting to actually be able to see and then this this opens up new doors for feedback to people And not everybody responds, you know Very you know in the same way to quantified feedback But there is a subset of of our population, especially 18 to 30 year olds Who are really into sort of the quantified self and collecting data about everything, you know that they're doing And here we have data about their internal attention, which they've probably never seen before Yeah, so so it can we find it can be very motivating to some people right to see like oh Man, I had a really bad day. What was going on? You know, what do I what can I do in my next day of training to kind of try to improve that Or maybe I was having a great day that felt great You know, I'm really motivated to come back in the morning and do this again So so it's kind of neat to be able to do that and then this is then final meditation time So this is when the closed loop system figures out that where did they get that day? How long could they sustain their attention because if you you know, if you click no Then it brought your final meditation time down From 20 seconds to 17 seconds to see if you could make that happen If you succeeded and maybe brought it up to 23 30 etc. So that's what you're looking at Not yes or no, but the final exactly. Yep. Yep And you can see um, so a full day view or full view or a three day view Yeah, so this is the full view that this basically would sort of um aggregate over time So as you went through the full 30 days, you'd see 30 dots on here I just kind of put this together before I came in for a demo gotcha So it's just 30 dots over a full view. Okay versus a three day view. So cool. So there's quantified self Metrics, there's your nice little yin yang calendar for a few days. Yeah, you're doing it. Okay, cool Yeah, so those are the kind of basics it's fairly straightforward and you know, again I think I started off by saying we we we've called it a meditation game. It's There are principles of cognitive Training games in it, but it's more of an app, right? So it really isn't it's It's not gamified to the to the point where we might do a future version of it that that would be but and then what's the um, what's the difference between What metatrain is doing right now and what? Calm or headspace. Yeah, or any of the other players are are doing Well, a big difference is that we're really focused on the The focus of the sustained attention aspect of it We don't really have we don't we haven't built in a lot of the mindfulness components to it because We really wanted to you know, we were interested in sustained attention. So we really wanted to you know, have sort of a You know laser focus on sustained attention and what can we do to really really Target sustained attention. So we kind of took all the mindfulness stuff out of the out of the equation Apps like headspace and calm really emphasize the mindfulness Which is it, you know, we think that there probably have complementary effects on the body and well-being um So one of the but one of the interesting questions that we had and again You know, we talked through this with with jack cornfield and developing it is that you know a lot of A lot of the philosophy behind Traditional eastern teachings of meditation is that you really need to start with the sustained attention And then from there Yes, you can build out to these other pieces like you can add the mindfulness much more easily you can add compassion more easily Exactly, but if you don't have that sort of folk that that sort of Foundation of the sustained attention those things you can come at it from a different way, but it's much harder. At least that's the theory It's like there will be a debate about sharpening sharpening your ability with your attention first and then you can go do all the other Yeah, yeah, and actually right now. We're building a second version of this app where it uses all the same sort of Underlying nets and bolts and algorithms, but is focused on training compassion as well. That's interesting. That'll be we're building that right Okay, so things like headspace and calm. Maybe they don't have this maybe the closed loop They definitely don't have the clothes. So there's no me answering if I'm yes or no sustaining my attention There's no them changing my time from yeah based on how well I'm doing These types of things so that's more like you just click a button and then you just let the music play And let's have a guided meditation. Yeah, and okay, okay So that this is a big difference and then And before we get to just some of the other slides on the results Then is then one of the goals in to for me to be able to download this on Android and ios Yeah for me to be able to use the increase the state attention that I mean ultimately we would We would love to have this become a commercialized app We're we're a research laboratory research center So we're not actually in the business of putting apps out to the market mostly because you know We can't support them at scale right so it's we would have to have much more staff in order to do that So right now there isn't a way to download this it's a research tool We're applying it to new research populations and again, we're talking with people, you know The idea hopefully would be to find some company that would like to license it and take it to market Right and do all of that sort of work that we're not, you know, we don't have the expertise to do that So unfortunately, there's going to be a little bit of a lag But we would like to at some point see that happen. Yeah, I highly I highly recommend people watching right now to figure out Who's the right person to License this absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, please get this out help Neuroscape get this out as soon as possible into the world. Yeah. Um, this is a such an important, um tool that can Just help us gain our own Sovereignty over our own attention and and and Creative endeavoring in the world. Yep. Let's um, okay, so let's show the Let's show the the assets that we have so um Okay, so we kind of talked about this a little bit. We went through the demos background stuff. Okay, cool And so then the next one So this is I went through a little bit of this This is just, you know, sort of the details of the study that we ran that was the most recent publication So We went over the the amount of training The key thing here is again, so these are healthy older adults You see their average age is in the 20 20s. Yeah And then they came in before and after that six weeks of training for an extensive selection of these sort of cognitive tasks so that we could really figure out what their baseline levels of attention Impulsivity working memory And distractibility were and then we also did all these newer recordings So we looked at the structure of the brain the function of the brain with EEG Okay, so you looked at the structure and function of the brain with EEG, okay But then what are the normalized tests that people do for um understanding? Attention and working memory and impulsivity like how do you sure? Yeah, what are those tests? Yeah, so I'm imagining you like dangling a fruit in front of my face while I'm like trying to focus on something So it's it That Is it's a little more Sort of fine grained than that, right? So actually, why don't you go to the next slide? I think I have a Yeah, so if you look on the left over here This is one of these tests and we call this the this is the test It's a version of the test of variable attention tova tova test of variable attention and um and the basic it's a very very simple task Right, so the idea is you have you're supposed to maintain your your gaze on that little That plus sign in the middle the plus sign and you see a box flashing on either the top or the bottom of the screen In one version of the task the box flashes a lot And you need to keep responding until it flashes on the bottom and then you have to withhold your response Okay, so what am I'm pressing a button? Yes, the keyboard. So oh, I'm pressing a space bar or something Okay, okay, so then the box is flashing on the top and I'm pressing the space bar And then once the box moves to the bottom I stop to withhold with hold. Yeah, okay But you've been pressing so much so fast that it's really hard to stop and so if you press that's a measure of Impulsivity right you made this impulsive response because you you were you were just kind of going with the flow Oh, that's an interesting task and then the other version of it is where you don't respond You see lots of flashes, but you only respond to be the time that it flashes in the bottom of the screen So you're ignoring it's flashing flashing flashing. You're not responding to anything But every so often only about 20 of the trials do you see it flash in the bottom and then you have to respond So that's really sustained attention because you're having to attend to the whole thing while you're not doing anything and watch for that One time that it's going to go to the bottom and click then. Yeah, whoa Yeah, so okay. Oh interesting. It kind of It's inverse in a way and that inverse can yeah. Yeah, I can show you both Sustained attention on kind of both these sides of sustained. Exactly. Yep Not doing anything and then doing it and then doing it all the time is stopping doing it That's so interesting. See these are these are cool tests. Yeah, I mean some smart humans out there Think about these tests. Yeah, we spend a lot of time So this is one that that has been around in the literature for a while You know, it's a fairly standardized one some of the other ones that we we develop a lot of these tasks I don't have an example of one that we developed ourselves in this slide deck, but We spend a lot of time trying to figure out What is a highly controlled way that we can measure this cognitive process that we're interested in and see if it changes over time? So, you know, we do we do a lot of the the development of these and I mean, you know Probably almost as much time to spend developing these tasks as developing these training apps and interventions So, yeah, yeah, they're equally important. You got to make sure that all the people that you're Doing the um randomized control trial with that Beforehand, you're doing a good job at understanding who who they are how well they have sustained attention How well they're working memories because then you're trying to compare the data after meta-training Okay, and if you're not measuring the right thing, you're not going to know which we actually think that you know in the cognitive training Literature there are lots of null effects where people don't find big effects And part of it is that maybe the the training intervention that they gave was not Nearly as engaging as the type of things we would develop But also that I think a lot of times people are picking the wrong outcome measures, right? So they're just things that have huge practice effects So, you know, it doesn't just be by virtue of doing it twice. You're going to get better on it So we spend a lot of time, you know, sort of Piloting and debugging and figuring out what exactly is the right test of the process we're interested in so that we know If it does change Interesting. So then you may have even had to do this Leading up to the oh, definitely trial like a bunch of times So we take a whole other sample of people who don't do an intervention But they come in and they do these tests two or three times just to see Just what are the practice effects, you know, what's the baseline level of change that we see? What's the baseline level of change then you have to like subtract that baseline level of change That's one way of doing it We didn't do it in this study, but in this study, we took what's called a placebo control So we had another group who did Trained they did all the tasks and they trained with other apps that we thought didn't have any of the active ingredient of meditrain They were just kind of off-the-shelf Apps that were were similar enough and people reported that they felt they would they would likely improve Their function or they'd get benefit from doing them But we didn't think that it had any of that active ingredient in it And then I think the one that so many people are used to Is the delayed gratification of the marshmallow? Yeah, the marshmallow. Yeah, so so these are really interesting that that you have to develop these Measurements beforehand for beforehand and afterward To make sure that you're that what you're doing is having a serious effect Positive effect on people on the right hand side. These are the the data that we were probably most excited about So again, you've got this task where you have the the impulsive version of the sustained attention version Because of what we were doing. Um, we focused more on the sustained attention Version of this of this test they did both but So as we talked about earlier young adults top of their game They're doing really well cognitively we so if you look at their performance on hitting the button They're close to like, you know 90 95 accurate, right? It's what we call a ceiling effect They can't really get much better than that But yeah, so we don't have a lot of room for them to change in terms of their accuracy, right? But what we can look at is this really key measure of Consistency in their performance that we call as you can see here response time variability So your response time is how quickly you press that space bar, right? When you see the the the Target event right target event. Yeah, so you if you if you respond Usually we think of fast response times is good because you were quick to get the response, right? The faster the better that's kind of like the western view, right? So if you're pressing the button fast on some trials, it means you're sort of you're engaged and you're doing the task pretty well But say you're start thinking about something that aren't those little Boxes on the screen, you know, you start thinking about what's going to be for dinner or you know All that traffic you had on the way in here and you're annoyed And so you get distracted and now you have a couple of slow responses because you weren't completely on task And then you get back to the task and you're fast again, but then you start mind wandering again and you get slow What happens there is you have variability in your response time You're fast on some trials and then you're slow and you're fast and slow But if people are consistently Responding either fast or slow or whatever their their optimal speed is for the task If they're consistent and they don't show these fluctuations from fast to slow to fast to slow That we actually take as an indicator that they're sort of in the zone And they're really focused on the task and their mind isn't wandering to other events And there's a lot of literature that sort of supports this idea So The lower your variability in your response time the more focused you are Yep, and so if you look at the bars here is the black bars actually works with heart rate variability too The lower the heart rate variability is actually the more focused But the more yeah, it's like the more the more fight or flight Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it goes down when you're in that mode And then the variability at heart rates. That's a complicated But yeah, it almost it's a little counterintuitive sometimes, but yeah So, yeah, the less variability the more focused here in this case Yeah And what you can see the the black bars are the the groups So meta-train is on the left and the placebo control here is on the right They were pretty much matched before the training But after training the meta-train groups showed a significant decrease in their variability So they became more consistent from moment to moment In their task performance and the other group didn't show any change Got it. So that was really the and then we actually I don't think I have the other slide on here Okay, that's cool. So you learned that they increased their sustained attention through response time variability Exactly that they were more focused. They were more consistent in their response times. Okay. Yeah, and we actually found the exact same Find the exact same Effect on a completely separate task. So another task called the filter task where you have to I don't have I don't I didn't put that one in here But you have to look at different bars and sort of ignore things that are distracting and on the screen So it's a little more complex task But you have to maintain some items in memory filter out the distracting things and then respond to to whether there was a change And their response time variability decreased on that task as well So it's kind of like, you know within the same group. We have this little replication on two different tasks Which really increases your Yeah, um, you know the the trust that you have in the final Yeah, because you have to store all of that information and working memory that you saw and say whether or not anything changed That's what what is that one called? That was the filter task. It's called filter task filter task. Yeah, because you're filtering the idea is you're filtering out irrelevant Stimuli. Yeah. Yeah, cool. Okay. So then they so then they six they increased on both of these tasks Okay, cool. Then is there something else about the bottom right? Um, there's just another way of plotting the data So what you can see there is the response time sort of in the in the gray bars That's the meta on the that's after training. So you can see that peak kind of sharpens Yeah in the meta training group, but not the placebo group that pretty much stays the same So that's just basically showing that they're more consistent and they're sort of fine tuning their Their stability of attention. So so you're training chimps to have improved attention And the editors and reviewers like to see data in many different ways. So that's why we yeah We had like, you know, probably four more panels to this this graph in the paper if you when you go to the actual publication Yeah, okay. Cool. Yeah data different ways. Okay. All right in the next one Yeah, and so these are this is just a little bit from that from the neural data that we recorded from the EEG data Um, and so again, we collected this electron cephalography where you put electrodes on the scalp and you measure the Sort of underlying electrical activity of the brain and one of the ways that you can Quantify this is in terms of different brain rhythms And I think I mentioned we talked about this toward the toward the intro to the interview One of the rhythms that's really important for attention is this theta rhythm. So it's a four to seven hertz oscillation So the idea is if you have neurons that are active all active together And then they're all silent and they're all active and then they're all silent That can take on a sort of periodic function or a rhythm. So like a sinusoidal wave And so you can fit the waves to that and you assign it a different frequency in this case four to seven hertz And so you can kind of see that over on the on the left You see the frequency is on the on the y-axis on the far left And then you have over time here you see on the on the x-axis So it's a time frequency plot and you can see this sort of big block of four to seven hertz activity Around two to three hundred milliseconds and what and then what does that indicate? And so that's indicating that's about the time when we think that people are really paying attention to whether the target happened or not And deciding to make a button press So it's the point at which they're either you know committing to their button pressure or not And so if they're really focused we should see we think and the the sort of literature backs us up that There should be more of this theta oscillation in these frontal regions here. So this is the front of the brain You can't see the back of the brain Interesting But basically you were seeing in sort of the lateral or side frontal areas and also the medial or middle frontal areas This increase in the the theta synchrony So do we think that the At any time of sustained attention that we should see theta synchrony in the frontal lobes It's we this is about the the well it varies from task to task But you should see it at some point after the visual system So you have this this was a visual task. They're seeing things on on a computer screen So the visual information has to go through the eyes to the the visual cortex So you have low level processing that has to be done Then a little bit later about 200 or 300 milliseconds later is when you we expect to see some of these higher order centers Engaging to make some sort of decision about the task So you really you wouldn't expect to see this really early in like the first 100 milliseconds Yeah, because the visual system is still taking in the information and sending signals up to higher level brain areas Then they they engage and if they're if they're attuned to the task and they're attending you should see this theta at that point Okay, okay And so one of the interesting so the the theta rhythm itself is is is great and important But the particular way that we measured it is Yeah, I do have it written out here. It's what we call inter-trial coherence. And so coherence is just synchrony or synchronized oscillations but this is was really important because Basically what this means is that the the alignment of the start of the theta oscillation Is from trial to trial as they're going through this task It's becoming more consistent in the people who did meta-train and not in the people who did the placebo So that's what the the bar graph is showing your coherence is increasing so this is coherence of The same in the of the rhythm Yeah, the start of the rhythm is becoming More consistent that so that's the inter-trial coherence and basically it's kind of like a neural analog to increasing your Moment-to-moment or decreasing your moment-to-moment rt variability So it's kind of like we think that these are very very similar processes So this is you know, what we think is the underlying neural mechanism. So by the you know Behaviourally, we see that people are more consistent in their performance But also in the brain this this theta oscillation is becoming more consistent from trial to trial in sort of the same way Interesting. Okay. So before there was more dissonance in exactly there and then then you got coherence towards this theta oscillation That's you think the neural underlying Physiology sustained attention at least one of them. Yeah, okay cool. So that's the main data There are a couple other things in there, but you know, we can Those are kind of the really take the big take-home messages from from that one. And then what's this one? Yeah, yeah, this one is just a different way of looking at e e g data It's what we call an erp or event related potential Um, and it's basically instead of looking at the oscillations. It's kind of just 3b Yeah, that's it. That's a um A bit of a complicated one. Yeah, you guys are so I know This is this area. It's like the dl pfc when you when you break it down. It's actually pretty easy p means positive Three means it's at three approximately 300 milliseconds. Okay, and b they're different So there's a p3a which happens early in the 300 millisecond window and then a b that happens late in the 300 millisecond window So positive 300 millisecond and happening a little later. Yeah ERP's are you I mean you people spend lifetime studying all these different different Event related related things or p potential potential so the electrical potential the electrical potential And basically what you can see here is that so the 300 it's like this window right here So you can see that there's this there's the a difference in the curves in the mediterranean group and not so much in the That's probably blocking the camera and not so much in the placebo group there So at that 300 millisecond window, okay, that's something. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I see I see so so okay So at the 300 millisecond window there is pre and post there's a bigger gap Exactly than in the placebo So it's there's a bigger gap and it's what it's slightly doing too is it's the the latency or the the speed at which The p300 sort of ramps up Is getting quicker in mediterranean the mediterranean group compared to the placebo group So that's that's what we're so they're they're engaging their control mechanisms their attention mechanisms faster They're engaging in the in the in the trial compared to the the other group Yeah, and now this is happening in a very different part of the brain So this is showing sort of a top down view of the brain This is the front. This is the back We see this more in what we call sort of parietal regions posterior parietal areas So we think that you know, we didn't really have the power to do sort of Modeling of the frontal parietal interactions But we think that these are probably sort of You know, there's sort of interplay between that frontal theta rhythm That's then driving what's going on back here at this the sort of because that was at 200 milliseconds This is a little later at 300 milliseconds So there's probably the the sort of interaction between the frontal and and parietal regions that is important Okay, and then what did that in that interaction is signaling Well that so this we think this is another marker of sustained attention So if you have this, you know, the the bigger and faster your p300 your parietal lobe is engaged Especially for visual spatial, that's kind of what the parietal lobe does these this visual spatial attention Yeah, you know, if we had used a verbal task, it would be different areas Engaged that is yeah, okay, then the more you're likely attending to the visual spatial challenge that you're focused on exactly Yeah, okay, and that's why it's yeah the parietal in this case. Yeah, okay, okay The brain stuff. Yeah, I mean the the we're really interested in the neural mechanisms, but it gets really complicated very quickly, but Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It tracks with the behavior results pretty well. Yeah Yeah, you you will see the areas of the brain engaged And focused that's what you're looking at. Yeah, okay Yeah, so many contributors and colleagues shout out This is nice to show this actually. Yeah, Jordy Martin, Lindsey Martin, Sasha Skinner, Joshua Volponi Yeah, Abby Spate, Jim Stern, Rosinga, shout out, shout out everyone shout out shout outs all around for all the people involved Yeah, it is nice to show because you know again for you know over four years and this is the type of you know team that it takes to do This type of study. It's it's a huge amount of coordination So I you know and again, they you know and our participants of course and shout out those Those were our this is one of our older adults. So this is a study that we're actually just now wrapping up 18 year old 18 year old. Yeah, exactly Now we're this is from our current study that we're just now wrapping up and doing data analysis on Another study. Yeah, we did a much larger study in healthy older adults 60 to 80 year olds. Yeah Whoa, so we we're just finishing that Looking at the data. It looks pretty good. Looks like we actually have Nice at least a partial replication of what we saw on young adults a world of in these older adults Grammas and grandpas with increased sustained attention Well, and this is a I mean that's a population that you know, they have challenges to their attention anyway So I think we think this could be really useful. You could actually you could actually end up saving You know potentially even like billions of dollars on health care expenses by people not needing to go in for neurodegenerative treatments Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah through just something as cool and democratize this digital Neuro therapeutics, right? That's awesome. Yeah, that's so cool. We we think it's a huge new, you know avenue that that you know, not completely unexplored but The digital therapeutics a lot of what's out there now hasn't been sort of validated to the level that we're doing it at Neuroscape, so that's where you know, I think that There's room for improvement. There's massive potential for these digital therapeutics, but they're also, you know, there are a lot of You know, there's a lot of overhype exaggerated hype Exaggerated claims where the people don't often have as much of the science to back it up So that's where we're trying to really sort of figure out, you know at a very Sort of Minute level what's going on? What are the mechanisms that are driving this? And you know, what what are the aspects of the training that are more most beneficial? And then how do we tailor it to individuals so that not every, you know, it's not like a pill that Everybody takes the same pill and it's supposed to, you know, have the same effect We know that isn't how medicine works, but it's how We don't we know that's not how the body works, but it's how medicine works, right up until now So the idea behind this is tailor it to the individual much more Yeah, totally way more tailored than original and not just yeah throwing pharmaceuticals and people's throats and hoping for the best This is an actual tailor experience plus. It's also crazy that this is applicable for not only, you know young people to focus on sustained attention and be able to Execute what their dreams are better, but it's also for and not need to like dose up on pharmaceuticals to deal with their You know, which is a huge problem, right? It's a huge problem growing concern And then also on the older side of folks as well to Not need to go in for dementia or any other types of yeah degenerative diseases and you can actually Maybe you want to do something new in terms of art or music or science later in your life And you can sustain your focus better on that than just yeah clicking on some Of channel that yeah, yeah Yeah, just sapping away the energy at the later points in your life So so that's kind of the future of neuro tech is these these digital neuro therapeutics I think it's it's a big Component of it. Yeah, I think that there are other things too, you know that that we're exploring as well neural stimulation You know neuro feedback in general, you know, we talked about that we were You know at some point we'd like to develop a version of this that is driven The closed loop is driven by neural signals as opposed to that's great, you know Again, we the question remains open how much of the introspection is important to it But once we have that capability we could actually ask that question Maybe they're good for different populations. Some people might I mean, I have a I have a really difficult time with seated meditation and since focusing on my breath It's really difficult for me. So maybe I could get much more benefit from Something that's just helping me relax and get into a state where you know My body feels better and my mind is more calm even though, you know, I'm not pushing it myself So yeah, probably this isn't for everybody, you know And like you said like the muse headset isn't for everybody But maybe that would tap into you know a different population who Benefit will benefit in a different way Yeah, it's interesting seeing how many of the players are at play here Like could meta train could the license go into headspace or calm or like sam harris is that yeah? Yeah, I don't see why not. Yeah, it could be complimentary. It's not going to it's not going to displace A lot of what these place what these other companies is doing. It's complimentary exactly. Yeah It's like they'll have a little drop down for sustained attention exerciser Yeah, open heart and instead of they'll have a closed loop system your closed loop system there I like that a lot and muse could use it all these different Yeah, and then they could also do the portion of the sensing through e g for determining if you're focused or not To prevent it's not self-reporting Could you smash all these together? Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get this done. Let's get this done. This is awesome Let's give us a democratize. Let's get this license and out there. Yeah. Yeah, I hope And it's people watching want to to do that or share it with people that want to To do that. I would we would love to see that happen And if you do want to go and you know check out david's link in the bio and reach out to him Be email and just inquire because that's a that's such a good way to get this out there faster Um, okay, let's let's wrap on a couple points. Do we cover what we yeah, I think I'm going to do a lot of the details Yeah, that was great. That was great. I liked it too. Um, a couple quick questions on the way out Um, the first one is uh, david do we come from somewhere else into these flesh vehicles to play on earth? I don't think so. No, I think that um there We don't know right, but there seems to be a lot of evidence that the our bodies are put together in a way that you know What our mind and our cognition is is this emergent property, right that It's kind of a lot of luck the things came together the way they did. Um, and you know, but It's not just yeah, I mean coming from somewhere else. It's not to say that there aren't others like us or you know A different form of us somewhere else. So who knows but it's just you think it's most Occam's rays are just emerged from as like that's from the planet My my you know based on what I know, you know, I'm not you know an expert on sort of evolutionary theory or that sort of thing But humans are I have studied. Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. I think that's most Occam's rays are yeah Yeah, some very spiritual people are like oh we come from source and we come through these bodies for school on the Sure, which kind of interesting, you know, they're yeah, and you can't refute that So, you know, there it's not, you know, I don't have evidence against that poke it again as a scientist. Yeah, I mean That the spiritual thing is I mean they're they're important They're very very important ramifications of that But those are those are questions that are just not falsifiable. So they're just we have to live with some unknowns, right Yeah, that's in the realm of that. Yeah science giving some space to spirituality and like testing that is Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I mean again, that's like, you know, what what we've done here with with Mediterranean is create sort of a new digital version of meditation, but a lot of the research on Sort of Eastern practices there, you know, these are, you know, it's all been proof of What people have, you know known for ages and ages, you know Or have suspected for ages and ages that, you know, we're just trying to Quantify it and and put scientific data to it. Yep. Yeah, we talked about that before. Yeah, exactly. Yeah What's the most beautiful thing in the world? Last question Well, I would have to say nature in general I'm trying to come up with like one at one Example of nature, but I just think that being in Nature in so many different, you know, we're we're in California here. There's there's so much About Being in natural environments that's restorative that, you know, I think it's the most those are the most beautiful places That I spend time on this world. Anyway Yeah, yeah, thank you so much for coming on David. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a huge pleasure. Yes. Thank you. Great Thank you. Thank you for all your work with the meditrain. Yeah, and we're keeping Continuing on we've got lots more to do. So yeah, yeah, we love neuroscape We would love, you know, everyone check out the links in the bio because neuroscape has so many to do This is just one very minimal slice. Yeah, and let's keep featuring more of neuroscape's technologies on the show It's a very super synergistic. Good. What's happening? Yeah, it's a great outlet Thank you everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate you left to hear thoughts in the comments below on the episode Go and get this licensed out go and get meditrain licensed out as soon as we can check out the full paper in nature as well That's down there go follow david on twitter and neuroscape on twitter for more of the information that they'll be releasing soon And have more conversations with your friends families co-workers people online about the future of neurotechnology in these closed loop Digital meditations that can improve their sustained attention Shout out to round bogus for producing and directing. Thank you very much And go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world support simulation as well our links in the bio We love you very much and we'll see you soon. Peace