 So it's been a crazy year, as you could imagine. So last year, this time, we still hadn't built our float tanks officially. And so after the float conference was over, Colin and Ginny and I went back to Tulsa and we started the process of creating an actual research laboratory to study flotation. And my goodness, I have so much empathy for what you guys are all going through. This is a quote from Jim Hefner, it really sums it up perfectly, though. And there's so many variables you have to control. You know, when you have somebody come into your float center, they don't have a clue what you actually have to go through to give them that experience. And there's so many different things you have to think about. But I would say out of all the things we have to control in this unique environment, there's nothing more difficult than creating the sound of silence. And I don't know if it's just me, but every time I get in the float tank, the first thing that pops up in my mind is, hello, darkness, my old friend. It's just like, I feel like the soundtrack just keeps going on and on. But the sound of silence is so important. You know, I read about this acoustic ecologist who's basically the past few decades been going around the whole world trying to find a square inch of space in nature that's completely silent. In other words, man-made noise pollution doesn't infiltrate it. You don't have airplanes flying in the sky or electric wires or smartphones pinging away. Just a square inch of space. And back in the 70s, you know, he found several hundred areas in America where, you know, give a 20-mile radius, you have no man-made noise pollution. And he's continued this research. And essentially, what he found in the past decade is there's fewer than maybe 12 places in the U.S. where you have this silence. And in Europe, there's none left, he says. So what that means is it's our job to create silence. If you can't find it out here because of all the drones and everything else that people are creating, the float tanks have to be silent. And so what I discovered is this is very, very difficult. The first thing we did is we created really thick soundproof walls. You could kind of see here, we got insulation in between. We have multiple layers of walls. We added in a bunch of green glue in between, as you guys might do at your centers. And we also were in a pretty quiet building on the ground floor. And when we finished building the float tanks, I get in and you could hear noises. You could hear the MRI scanner down the hallway pinging away. On occasion, you could hear footsteps. So we needed help. What the heck was going on? We put all this money into soundproofing it and noises were still getting in. So Richard Bonk connected me with a guy named Steven Orfield. This is Steven right here, and he's in an anechoic chamber. And essentially, this is the world's quietest room. In the Guinness Book of World Records, it holds it. And I spoke to Steven on the phone and he sent down his crew to do detailed sound testing. And what he discovered was 95% or more of the noise we were hearing wasn't actually coming through the walls. It was coming through the ground via vibrations. And so Colin built these springs. Underneath each float pool, we have 48 of these springs. And they're butyl rubber, and you can kind of see what it looks like. And now the float pool is essentially detached from the ground, and the springs are absorbing all of the noise. So after Colin had done this, we had a moment where we prayed and said, you know, please let the silence be there. But what you guys don't realize about Colin is it turns out he does float engineering as his day job. At night, he's actually Superman. And of course it worked. It was great. I mean, it was night and day what these springs did to control all of the noises that were reverberating through the ground. But a few weeks go by, and we start hearing crackling. And so you're in this total silence, then all of a sudden you hear, I'm like, oh, what the hell's going on now? This is crazy. Well, it turns out we detached the tank from the ground. It was no longer sealed. And as a consequence, salt was getting underneath. Every night the housekeeping crew would come in and clean up. And the salt was getting on the heaters. It was getting underneath the springs. And the crackling noise was the salt. So then we had to lift the tank up after we put all the water in a holding cell, clean out all the salt, reseal it to the ground without letting it touch the tank. So the vibrations wouldn't get back in. And now, once again, finally, silence. But my goodness, it is so difficult to do all of the different things that are necessary to create a perfect float. But I think we're getting pretty damn close. And I can't thank Colin and Ginny enough for all their help in making this come true. So here's a look at what they built. This is our closed pool. It's an 8 foot diameter circular pool. There's a lot of different sorts of bells and whistles in this. I call it the mothership. But we're going to be doing a lot of clinical work with patient populations in here. We do have airflow coming in and out. This is not a camera. This is not a camera at all. In fact, it's a skeletal tracker. It decomposes your body into a whole slew of skeletons. And we could look at movement and calculate the percentage time that someone is able to stay still during the float. We have a bunch of other physiological equipment that we have in here. And we're trying, in fact, to try to control humidity levels, which I think are very, very important for having the perfect float experience. So this is what I would say is our more advanced pool. We also have a beginner's pool, which is our open pool. It's the same exact size as the closed pool. But the room itself is now soundproof and lightproof, so you don't really need an enclosure. And when you're working with any sort of patient populations, especially people with anxiety, I think this is kind of the perfect transition. There's no sense of claustrophobia when you walk in. It's wide open. And one of the things I want to point out is it's circular. And the circular piece is important. I find that a lot of float centers do not have circular tanks. And I'm not sure why. Because what ends up happening when you have a circular tank is you have something known as the self-centering effect. If you're totally still when you're floating, each breath is going to create these little ripples that will go out of your body in concentric circles, they'll hit the side of the pool, and then they'll ripple backwards and hold you in the center. So you could literally float in this open pool for hours without ever touching a side. And that's so important, because every time you touch a side of a pool, you're immediately out of that internal state of consciousness. So I think we should really think about how circular pools could actually be beneficial. Another thing Colin put together is an infrared motion detector. So instead of having to find a light switch, all you have to do is raise your arm elevated out of the pool and the lights will turn on. So I think this pool is really conducive to doing patient work, especially as you're introducing them to the float experience. Colin also created a really, no, it's not messy. It's old school. It's old school. And that's what I love about Colin. I mean, you see Colin here, and this is one of our graduate students, Jesse, who's an electrical engineer. And I mean, it's quite complicated. But what Colin has essentially given us is the ability to measure everything. We could control and measure air temperature, water temperature. We have intercom systems to speak to people. We could calibrate airflow and humidity. All of our physiological equipment comes in and gets integrated. We could compute exactly how many minutes somebody's in the float pool with the lights on versus off, how many times they turn the lights on. And so it became a research institute. And we couldn't have done this without Colin. Colin is, in many ways, a true Renaissance man. And there's not a project I ever gave him that he looked at me and said, I can't do that. Everything I ever asked. Oh, no problem. We could do this. And so months and months went by. And I would say Colin and Jenny probably were out maybe over the past year, at least four months, maybe five months. Yeah. And day in and day out, with a lot of hard work, we put this center together. And we finally were able to start some research studies, which we're going to present to you guys today. But before I do that, I just want to play a little video of FloatAway, which is Colin's company. A lot of people don't know this because they're in Europe. But they make some beautiful float tanks. And as far as I know, Colin is really the only engineer that will make you a tank in any shape, size, or form. And he really could do anything. So please go ahead and run the video. So thank you, Colin and Jenny. That was an incredible amount of work. But we did it. OK. So research could begin. We have our float center. Now we need a control condition. And this is important, you guys. I can't emphasize this enough. And Dr. Sudfeld talked a little bit about this earlier. But if you want any sort of researchers, and especially the Western medical community, to take any sort of float research seriously, you have to have a good control condition. And I think we have a good one. I don't know if it's the best one. And I think we're going to have multiple types of controls over the years. But our first control condition involves something known as a zero gravity chair. Just by a show of hands, who here has sat in a zero gravity chair before? OK, a couple of people. It's a chair that we now refer to in the laboratory as the float chair. And when we present it to research subjects, we actually call it floating. And I'll explain why we do that in a second. But it's a memory foam backing. And it essentially takes a lot of the pressure off of your spinal cord the way it's shaped. And we have participants sitting in this chair for the exact amount of time that we have other participants float. And we measure all the same things physiologically. And the essential idea is we're trying to control for the effects of simple relaxation. What we want to be able to say is that floating is systematically different than something that maybe you could do in your own living room or home. So first of all, in both conditions, you're laying supine in a comfortable environment. You have minimal pressure on the spinal cord. You're alone by yourself in a quiet and dark room for 90 minutes. And all of our floats in this first set of studies were 90 minutes long. And what we tried to also do is control for the expectancy effects. And so the reason I call this an active control condition is because I think there's a number of ingredients in here that might actually benefit people just by sitting in this chair. Now in terms of the expectancy effects, we give both people who float in our pools and who are floating in our chair the same script. So here's what we say to them. We say, thank you so much for your help in participating in this research study. Our goal is to learn more about the effects of reduced environmental stimulation on the brain. Throughout the day, our brain is constantly being bombarded by sensory information from the external world. In this study, we aim to understand what happens when the brain gets a chance to disconnect from the constant stimulation by floating in an environment with reduced levels of light and sound and reduced pressure on the spinal cord. So in both conditions, you kind of have the same script. And they're assuming they're actually receiving the treatment when they're in the chair condition. So that's one thing I want you guys to keep in mind. We do have an active control. The next thing that we have at LIBER is we have some state-of-the-art MRI scanners. These were scanners that were basically a system that was built at the National Institute of Mental Health. And the physicist there, Dr. Yezhi Berdurka, brought it over to LIBER. So we have the same exact system that NIMH has. These are three Tesla scanners. What happens is the person will lay down in here. You could see this is a baby. It's totally safe. No radiation involved in MRI. And their head will go into the scanner, and then they'll do different tasks. There's a little mirror at the top here. And we'll present things up here. And they'll do different tasks during the scan. And what MRI is essentially measuring, fMRI, I should say, is exactly brain activation. What we're looking at is changes in blood oxygenation. It turns out the brain needs energy in real time every moment of the day. And so as brain cells start firing, they consume oxygen. And as the oxygen in the hemoglobin gets consumed, there's a change in magnetic property. And that's what fMRI is picking up. And so our goal was actually to try to understand what happens in the brain when you float. And so this was the first study we set up. It's a little complicated, so don't start reading everything. Let me kind of take you through this. It starts out where everyone comes in for a baseline assessment. They go through the informed consent process, fill out a bunch of self-report measures. And then everyone does a 90-minute scan at baseline. There's a bunch of different tasks that they do during the scan. Today you're going to see my colleague Dr. Simmons talk about the VIA task. I'm going to be talking about the mid-task. We still have to analyze some of these other ones. And that's baseline. And then at the end of their brain scan, we randomize them either into the pool condition or the chair condition. And we're aiming to have about 40 subjects in total by the end of this study. And then after they're randomized, they engage in three different floats in either condition, 90 minutes each float. And then at the end of the third float, we scan their brain again. And the reasoning behind this particular design is we didn't want to scan their brain right away after the first or second float because then we'd be picking up on the novelty effects. And I think there are a lot of novelty effects when you have your first float. It's just such a different experience. And so our hope was to actually try to capture more of the pure float experience by aiming at the third float. Couple other points here that we don't really have to talk about. But I think the most important part here is you do your brain scan before you ever float. You get randomized to one of the two conditions. And then you do another brain scan at the end of your third float. A couple variables that we tried to control, all the floats during the day of the scan occurred in the afternoon. And part of that reason was because we're measuring cortisol. We did maintain the water temperature at about 94.5 degrees. Air was set at about 92. And I think this air temperature difference is really a product of humidity. And we have to kind of figure out as an industry, what is the ideal humidity and what is the ideal air temperature? Specific gravity was calibrated at 1.25. And I really do think this is better. We originally started at 1.3. And then I spoke to Glenn Perry. And he had recommended 1.25. And I really do think that's the perfect amount of immersion. And then everyone during the day of the brain scan floated in the dark for 90 full minutes. Here's some basic demographics of the subjects we tested. And as Ashkan said, we literally just finished testing this particular group Wednesday. So you're seeing some of the data basically at the same time that I'm seeing. Right now, we eventually want to have 40 total subjects. Right now, we have 16. So we're getting there, eight in each group. They're all healthy. Before they even came in for the study, they went through a thorough screening process to make sure they were free of any neurological or psychiatric illness. And thus far, we've had no dropouts. And I'm pleased to see that. Now, one thing to keep in mind, this is all preliminary. Everything you're going to hear today is preliminary. So don't go home and say, oh, floating does this to you. We don't know yet. We only have less than half the sample that we're aiming to get. And so just keep that in mind. We started testing subjects in May, but the majority of subjects were actually tested this prior month. We finished data collection in this cohort last Wednesday. Target goal of 40 by the end of this fall. So hopefully by the end of this year, we'll know what the final results do look like. So all of the results being discussed today are preliminary. Please treat them as that. And I have to say, some of the effects are rather strong. I was surprised to see even in the small samples such strong effects. But you never know until you have your full sample. So before I get off the stage and let my colleagues take over, I kind of want to show you this picture. Because this was taken September of last year. And right here on the left, or yeah, your left, is Dr. Martin Paulus. He's the scientific director at LIBER. He was my original mentor in neuroscience. And he brought me out to Tulsa to work with him. Here you see Dr. Saib Kalsa. Saib was visiting us at the time. He was a professor, assistant professor at UCLA. And he came out right after we gave a talk in Tulsa at this mental health symposium. And he also got a chance to float in our float tanks, which had literally just been built as he arrived. And this is Dr. Kyle Simmons, who's a researcher and neuroscientist at LIBER. And started floating last year and fell in love with it. And he knew right away that it was tapping into a subject near and dear to his heart, a concept known as interoception that you're going to hear a lot about today. But I put this picture up here for a reason. This is the perfect storm. If I could hand select anyone in the world who I would want to work with to study this, I couldn't have picked better colleagues, honestly. And Saib came out. He was very skeptical at first, and he was the first person, I think, who ever floated in our open pool. This was back in September 23, I want to say. And next thing you know, a few months later, Saib decided to join forces at LIBER, moved out from UCLA, and the team was complete. So without further ado, please give a warm welcome to Dr. Saib Kalsa. Thank you. Thank you.