Eric Rieger
0:00 Hello gut check project fans and KB MD health family, I hope that you are having a great day. It is now time for a new gut check project episode and guess what? Brain FM is in the house. That's right. Brain FM ceo dan Clark and chief scientist, Kevin Woods. Join us on the show today to talk about an incredible application of sound improving your life solving anxiety, sleep issues. Focus just an incredible tool that I can personally say I've used now for well over a year so as my family so as kids who has kids family, and so have several of our patients, they love brain FM so I don't want to spoil a single thing is an awesome, awesome episode. So let's get to our sponsors and get straight to talking to Dan and Kevin. We of course are always sponsored by atrantil. My co host Kenneth brown discovered, formulated and created atrantil to give to his patients to solve issues that are similar to IBS to give them all the polyphenols that they need for their daily lives whether they be athletes or they have gut issues or they just want to stay healthy. Go to love my tummy.com That's love my tummy.com Pick up your daily poly phenols today and of course unrefined bakery, let me just say some unrefined bakery. My wife is gluten free eater. She's got celiac disease. So I stopped by there and I picked up from unrefined bakery for my wife's birthday. I nice pumpkin pie. It was delicious. You would have no idea that was a gluten free product. It just tastes like awesome pumpkin pie. So go to unrefined bakery.com If you've never ordered from there before use code gut check and save 20% off your entire first order they deliver to any of the connected 48 and or you can you can just stop by go to unrefined bakery.com If you happen to be in the north Texas Metroplex area, and I think they have four locations. So just check them out and they got awesome stuff cupcakes, breads, various snacks that otherwise you may think I have to remain keto or I have to remain gluten free now. I can't have these awesome foods. That's just not true. Check out unrefined bakery.com today use code gut check for 20% off and last but not least go to KB MD health.com. And soon we will be featuring the signature package of course which includes atrantil CBD and of course you can also get not only CBD and atrantil there you can also pick up so if you're feigns That's right, Brock elite and broccoli pro exclusively available from physicians and guess what my co host he's a physician so we get to sell it and we bring it to a cost that you can't get anywhere else. So check out KB MD health.com Today Alright, let's get to some brain FM right now.
Hello Gacek project fans and KB indie Hill family welcome to episode number 64. I'm your host Eric Rinker, joined by my awesome co host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. And honestly you got a an awesome intro to make here for everybody.
Ken Brown
3:52 Yeah, so we're super excited. This is something I'm extremely passionate about because we have the CEO and the lead scientist for a product that I believe in. I love I have my patients use. I have my staff use I have all my family use, and it is called Brain FM, this if you have any trouble focusing if you have any trouble sleeping, if you have any trouble with anxiety, there is a really, really cool way to correct this. And we've got the owner and CEO, Dan Clark here, and Kevin JP woods, Ph. D. Super smart, and they're going to explain to us why well quite honestly why it's so effective on me why it's so effective on my patients. And one of the most exciting things we've been trying to do this for quite a while now pre pandemic, we realised Eric and I realised that when we tried this on a few patients at the endoscopy suite, not only did patients have a better experience, they were calm going into it. They woke up quicker and almost you vigorously every patient loved without question. And so I'm so excited because they're here in town visiting from New York because we're going to end up actually doing an official study where I think it's going to be groundbreaking. I think we're going to be able to change how people feel about outpatient procedures like colonoscopies decrease the anxiety. And it's not just anecdotal. It's because there's science behind it. There is a growing movement with this, and I am just absolutely thrilled episode 64 is probably going to be our biggest episode, ever to date.
Eric Rieger
5:33 I would imagine so and I don't want to take away time from you all feeding in but just so that y'all know, this is 20 months in the making, I mean, Coronavirus, COVID hit, and derailed all of our effort to really we should, we should be 20 months further down the road of actually implementing this. And it's really for patient benefit, which is what we talk about here all the time. This will enhance the experience, I believe, for people who come through and have procedures. So, Dan, Kevin JP, what's happening?
Unknown Speaker
6:02 Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having us.
Eric Rieger
6:04 Well, thanks for coming all the way down to Texas. How's Dallas, amazing, amazing. Not
Unknown Speaker
6:09 my first time in Texas, everything is enormous. The streets are three times as wide as they are in New York. I tried across the street, and I just keep on walking. Keep on walking.
Eric Rieger
6:19 Well, awesome. So yesterday was your first time to join us at the GI suite? And for honestly, I don't want to steal anything. But what was your impression that you thought you might see on an application of your technology? And then how do you see it fitting in kind of how Ken and I have been trying to experience it ourselves?
Unknown Speaker
6:39 Yeah, sure. So first, let's maybe tell everyone what the technology is. And then we can talk about how we jumped in and started this whole process. The backstory is actually interesting. So basically, brain FM, we make functional music designed to help people focus, relax, or sleep better. And mostly, we have a consumer product, where we have 2 million people that use us to jump into focus or switch into relax, or help them sleep. And we've been having really great success there. We have papers and some things in review in nature, which we're really excited about. So it's evidence and science backed. There's some really novel ways which we use music to basically switch you into that state. And I'll let Kevin, jump into that maybe come back to that and some of the science. But what's interesting is while we're chugging ahead on that, what my girlfriend actually she starts going to get a tonsillectomy. And she's signs her life to me, we're dating for six months, I now know we're in a serious relationship. And, and I realised that I'm terrified, and I'm not even getting surgery. And she's very scared. She's never been under before. And I realised at that point that we can use the same things that we're using science to advance on our consumer angle, we can use it in relax in a medical grade setting. Remember calling up Kevin and saying, Hey, can we do anything? And he starts looking at the literature, he starts looking at other things. He goes, Yes, I actually think we can improve it a lot. I pitched that to you guys. When we met. Yeah, like I think we met probably three months later. Just a coincidence. And you'd love the idea. And that's when we became here. So it's really cool. It's been definitely long time in the making. But it was amazing. When we were doing it some some yesterday. And then one gentleman woke up. And he was so he was so he was almost emotional. He was so happy. He's like, every single time I wake up, this is like the worst or most traumatic thing that can happen. And I was using this music and I woke up. And it was it was it was fine.
Unknown Speaker
8:46 And I've done this several times before without music. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
8:49 And that's the thing that we're trying to do is how do we help people relax into surgery, and then wake up, non groggy alert, and in being able to get on with their lives without, you know, making this traumatic, because a lot of people are so scared. And I know for me personally, it was really cool to see you guys doing the art form that you have, because I was able to see that it isn't scary. There's this there's this almost like divider between people that are non medical and medical have and for being able to cross over it and bring a bridge, using some of our music, I think is really what we're set up to do.
Eric Rieger
9:27 So it's interesting that that, honestly, it was really awesome. I think that the first person that y'all got to see feedback from was somebody who was so engaged and immediately wanted to tell you all about it. And I only just want to just so the audience understands exactly what Dan's describing because it was awesome. So kid, I saw this multiple times before they even got here when we use brain FM as an experiment, but essentially this particular patient, he wasn't high high anxieties per se for him his singular case, but he had a history of waking up erratic very emotional, hard to console, not very comfortable in his surroundings as he was emerging. He even told you all, he feared how he was going to wake up. Yeah. How would you describe that you saw him wake up.
Unknown Speaker
10:12 My goodness, he was he was happy. He looked straight in the eyes. And he thanked us on a personal level. And that meant so much. And just knowing that he had those prior experiences, and that he saw such an enormous difference, and I remember him saying, How can I recommend this to people? How can I tell people? Whoa, hold up, we're not ready for that quite yet. But yeah, he was ready to tell the world he was just so excited. And the
Eric Rieger
10:38 credit, the greatest thing is, it's non invasive, meaning that I don't have to inject a new drug brand doesn't have to use a new scope tip or something new, gigantic piece of equipment. I mean, this is something that we can apply. It's practical. And it's gave us real results in appreciable results. And
Unknown Speaker
10:57 it's enjoyable to absolutely. And that's the thing about music is it is familiar to people, they understand it. And yet we have this music with a scientific twist on it. Right? We have a dive into the science later. But you know, it's not exactly the music that you know, but it still is entertaining and fun to listen to. And as something that can distract you, while you're you know, lying there maybe worrying about the procedure you're about to undergo. So, you know, it's art and science coming together in a really special way. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker
11:25 yeah. And I think what's cool about it is, to Kevin's point, people for 1000s of years have always used music, right to be able to control their environment, right. And, you know, there's been people that have tried with this in medical settings. But it's, it's always lacking some of the results, some of the things that are proven in science that this can make a better experience, what we're really trying to do is combine both worlds between, you know, auditory neuroscience with Kevin's background, and with a product that can be brought into these experiences that isn't, is more than a placebo. It's something that is shown to have an effect, and it makes everything better. So it's a win for the patient. It's a win for the the clinic, it's a win for everyone involved, because everything just becomes a little bit easier with something that everyone's already used to, which is music.
Eric Rieger
12:20 Again, I know that whenever you've had to had conversations with patients before they come in for their very first colonoscopy, the level of fear and anxiety for somebody who simply has never even endured a procedure before it can be very real, and oftentimes occupies a lot of the time in the clinic for either you or Megan, or one of the nurses or the MA's to really kind of talk them off the ledge. So what have you seen incorporating something like brain FM so far?
Ken Brown
12:46 Alright, so my personal experience, before we even get to the patients, I would say that, but what I really liked is that my day begins. Every every morning, I start my day, I switch from the evening brain FM sleep, because I go to sleep with it. So my day begins was switching it to focus. I come down, I do my French press, which I say French press because Eric gifted me this French class, he's like, dude, quit, quit using drip coffee. It's like French press is the way to go. That's why boil the water, I have my brain FM on, I'm in the focus mode, I put that in focus, because I know within five minutes that my brain is ready to really do this, I'm put the coffee on. I do the French press fire up the computer. And then I start looking at my chart. So within 15 minutes, I am literally ready to roll. Because there's a lot of stuff I have to do. I then go to work to go work out, do whatever I do in my day. And then when I come home, then my wife and kids know this. And everybody has. We all use brain FM we all use it for the exact same things. My kids use it to study, I use it to get my day going, and I use it to put myself down. So I'm such a big believer. And then when we had our first what 30 People that we did at the endo centre, yeah. It's very easy to say, hey, trust me on this. I've experimented with it. All my employees use it. I use it, my family uses it. And what, just like you said being on the other side of this medical experience, even will today Nasreen was talking to these guys. And she said, even though I've scheduled 10s of 1000s of these when it was my turn to do it, I was nervous. And we gave her brain FM to do and she said to you guys, that immediately I calmed down. And now she's had several different procedures since then, and she doesn't care at all. She's like, I know, I'm gonna get in there. I know, I'm gonna wear this, I'm going to calm down. I know I'm gonna go to sleep, and I'm going to wake up and it's going to be refreshing and I'm going to feel good. So she can now tell my patients that she's like, Don't worry about a thing. Because one of the things that really and you and I talk about this all the time and we've had several podcasts, colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Colon cancer comes from colon polyps, we have a cure. And you saw that yesterday you are with us, we have a cure. So you and I have this urgency that if you're anxious about having a done, if you're scared, if you know somebody that had colon cancer, if you know somebody that complained about their colonoscopy, anything to get you into the clinic to get those polyps removed, because it saves your life. So now, when we have this opportunity to offer something, to make it a more, a more pleasant experience, not only more pleasant, because we're going to get into the site, we keep saying we're going to get into the science because that's coming the thing, that's the coolest thing. And I'm I want to thank both envision healthcare and and search, that they're being open minded about this. I'm really excited to get all my partners in G IA, looking at this, because I really kind of feel like this is a win win win win. We spoke with Dr. Ackerman, who's been co host, multiple, multiple times, when we spoke with Dr. Ackerman. He said it he's like, yeah, he's like, you just it's it's a no brainer, it's zero risk, potentially might help. And this is somebody who hasn't used it yet. When he realises he's like, Oh, when I said potential, I should have changed that word. He's like, it'll help. And that's what we're gonna end up trying to figure out. So what I love about it is it is just a way to say, look, get it done. Any worries you have, I'm gonna take one layer of that away, the second you show up. And that's what I'm excited about. Because ultimately, it's just a way, if you're worried about it, just make the appointment. We'll handle everything else. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker
16:45 I think it's it's interesting, too, because a lot of people that at least from my experience, right, the first time you're going to something like this, you focus on these negative thoughts. So you're trying to push out of your head by using music, which we're used to. And again, we'll get on the science last time we hear that, but it's something that we can focus on something else. So instead of the fears or something else, we can focus on the music that we're listening to, and know that we're in really good hands at a centre that's willing to invest in technology, and try new things. For better patient experience.
Ken Brown
17:20 I would like to just comment on that right there a centre that's willing to invest in technology. You're exactly right. Because when you've been meeting with people, they're saying, you know, we would like to be the Apple version of delivering health care like this.
Unknown Speaker
17:33 Yeah. I mean, well, it's interesting, because if you look at Apple, right, why, why do people want to be Apple, it's because they do things more, they're not the first to do things always. But the first to do things extremely well and extremely thought through. So they take their time. They they're not, you know, first to market sometimes, but other times they are and they when they are they're the dominant factor. And I think it comes down to really finding solutions that truly do work that truly do make a difference. And that are long term solutions rather than the not right. And when we're talking to other people that are looking to be the apple of healthcare, it does take an investment, it does take a chance, like a leap of faith into trying something new. But I think that the the return on that are exponential in patient satisfaction and repeat visitors, people that are actually showing up for appointments because they're less scared because we have a solution for that. But but more with with all the other things that we're learning on as byproducts like efficiency and helping so that's the stuff that we're really exciting, because it's still focused on patient experience first, but there's so many other things that come from patient experience being better. Let me
Ken Brown
18:49 get your take on this real quick. Since you guys did see this from the other side. Yeah, you saw what happens with me and my partners with the staff with the camaraderie how everyone there really is there for one ultimate goal and that's to take care of people to help in any way we can, meaning that we can fix diseases. I just want your take on the how the patients felt and where they came through. And certainly when we started using the technology, because people do need to hear it's easy for a doctor to say oh go go get this done because you should but I love that you're like this is the first time I've seen this and it's it's it's beautiful to watch how you guys as a team. Yeah, everyone.
Unknown Speaker
19:32 Well, I think it really comes shines through that that's true and everyone it has a great teamwork. I went from my perspective, it looks like everyone's there because they're like we have to be a players because we're saving people's lives. And that comes in from the RNs that we saw from the people in the lobby from from how you guys are showing up and and giving great bedside manner joking around everyone's having a good time. because you guys are in a great line of work where you're, again, saving people's lives, and even just talking to some of the the nurses there in our ends, you know, they're not just trying to make the experience where they're processing people, I thought that was really great. Where it's not like, oh, let's get this person with an IV and all these other things as fast as possible. It's like, no, like, Okay, you're sensitive, you've never gotten a needle or an IV or whatever. Let me figure out how to make it. So it's less obtrusive, or less intense. And I thought that was really great. And that's when why we're so excited. We're trying to say, hey, we're gonna add this brain FM thing into it. And they're like, that's gonna make our job even easier. And that was, that was really fun to say,
Eric Rieger
20:43 I love the fact that that's what you said, because what I see brain FM being, I know that it's for the patient, but truly, the person who's going to see the benefit repeatedly is going to be the nurse who's already trying to be exactly what you said, to make sure that it's not a cattle call for the GI centre, or really any surgery centre. Yep, that wants to be appealing to the patient, but at the same time, allow their staff to all be really really good at not everybody is great at talking or, or joking appropriately with a patient and make them come down at ease. But if you could have something that was somewhat of an equaliser, yes, yes, that's been proven and tested, etc. That looks to me like something like brain FM could easily fit that mould really decreasing the burden on the staff that's checking.
Unknown Speaker
21:31 Absolutely. And we were talking earlier about the fellows that we saw yesterday that had this great experience coming out and said that, you know, in previous cases, that he'd come out crying and distress and you think, not only the stress on him, but the stress on the nurses that would have to, you know, deal with them in that situation and calming down, and how that loads day after day on nurses that have to deal with that. Right. And, you know, to be able to relieve some of that burden is just absolutely enormous. And by the way, and what I saw at the centre yesterday was, you know, not only the nurses clearly care about people, but also just extremely efficient, and how quick the process was people with people going through, you know, and I had never been to a GI centre like that before, did not know what to expect. We were struck out. Yeah, how fast the whole thing was, it was amazing.
Unknown Speaker
22:17 Yeah, I think investing, you know, in something like this is investing and also your employees, you know, they see that we were talking to believe it was Alexis. And she's like, this is ice 1000 People wake up a week. And I'm just today I can tell you that those people are waking up faster. And that's, that's something which, when, especially now trying to hire people in the in the world that we live in right now, you want to work at a company that is leading the charge and is something that you can feel really good about working there, because not only are they taking care of you, but they're taking care of everyone else. And I think that that really shone through yesterday as well.
Eric Rieger
22:56 I think we're really lucky honestly can have G IA in this position to help us do this. Because it seems to me like this this lot. And we've talked about this on the show before but this company wants to be a an innovator, not just some big Gi Group. They want to help establish what should be some some good norms instead of some of the the throwaway old norms they want to be the ones that emerge southern think this is this is only going to pay a compliment to that.
Ken Brown
23:23 Yeah. And I want to point something out when you're talking about the efficiency and all that, you know, let's what you did see is the efficiency in the preoperative and post operative, but you saw in the room that it was consistent, it was Eric and I focused. My technician, Mackenzie, we you guys saw that. It's just it's right there. It's the same process. And so by not worrying about the patient's concerns, or the concerns are alleviated when they come in, and I know that they're going to wake up in competent hands, I get to focus 100% on taking care of what I'm looking at with the endoscope. Eric gets to focus 100% on making sure that that patient is sedated and I work as a team and you saw how that is that the the flow of the room. And that's what's beautiful about the centre there. We're at that, although it's the efficiency sometimes people think oh, well, that that feels like you're moving too fast. No, the spot where we slow down is in that route.
Unknown Speaker
24:22 Right? Yep. Yeah, we definitely saw that. Yeah, by efficiency. I just meant as a as somebody coming into the centre for procedure, I would be out of there in less than an hour, which was amazing to me. I always thought that outpatient procedures and you know, my take all afternoon I'd be sitting around all day, did not see any of that. It was really amazing.
Eric Rieger
24:41 Yeah, it is a whole nother dynamic. Beyond that and why this is a good setup. But I do think it's a great setup because we huge exposure for something like brain FM so we can really prove this concept. So let's get into it. What in the world is brain FM? How does it work? He's rubbing his hands together.
Unknown Speaker
25:00 Here we go, here we go. All right,
Ken Brown
25:02 before you even get into this, let's at least can I, I love being around I love being the stupidest person in the room. And yesterday, I'm by far, I just felt like I'm just like playing catch up with Kevin all day long. It's just that you are wicked smart, and certainly have the credentials to prove it. And the way your passion towards this you the whole story. So before we even get into the science, oh, I was out last time.
Eric Rieger
25:35 I was trying to follow the flow here.
Ken Brown
25:38 How in the world? Did you become a PhD in this? Like, what is the path?
Unknown Speaker
25:43 Sure, sure. Well, let's see. I was first interested, I think in the study of consciousness, I want to understand subjective experience. Why it is the case that we should experience anything at all rather than nothing? Why isn't it the case that humans are simply zombies with nothing on the inside, but you know, objects in the world, that kind of thing? Well, it turns out, it's hard to make a living as a consciousness research researcher. But it is possible to make a living as an attention researcher. And of course, attention and consciousness are very closely linked, at least in the sense that you tend to be conscious of what you're paying attention to. So I went into attention research in neuroscience. And within attention, I went into Auditory Research. Being a lifelong musician, just interested in sound in general, there's something magical about sound, right? It's ephemeral, you don't see it, it's in the air. And yet, it's so important to our daily lives, as you're experiencing right now. And so there's this magic about it. And I want wanted to understand, you know, the principles of how do you attend to sound in the world, right. And often, we're in these situations where we're trying to listen to the person talking to us in front of us, but there are other people talking around us, right? Or maybe we're on a busy street corner. Or say we're listening to a piece of music and just trying to hear the guitar part, but ignore the drums. And so there's this notion of a spotlight of attention in listening to things, right. And with the eyes, it's simple to understand how that happens, because you can move your eyeballs around, and you can point your eyes and things right? Well, we don't point our ears at things. We do that with our brain, right? And so if I'm sitting at the dinner table, and I want to listen to the person next to me, instead of the person in front of me, I don't have to turn my head to do that. I do something in my brain, right, that changes the spotlight of my attention so that I'm eavesdropping, right? And what is that process? How does that work? So I became very interested in that. I studied it in undergrad and then then went on to grad school, and did my dissertation on something called The Cocktail Party Problem, which is exactly the problem I've just described. And again, you know that the eyes being a two dimensional sheet, objects already arrived on the retina separated, right, but the eardrum is not a two dimensional sheet that your drum is a one dimensional receiver where you just get pressure over time, sounds mix in the air before they arrive at the ear. And it's the brains problem to unmix those sounds right? This is absolutely fascinating computational problem. So I study that for seven years. And in the process of doing that, I developed some methods to do online auditory experiments, which hadn't been done before. And long story short, you know, the, the old guard in auditory computational neuroscience would have said, Oh, I have have to bring people into my sound attenuated chamber, I have to make you wear my calibrated headphones. And therefore I can only run two subjects a day. Well, it turns out that if you do things online and use the right methods, you can collect 100 participants that day. And the date ends up being roughly the same, you know, with a few more participants, you can even out the noise that's otherwise introduced, but slightly messy online methods. It turns out, it's a massively more efficient way to run experiments. And one day, by chance in the supermarket, I ran into an old colleague of mine, so excited about these methods, I went on and on and on. And she had just hooked up with brain FM. And in that she was a consultant for them. Wow, bright brain FM, this, you know, wonderful company, they're doing functional music. And they really need somebody to, as you know, as a team of one to run lots of lots of experiments, behavioural experiments to figure out, you know, what is the ideal background music for doing, you know, XYZ. And I jumped on that immediately. I started consulting for brain FM, even before I defend what yours is,
Eric Rieger
29:27 do you think, Oh, this
Unknown Speaker
29:28 would have been 20? Nothing? No, no, no, no. 1819 2018 Oh, yeah. Yeah, bless. Yeah. Say I defended in 2018. Yep. And so six months before that, I was I was consulting with Brian FM and, and I remember the day that I defended my dissertation, I signed the employment contract with Brian. Nice, very, very happy day.
Unknown Speaker
29:49 snagging right out.
Ken Brown
29:51 any room at all? And the
Unknown Speaker
29:53 rest? Yeah, the rest is history. And it was gone to do some really incredible things. We got a grant from the National Science Foundation to look into music for ADHD. Out of that has come a this beautiful piece of work that has behavioural experiments has fMRI brain scanning and has EEG, and another method of looking at brain physiology. And we combined all of these methods to essentially show how our focus music works. Yeah, the results are really great. The papers currently in peer review at nature. We're really excited to see how that goes. Yeah, so that's currently currently where we're at with brain FM. Super excited to explain how it actually works. But maybe, since Yeah.
Eric Rieger
30:41 We have to round out and ask Dan. Dan, you mentioned maybe on this podcast, my memory is already fuzzy, but you didn't found brain FM but you hopped on it. The moment that you saw there was an opening so why don't you to go over how you got here?
Unknown Speaker
30:56 Yeah, so I have a very interesting story that's different than Kevin so I, I started making websites when I was 13. I loved it. I thought it was like a nother kind of video game that you could play. And I am a sucker blackbelt. So I made martial arts websites made the first one for my school, and they went from getting 30 leads to 130 leads
Ken Brown
31:19 sorry, somebody that's done martial arts his whole life. What second degree and what? Mixed martial
Unknown Speaker
31:23 arts so it concentrated in jujitsu? Krav Maga, Muay Thai and Cuba.
Eric Rieger
31:28 Sweet. Yeah, Lucinda Drew.
Unknown Speaker
31:32 So yeah, so I did that for a while. And I went to make martial arts websites because I made it for one person. He's like, can you make it for all my friends. And before I was out of high school, I had 20 clients were dropped out of high school, ended up having, you know, 40 clients at one time. And so my first business when I was 20, travel the world and came back and I said, I wonder if I can do this again. Maybe I got lucky. And I started working with businesses and bringing them online and building lead generation businesses and started doing more and more complicated things like POS systems, I started doing digital advertising became digital director of a company at a like 24 years old. And from the outside, I made it you know, I was making more money than my parents, you know, like travelling around the United States selling million dollar contracts. But I didn't I hit this point where I didn't feel like I was as really like helping people like I did when I was teaching martial arts. Because we used to use martial arts as a vehicle to take a kid from being not really confident or sure of himself into a leader into being someone and I'm I'm an effective that I was really shy, I got bullied on mercilessly in fifth grade. I was a little chubby and, and martial art transformed me. So even though I made success, you know, financially, I didn't really find success success personally. And, you know, I had this life or death situation, which is a whole nother podcast to talk through. And I realised I need to quit my job, quit my job, I came across brain FM, like three months later, when I was looking for what I should do, I knew I wanted to work in tech, again, to help people. I remember using it the first time and being blown away. Because I used to work from 10pm to 4am, because that's where I could find my flow state, right. Like, I could find that magic zone where I could just jump into things. And I remember taking my headphones off the first time and being like, this is too good to be true. This is no way this is working. I was super speculative. And I was I was this is just music, right. And I remember trying I save 24 hours and then used it still worked. My diet still worked. And it was it was perfect. Because it was something that allowed me to switch into focus whenever I wanted to. And from then I was like this is going to be something that changed the world. I called the people that created the company like 12 times, I actually started working for free and absurdly the tech team becoming CEO and then purchasing the company. So wild ride, never never intended to do that. But along the way, you know, obviously Kevin, Kevin and I are together as well as a lot of other great team members. We're really trying to use brain FM as a tool to help people be their best self, their best best version of themselves. And while we are doing that consumer you know now we get to do it in the medical space and help people have best health that they can have. And that's something that's we're really excited about is
Eric Rieger
34:40 awesome stories it y'all linked by passion, which I find really endearing for the process.
Ken Brown
34:46 So we're doing so at at atrantil and certainly with the practice and everything we really like to discuss what is the what is our collective why what is my why? What is the the companies Why if we're all on the same way, what I'm just hearing, I'm just writing little notes here. I'm like, wow, both you guys driven by the Why have you have this knowledge, Kevin, that you are like, wow, this could really, it's so I come from this music background and I understand this and I can do this. And Dan, you have this incredible like, this is where I came from I, I need to I'm it's not a money thing. It's a The why is how do we get everyone else on the same page. And we hooked up because we're in that car that one day, we were being shuttled to the to the meeting we're going to and the why was wow, that sounds like that could really help my patients and you're like, the more I think about I think I can and I like when the y's align. And you can move that forward and get more people doing it. The beauty of brain FM is that you can teach people that they are capable of their Why suddenly they can unleash that. So when I meet with so many people that have irritable bowel syndrome, and which is associated or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis where they're kind of consumed by negative thoughts and anxiety. And there's that brain gut access, that Kevin's nodding, because he's like, that's definitely the cool part. So I want to affect the brain by protecting the gut. Kevin knows so much about the brain that we realised we're kind of meeting there were so I think that this collective why if we could expand this circle of why into okay, we now know that am Serge and envision is getting the why they're like, yes, we can do this. And now we can get the why going with the doctors going, we all can have this collective why, which is one thing, how do we get more people to have a better experience in healthcare and ultimately, collectively improve the health of everyone? You guys are doing it to the brain? I'm trying to do it through the budget.
Unknown Speaker
36:58 So yeah, well, that's.
Ken Brown
37:03 So I love hearing that story. I didn't know that. I mean, we've talked to me for hours and hours. I did not know that's a really, really cool story.
Eric Rieger
37:10 Just a brief primer on, on how we all linked up there, because you just barely hinted at it is we you and I had met in snow skiing together, you have snowboarding on snow skiing, had a great time. And then we decided to ride together for the summer meeting. Yep, to the same group and share a shuttle. No pretence at all, we just got hopped into conversation about how are things going. And it probably took about 10 miles or a 70 mile ride. Before we determine, wait a second, there's something there is something here. Yeah. And so anyway, that's that's just my short version on how I showed up here today.
Ken Brown
37:49 I love it a lot.
Unknown Speaker
37:50 So I guess without further ado, should we talk about what's here and talk about some of the science?
Unknown Speaker
37:54 Yeah. Finally, all right,
Ken Brown
37:57 now we're gonna get into some cool stuff. All right, this is if you are, if you're listening to this, get a pen and a piece paper out because this is cool, cool, cool stuff. This is not just listening to music, I love that.
Unknown Speaker
38:09 And so the trick with this is always to make it you know, straightforward and understandable. And hopefully, you won't need pen and paper to understand what's going on here. So simply put, a lot of neural activity activity is rhythmic, right? These rhythms, slow, fast, everything in between. And the rhythms in the brain support, perception, cognition, and action, essentially, those three things that the brain does. One that you may have heard of, are delta waves when you're sleeping, that's probably you know, the most common widely known one. But their rhythms are all sorts of different speeds that support pretty much you know, anything that you're doing in your daily life. And the idea behind brain FM, is, it's music that's specifically engineered to drive these rhythms in the brain called neural oscillations, or if you'd like brainwaves to drive your brainwaves in targeted ways, right? To support whatever you need to be doing, right. And so for example, we know what brainwaves in the focus brain look like? They're at particular speeds in particular regions. And so what we do is we say, okay, let's use the odd, let's use the auditory system as input for neuromodulation. Right? And so how can we use an auditory input to drive your brainwaves into the state that we know supports focus, right? And so we figured out that out and that's what we have our paper that's coming out shortly on, but because the principle is using the auditory system as a neuromodulator it's not just a one trick pony, right? So we can support focus, we can support relaxation, we can support sleep, and now we're discovering that we can, you know, support people going under and waking up from anaesthesia as well. So it's really it's a delivery method for you know, driving your brain into whatever state you need for, for what you need to be doing. Right. And so again, this is, you know, it's what we call functional music, which we'd like to make the distinction between that and, you know, what you might call art music with a capital A. Right? Which is that, you know, in modern times with artists and albums, there's a conception of music as something that primarily exists for self expression and for beauty and to connect to your audience. Well, things haven't always been that way, right. And if you go back 500 years, 1000 years, it's not about artists and albums. It's about music that is designed to do things for people, for example, you know, a lullaby a lullaby is a perfect example of ancient functional music. Because the point of a lullaby is not to sound beautiful. Maybe you also want that, but the point of a lullaby is to put a baby to sleep. Right? And similarly, you know, you have music that was used to help people do physical labour, right? Or music to march to if you're in an army, right? And the point of marching music is not to sound beautiful is to make people walk in lockstep, right. Another good example is dance music, right? And dance is a perfect example of this principle of rhythms in the brain and rhythms in the world. Which by the way, is called entrainment. That's a concept that you may be familiar with, which is, rhythms in the brain reflect rhythms in the world?
Ken Brown
41:22 Yeah, what threw me off a little bit. Sorry.
Eric Rieger
41:24 Just to catch up on everyone on on the vocabulary. I want to hear your just brief explanation of neuromodulation Sure, I've entrainment is another might have been one more, but just just to keep everybody on the same? Sure.
Unknown Speaker
41:35 Sure. Sure. So neuromodulation is just a broader term that refers to, you know, inducing a change in the brain through an external stimulus, right. It could be a magnetic field, it could be electrical currents. But it could also be sensory stimulation, right? In this case, auditory system. And treatment is a form of neuromodulation, where you're providing a rhythmic input to induce a rhythmic response from the brain, right. And so you have this oscillating system, neural circuits of the resonance frequencies. And so you're basically pushing on this neural circuit in a rhythmic way and a response in a rhythmic, rhythmic way. And because the brain has this property of training to things around it, then you can drive the rhythms in the brain to help support what you need to do. Okay, which is, yeah, we're where I started. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward and simple example of that coming back around as dance, right? That's one that everybody understands. You hear the rhythm and the music and your body moves to that. And that's entrainment and what's called the auditory motor system, right? And also, by the way, if you want to know, how quickly does it take for brain FM to kick in, which is a question that we always get asked, I asked back, Well, how long does it take between when you hear dance music? And when you want to dance? Yeah, right? The answer is, it depends on how closely you're attending to the music, right? It depends on how intense the beats are. And all that's true for brain FM as well. But you know, the real answers, maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute, if you're not really listening, if you're in the right mood, maybe 10 seconds, right. But that's the sort of timescale and ballpark timescale when you're talking about rhythmic entrainment in the auditory system. And interesting thing about dance music, right, is that the functional properties of dance music are completely dissociated from the aesthetic properties of dance music, right? Yes, you can listen to music that sounds terrible, and still makes you want to dance. And that's a perfect demonstration of functional versus art in music, right? And so what we've done in brain FM is we've said, okay, you know, we know entrainment is the thing, but instead of, you know, relatively slow rates that you will bounce to, you know, you can actually drive the brand very fast rates that support focus, or very slow rates that support sleep. And that's anything in between, and everything in between. And that's the principle.
Unknown Speaker
43:47 What's really cool about it as well is in addition to all the things that Kevin is saying, we're also able to do it through sound, where it's something that is not obtrusive, or it stops you from what you're doing. So for example, in focusing, it's it's not something that you have to watch, or like meditation, you meditate, and then you focus this is as long as you are doing the activity. So what's nice about it is usually our work is visual, to why adding music to it, it's allowing us to focus better and work like we normally would. And the same thing in hospitals, right? And in the clinic that we were just at is this is music that you put on top. And it doesn't take away from the experience. People can still you know, hear what you're saying instructions, it's not something that they're putting over their eyes. One interesting thing about music compared or sound compared to light is what like one out of 18,000 people are epileptic,
Unknown Speaker
44:47 right, the light can occasionally induce epilepsy, but music will not. Yeah, sound induced epilepsy is not only extremely rare, but it's also not due to rhythms. It's triggered by you know, things that have to do with your past. So the sound of a car crash or something might trigger trigger epilepsy for sound. Whereas with light, it's a very automatic thing where once you hurt once you hit a certain frequency of light flashing, you know, if you have that kind of photosensitive photosensitive epilepsy, it'll set you off. Not so with music, so it's extremely safe. Yeah, so,
Unknown Speaker
45:19 so sound is really this perfect medium to apply to things that we're already doing, whether it's relaxing, sleeping, or going through surgery, but it's also something that's incredibly safe. Because we have all of these things that we've evolved to have that protect us from sound, the worst thing that can happen is maybe it's too loud. That that's, you know, very, that's, that's actually not even probably going to happen because of the way commercial headphones are made. You know, it's a very safe thing to add to your regimen.
Eric Rieger
45:51 So what do y'all call this particular technology? And then how did you arrive at this technology? Because I know it's not the first iteration of utilising sound, you've even said, you know, it's been years ago from the lullaby to now. So what's this call that we're bringing in uses? Sure.
Unknown Speaker
46:06 Well, I think we like to call it brain FM. It's it Yeah, it is. It is unique. We have, you know, patents on the process that we use to make this music because it is so unique, you know. Let's see. There are other methods of training the brain for example, you could flashlights that people like we were just saying, but you can't get your work done. If you're having lights flashed at you. Right? There's there's a conflict there. So Sam is really a great way to do it. Yeah, I don't think we have a really good name for the technology
Ken Brown
46:40 there. Let me ask you a quick question. So I'm somebody that I own a different centre someplace else, like, oh, yeah, I heard this podcast you know what we're gonna do? I love Coldplay, so I'm gonna make everybody listen to Coldplay as they get in there. Because Coldplay does it for me. Explain the difference?
Unknown Speaker
46:55 Yeah. So before we do that, I think so obviously, brain FM as a company, you know, we do have patents like, like Kevin saying, I would just say that every time we the reason why we call it brain FM is because every time we learn more, we actually grow and build and change brain FM. So it's an ever evolving thing, where brain FM was five years ago, and where it is now. And our understanding of the brain and even the music we produce different. As far as this of what we're making for health care. This is really brain health, that we're really focusing on as a pursuit, and it is different than our consumer product. And Kevin can share some of the things that we arrive to it. And it actually it's funny, because Coldplay was one of the control groups that we did that dimension. So when you when we first started talking about, hey, I think this is something that we could do. I think I share that story of my girlfriend. We were saying, I remember telling Kevin, I was like, Hey, can we make relax? We just play a relaxed music. And he's like, Yeah, we could but let me check to check. And he started finding all this free search, which I'll just like Kevin say, but it was just incredibly exciting. Because from that start, we were able to eventually build a product that blew the wall to off everything that existed so far, we can see that with science.
Eric Rieger
48:14 So that's that's kind of where I was going. So I when you and I very first got engaged with this topic and what brain FM was. I think one of the first questions that can ask is how does this compare to some someone utilising binaural? Beats? Yeah, and then that that's really kind of what I was getting at is that that is more or less in, correct me if I'm wrong, but static in where it is. And just as you described, y'all have been evolving and finding new applications for brain FM proprietary applications. Whereas by neuro is a great discovery. However, y'all are evolutions
Unknown Speaker
48:55 on Yeah, I'll start and then I'll give it to Kevin. So you know, this, like we were saying before, it has been tried to be done forever. Sure, functional music lullabies those existed for 1000s of years. And then a lot of people are familiar with music that they they play to elicit a response. So when you go to spas, you hear the waterfalls and the relaxing, you know that because you're trying to have a relaxing experience. What we've done is we've taken that to another level. Now, to your point, binaural beats isochronic tones, those have existed for a long time. And that's when for anyone that hasn't heard about this is when you play one frequency in one year and one frequency in the other. And they basically combined in your brainstem, right? And that creates entrainment in your brain. But it's not as precise as what we're looking for. It still has effects but they're diminishing or they're not. They're not as rigorous as we'd like to know that this is 100% effective. So when we were creating brain FM, it was well this is something that's there but how How could we make it more effective? And Kevin, I'll share in a second, but the difference between is instead of modulating frequencies, we actually modulate amplitude. Mm hmm. Kevin, you want to explain that?
Unknown Speaker
50:12 Sure. Yeah. So I can talk about by now binaural beats specifically. And Dan is absolutely right, you have two different frequencies coming in the two different ears. The difference between those frequencies creates beating in the brainstem, essentially, that if you were to take two sine waves of slightly different frequencies, sum them together, what you would end up with is amplitude modulation, basically interference between two very similar assignments. So for example, I've 400 hertz and one year 410 Hertz in the other ear, in the brainstem, I'm creating a 10 hertz amplitude modulation, okay, right dude with some of those things. Now, the issue? Well, there's several issues. One is that the brainstem was limited and how strongly it can pass those modulations up to the cortex, right, the cortex has a high level of the brain where all the interesting stuff happens. So even if you have, you know, it doesn't matter how loud those frequencies are in your two years, the the level of modulation created in the brainstem will cap out at a certain amount. But if you put that modulation directly in in each ear, instead of relying on the brainstem to produce it, you can get a much stronger response from cortex, right. So in terms of the strength of entrainment, and binaural beats is also about entrainment right? It's about producing this modulation, that then in trance cortex, the strength of that entrainment is much less than binaural beats because it is produced, because modulations produced by the brain instead of existing in the sound signal, right? A practical issue is that with binaural beats, you're limited to listening to tones. So when you listen to binaural beats, what you're hearing is, and one year and and the other year, I love that song. Exactly. No one loves that. Right? And so what we've done in brain FM is we found a way to insert modulation into music, right? So that it's enjoyable, and you get those effects as well. Right?
Unknown Speaker
52:04 Yeah. And we can we can send over a demo if you want to stitch it to the end of this podcast so people can see here. Well,
Eric Rieger
52:11 that's honestly one of the coolest parts is is the fact that y'all can y'all can put the effective portion of brain FM inside the genre that anybody wishes to listen to. That's right. It's one of the coolest things because I was even asking you when you were first describing Oh, is it? Is it country to go to sleep? And is it hard rock to wake up? And he said, actually, it's whatever you want, for anything that you want. And I thought that was the coolest explanation, because you're not limited to some type of genre, just simply because that's how you need to feel.
Unknown Speaker
52:42 Absolutely. And to be clear, you know, most music is rhythmic, and therefore most music has amplitude modulation in it. But it's not targeted in the way that brain FM is, right. It's it's a byproduct of the artists doing their thing. So if you're listening to Coldplay, right, they have a mix of whole notes and half notes and whatever, you know, musical things are going on and do that they have amplitude modulation at all sorts of different frequencies happening, right? If they're at, you know, 120 BPM and they're playing whole notes, then they have, you know, one hertz or whatever it is maybe two hertz. But with brain FM, what we're saying is, okay, we know the frequency that we want the brain to hit. So we're going to directly insert amplitude modulations, at exactly 16 hertz, or, you know, whatever it happens to be, and make those the dominant modulation frequency in the brain. Whereas with music, you have all these overlapping frequencies. And you know, the, the target is to make it sound beautiful not to drive the brain into a certain solitary state. Right. And so, by the way, with Coldplay, we did this very large online study, we had 200 participants in this, we gave them a standard questionnaire called the profile of mental states looking at, among other things, tension and relaxation. And we had Coldplay as a control. We had brain FM, we also had another piece of music very fascinating. That was made by music therapists and was hailed as the most relaxing song in the world, it was used in multiple studies, it was shown to reduce blood pressure to similar extent as benzodiazepines to for people undergoing surgery. And we found that we beat that would be called Les by a mile. And we beat that song as well. You know, error bars were small relative to the difference between them highly, statistically significant. So that was very cool to see.
Ken Brown
54:21 So the last part again, one more time, because it's based on science. And what I said Coldplay, kind of jokingly because I like Coldplay, and that didn't realise that they actually studied that. And so this was compared to a scientifically or supposedly scientifically derived music considered the most relaxing music in the world and I guess you paid yourself you like you went you just went immediately to the deepest water you could find
Unknown Speaker
54:46 that's exactly right. We we did the hardest tests, we always try to give ourselves the hardest test. By the way, it's a track called weightless by Marconi union is extremely Google will you'll find it was CNR CNN article written about it, and we said okay, if this is the king of the hill, We're going to beat it. And we did. Wow.
Unknown Speaker
55:03 Yeah. And we do that from some of the things that Kevin was talking about earlier, which were there's online experiments. So think about it, you know, we can actually test 1000s of people, and we know all the knobs to play. So not only are we doing these neural phase locking these amplitude modulation, we actually do other things in music, like 3d sound. So when you're in some of our relaxing music, we actually shift some of the sound from right here to left here, almost like you're in a hammock, sometimes, we have different BPM rates, different kinds of genres specific to make you feel more relaxed. And as we learn more about you, and what you prefer, we can actually have even a better response. And, you know, getting back on track on some of the stuff that we're doing with you guys, and hopefully more people in the future. We started looking at this from a science based procedure and saying, Okay, this is what the world says is the most relaxing music in the world. Let's beat it. And I believe it would be like, like 50 50% or 5%. It's a pretty pretty demonstrable, especially compared to,
Ken Brown
56:08 just to clarify that was like, first iteration, you guys continually improve what you're going
Unknown Speaker
56:13 Oh, yep, yep. And now it just comes down to so we have improved sense and now it's comes down to doing clinical trials with real people to say okay, we've improved as much as we can outside the environment. Now let's make it better in the environment and continually test
Eric Rieger
56:29 one or something else that that you mentioned, Kevin, that I feel like is, is maybe even just glossed over as we're talking about comparing it to Coldplay or or waitlist, is you said benzodiazepines also. So now you're talking about comparing sound to a drug and a bit of die as a pain, of course, is what we use, if you're curious, that's verse said, that's out of and that's value. These are things that people religiously take for, as an analytic try to stop that. So the fact that you didn't just go to the deepest water and sound, you went straight to the heart of what we use and anaesthesia, chemically to allow people to alleviate their anxiety, and that's quite measurable.
Ken Brown
57:11 Alright, so let's bring that up because you said religiously tape. But the reality is, is that benzodiazepines have an extremely addictive potential as well. Correct. So people that suffer from anxiety and using those medications to try and get through that there are tremendous rich,
Eric Rieger
57:27 so in before we hit on that just just the array of benzo and benzo like drugs. I mean, it doesn't just stop with those three, you're talking also about Xanax, Ambien, senesce, those, all of those fit at some level to be maximum GABA agonist. So when you say that what you have by comparison is something that's effective. We don't know this today. But potentially y'all could be unlocking a way for people not to be dependent upon taking these drugs to to get better sleep to alleviate their anxiety, etc. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker
58:02 I mean, this is definitely a road that we see could be possible. Obviously, there's a lot of work to be involved involved right now. But we do have testimonials of users that, like reach out and they say, Hey, I haven't slept well in 10 years. And I tried brain FM a lot last night, and I've been on Ambien, I've been on Lunesta, and I slept better than any drug I've ever taken. Right. And now we're I'm not here saying that this is a cure or treatment. Yeah. But this could be an alternative approach where maybe you can take less trucks, or you can do this before you try drugs, or, you know, whatever. And, you know, I think that gives someone more control and freedom.
Ken Brown
58:41 As someone who tries to incorporate different lifestyle modulations to improve my life to try and incorporate these different things with my patients. When we talk about let's talk about benzodiazepine addiction, we can get into the fact that benzos works similar to alcohol. So I work with a lot of patients with liver disease, and we try and get over that. Well, the beauty that I really like about this is that just like you said, when you meditate to try and focus, you are meditating, and then you're going to try and have focus. What I love is I'll actually stack this kind of stuff. I will and Eric's a big sauna fan also. And so I will put my brain FM on I will go into the sauna, and I will do breathing exercises all at once. And I love is absolutely you know, it's I'm, I feel like I'm focusing on my breath. I know that I'm getting that neuromodulation that's going to happen anyways and start stimulating that area to try and do that. And I'm getting the benefits of the sauna that's there. And so just we're not saying that one thing does something or other but when we start on my lifestyle modifications, this is like one of the easiest as the other stuff you need a sauna like when I tell my patients I'm like you know sauna therapy is good. I don't have access to it. Okay, do you let's do some breathing and some meditation. I can't I'm super busy and whatever. Okay, how about just putting some headphones on? Yeah. How about that? Let's start with that and see what happens.
Unknown Speaker
1:00:11 And it's something that, you know, one of the reasons why I was so attracted to the company in the beginning was, it isn't just for, you know, people that it is for everyone. It doesn't actually matter if you speak English or not, none of our none of our music is created with lyrics. And one thing I think we glossed over is actually we have in house composers that are makeup, that's gonna be my next question. Yeah. So we have people that have toured with some of the greatest bands ever, which, you know, I don't know if we can disclose, but some really great talented musicians. And they're, they're taking this in making this from a functional approach, where it's music that sounds great, it's music that has all the scientific effects, and all the knobs turned the right way to have the effect we're trying to, you know, get for the user. But it's also not necessarily music, that is going to be your favourite song. Because that's not the goal, right? The goal is to make an effect that can be measured in your brain, and is not just sometimes it's every time, whether you're trying to relax, you're trying to sleep, you're trying to focus,
Unknown Speaker
1:01:13 and it's music that will sit comfortably in the background. So for example, with our focus music in particular, you know, a lot of people don't realise that. If I'm a music producer, normally, my job is to grab your attention. My job is to make music punchy, and make you sit up and distract you from whatever you're trying to do. Right. And so we've we've flipped the script on that, and we say, Okay, well, we know the tricks they're using to make music punchy and grabbing your attention. Let's do the opposite. You know, what can we do to make music still sound good and be entertaining, but help you work by not distracting you? Right? And because we have a different target than everybody else who ended up making different music than everybody else.
Eric Rieger
1:01:50 So figuring this out, you some people say they're an audio file, I would say that You are the supreme audio file doctor. Yeah, no, no. But not not only that, you also play guitar. And we talked about this briefly yesterday. So when you have when when y'all team up with your composers to come in house to build stuff? Just just how does it happen? How do y'all know what sounds good for it to match together? And you're like that that'll work here? I mean,
Unknown Speaker
1:02:19 absolutely well about it. They're much better musicians than I am. For starters, my job is to annoy the heck out of our musicians by saying, that's a bit too good. That's, uh, you know, that that melody that you made, it's too catchy, you know, oh, that that percussive part as normal music, it would be totally awesome. Yeah, right now, you know, we're not trying to grab people's attention. And so just sort of to remind them of the science and the target and that kind of thing. But,
Eric Rieger
1:02:47 so what was the session? Like for them? Are they there for like, four hours, and they're cutting one track? Or?
Unknown Speaker
1:02:52 Oh, they make enormous quantities of music. They're so good at it. In terms of a session, so they work in Ableton, you know, okay, yeah. So they have DAWs we have proprietary software that plugs into Ableton that helps us layer the science on top of music, essentially, that's what what's happening. And the principles of composition they use from the ground up, are meant meant to support whatever mental state right? So, you know, even though it was talking about modulation, that's the layer that's added on at the end, essentially, but they'll start from a place of, okay, we want to make things fun, but not too exciting. You know, we want to make things slightly repetitive so that they'll blend into the background. We want to, you know, not have a bunch of symbols and bright distracting things, you know, maybe we want to slightly lopat, you know, bring up the bass and cut down the treble, so it's not to distract people. So they have all sorts of production tracks, that, again, are pretty much the opposite of what you'd normally do if you're a pop composer.
Eric Rieger
1:03:45 And so for those who just listening, you said Ableton in DAW that you're basically saying that they use a digital audio workstation exactly when they're collaborating from I'm assuming all over? Yes. And to do that, okay.
Ken Brown
1:03:57 Let me ask one quick question. I use the term we have proprietary software to integrate the science into the music. And so like as a, as a clinician, I can competently look at my patients and say, it doesn't really matter what you're listening to. It's the science has been built into that just choosing what music you like.
Unknown Speaker
1:04:16 Exactly, right. Okay. And that's why brain FM works on top of pretty much any genre because it's about layering the science on top of the music, right?
Unknown Speaker
1:04:24 Yeah. So from a non musical side, I like to think of metaphor as a skyscraper. Right? So imagine you have a skyscraper where you have, you know, the structure of the skyscraper, right? You have the different floors, and then you have the facade, right? And what happens is that the really important things about the skyscraper is really the structure and how it's built and how the floor is how strong the floors are, right? That's actually all of the science that we're putting into it. And the facade of the skyscraper, whether it's it's black, or white, or class or not, is the genre that we applied. Really At the end, right because it doesn't we can make the different different sounds of all these different kinds of music and how it is expressed. But it still has all the core technology is really holding the skyscraper making it strong and eliciting that effect in your brain
Eric Rieger
1:05:15 is one of the coolest parts. I really do just because you can, like I said earlier, I'll reiterate it's people can just choose what type of music What style of music they wish to enjoy and still get the benefit. Exactly. So it's really really cool.
Ken Brown
1:05:29 Yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm a huge believer I now I'm a bigger believer. I now actually understand it. I'm just been doing it and going wow, this stuff works. Yeah, but now I'm like, wow, okay. Um, how many times when you're making music does somebody want more cowbell?
Unknown Speaker
1:05:49 Oh, all the time? I'm always advocating for more cowbell, right. No, I'm my job is to say less cowbell. Less.
Unknown Speaker
1:05:57 very distracting events.
Eric Rieger
1:05:59 Do you ever cut you ever cut time with any of you musicians in and I wish
Unknown Speaker
1:06:03 I'm not I'm not at their level now. They wouldn't
Unknown Speaker
1:06:06 have been very, very busy on other things.
Eric Rieger
1:06:08 Dances know what to do here.
Unknown Speaker
1:06:11 Take me an hour to do what they do in a minute. Yeah,
Eric Rieger
1:06:14 no, that's, that's very, very cool. Oh, it'll come back to me.
Ken Brown
1:06:19 Okay. Well, I was just gonna say, I mean, I find it really fascinating. You know, there's that I listened occasionally to it to the podcast how I built this. Here these people were that but the story that came into it. To me that's super fascinating. That's why I love talking to guys like you getting the history I did not know that history. I love that where your emotional drive guide you and your past where you're going your intellectual desires with your ability to incorporate the music brought us together. Like I don't think that or maybe it would be just a wouldn't be as amazing as it is. But the the union of your guys's circles coming together, and then doing this and the ability to have that. I'm listening to it. And I'm like, man, they're just getting warmed up. Oh, this is gonna be the standard of care in our field.
Eric Rieger
1:07:15 100%. And another thing to consider is somebody wants to utilise brain FM, it's not in before we get into how to find brain FM, etc. Desired equipment to listen to it on. You've got everything from noise cancelling headphones, you've got earbuds, one of the bone rockers called that we use. Well, we
Ken Brown
1:07:36 were using these yesterday, which is the the these are well, these are actually mine radios. Arrow Plex shockwaves are applied shockwaves, which is really interesting because they actually don't go in your ear, they actually vibrate the what can you explain really quick how these work?
Unknown Speaker
1:07:53 Sure. So the bone conduction devices. And the idea is that you can transmit sound by vibrating your skull essentially into the cochlea, which is the organ of hearing. And you can bypass the eardrum essentially what's happening. And it's fascinating that they work as well as they do because the the transfer function, the skull imposes his spectral shift on the music. And so what they've done with those headphones is that they've shifted the spectrum in the opposite direction. So after being filtered by the skull, you hear music as it should be heard, which is fascinating. I hadn't used them before yesterday, I'm totally sold on them. I
Eric Rieger
1:08:30 had never seen them either in the patients seem to love that. And conveniently it allowed them to lay easily on their side. Yes, they weren't obstructive,
Unknown Speaker
1:08:38 and to hear what's going on around you, you're important. So yeah, you're
Eric Rieger
1:08:42 exactly right. We were still able to communicate ask them appropriate questions, but they were if we weren't engaged with the patient in conversation, they were immediately back into utilising the the sound yes to the benefit. Exactly.
Ken Brown
1:08:56 I discovered these because my partner Dr. Adnan Bader, who works with us great gastroenterologist, he was wearing him and I'm like, what, what is that? Oh, I read this article, read this article that the earbuds they trap bacteria and people are getting you can have this potential to alter your microbiome in your ear and he doesn't have just this I do this and now i i bought it for my father my uncle's my business. We just bought a bunch of them and just mailed on all his family members. And I was like, I'm in I'm just like, classic Amazon Prime addict. I was like, what do they call like? I've already ordered it. I'm just like, you know, bought like, because I know I'm gonna lose some so I bought like three
Eric Rieger
1:09:33 it's very cool. So what is the best way for lay person while we are getting things set up in the in the clinical trials, etc. To learn more and engage with brain FM?
Unknown Speaker
1:09:43 Sure, so someone can go to our commercial app, which is brain.fm or website are iOS and Android and download our apps. We give everyone a three day free trial to experience brain FM for themselves. I always recommend for trying it for focusing if you can, but also just relax extra sleep, finding what works best for you. And again, we're so confident in our technology that that's why we give three days for free. Because we want people to experience it and integrate this into their lifestyle.
Eric Rieger
1:10:15 Fantastic. I mean, it's really, really cool technology top to bottom. I'm just so excited. Y'all came down in the we had these kinds of responses that we were able to replicate. But I will say something, which I thought was really funny whenever we did our very first experience with allowing the patients to relax, and then wake up y'all sent Ken and I, these gigantic briefcases of all these headphones. Yep. And we were trying them. I think for three weeks or two weeks, by the time we decided to check in via email with with a Dan. And so I was on my hair actually. Yeah, that's I tell you lost all your hair.
Ken Brown
1:10:55 Oh.
Eric Rieger
1:10:58 And they, so basically, Dan, and Kevin wrote to us, and they asked, How are things going? And of course,
Ken Brown
1:11:06 we'll hold on these are really nice headphones. Oh, yeah. It came in these like crazy cases, which like gun cases. Yeah. They're like, like, and people that like, have guns. Yeah. Oh, that's a such and such.
Eric Rieger
1:11:18 Yeah. I thought it was a badass case. If that's all you said. But these were all pre programmed noise cancelling headphones. Probably a few 100 bucks apiece, I don't know. They looked really cool. But so they asked, How are things going? And you and I already do, they're going well, and we decided to write back. They're going awesome. And I can't remember exactly verbatim what it was. But
Unknown Speaker
1:11:40 like, can we get more headphones? Because we gave them all away?
Ken Brown
1:11:42 No. Was it? It's working great. Patients love the headphones, please send more very polite way you're like, huh, we can do that. But that wasn't
Eric Rieger
1:12:00 these were not single use headphones. But we quickly bonded at lead in I think that Kevin realised that no, we are oftentimes bullshit. Yeah.
Ken Brown
1:12:11 I'm glad that they saw that pretty much everybody we work with this fellowship. Everybody, everybody. Yeah, maybe it's a Texas thing. It can be
Eric Rieger
1:12:22 but I thank y'all so much for coming down. And being part of embracing everybody endo centre. I think that I really think that the staff enjoyed the fact that y'all are on something. So cutting edge. So innovative yet it means enough to y'all to come and just really set yourself inside the environment, feel what it's like. And thank you all so much for doing that, that
Unknown Speaker
1:12:45 we've learned. We've learned so much. It's been wonderful.
Ken Brown
1:12:48 My, my feeling is that your passion to see how this can actually help people is fantastic. And that's why everybody saw it. Yesterday, you were talking with the staff. The nurses came up to me afterwards. They're like, but like that guy owns this business. And it's like, yeah, but it's he like is legitimately wanting to see how this can affect general health care in this environment. And it's the same passion that we have. You guys have I just like being around that kind of energy
Eric Rieger
1:13:19 almost forgot something. There's some really important and you brought it up yesterday, and I had never heard it before. And this is for all the practitioners that are listening and could be interested. You had mentioned specifically that the sound was now comparable to another drug to essentially possibly cut down on wakeup time, maybe as it pertains to pro football. So let's talk a little bit about that. Because that's actually a really, really cool feature that I didn't know until you said yesterday. Sure,
Unknown Speaker
1:13:45 sure. Sure. What I'd mentioned is that it was my understanding that propofol was an agent that had very few reversal agents, but one of the things that does reverse the effects of propofol is methylphenidate. methylphenidate, of course, also known as Ritalin is something that's used to treat ADHD. And of course, brain FM's bread and butter is treating focus or aiding focus, particularly in people with ADHD. And so we're speculating that there might be, you know, something going on there in terms of the mechanism of action in the brain of our focus music that might work particularly well for propofol.
Eric Rieger
1:14:23 So knowing that, and it is can only be considered anecdotal to this point. But what we had yesterday were a couple of patients that we had to carry heavier. And I tried to describe that as we're doing that from case to case to case. But then we had to carry heavier or in other words, I'm using more propofol than normal and the amount of time from the time that kids finish with the procedure to our time to go and wake up. Normally, I would expect that patient to take a little longer to be fully arousal. That really wasn't our experience. And there were even those times that I would show you it's Look, I'm just not going to try to physically arouse or engage the patient. Let's see what happens when we get up to the pacu, the recovery area. And you can say you can even attest to it, but patients just woke up very smoothly, there was no wait time, by the time the recovery nurse was there to take it. The patient was ready to engage, talk, discuss if they wanted something to drink, and they're well on their way to having the IV D seed, as well as getting out of the end of centre, that doesn't just benefit the patient that benefits the person who brought the patients and now they're not waiting longer. And the endo centre or surgery suite, whomever it is, it's caring for this patient, they've now got less time occupied by patient that could be used for someone else who may need it. Or you might actually have to spend as long doing all the cases. All right. So I thought that was fascinating that that was the postulated idea that
Unknown Speaker
1:15:59 absolutely and with what we know about how protocol affects oscillations in the brain, there's a theoretical basis for why this would work as well. So I think it works on all levels. We'll have to see if that's actually the case. But I think there's a good chance that there's something real there. And as you say, it's a win win win win for everybody all around.
Ken Brown
1:16:15 Yeah. So I mean, you heard it here first. I mean, when we get the study finalised, and when the study gets published, it'll be pretty groundbreaking, pretty cool. And if you're listening to this, and if you happen to be somebody in GI a or an am surge, or envision or somebody that has an interest in this, you're hearing it, we have already shown on a pilot study that the patient has a better experience, the doctor has a better experience because it is a patient that comes in the CRNA has a better experience, post op the centre movement, it is literally a win win win. So wow, this is I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited to incorporate this on a daily basis. And I
Unknown Speaker
1:16:55 think the coolest thing is it's super approachable. So it's not something as we said in the beginning, that it's another drug or another thing you have to do that's scary. It's Hey, if you're in a brand new environment, a lot of things going on that is scary. But what is one thing that everyone is already familiar with? It's music, it's just music 2.0 with science involved, that helps have these effects. So the people that are willing to try it, it's going to be a very high likelihood, and they're going to get the effects then what we're trying to do
Ken Brown
1:17:23 if there's one thing that I really liked about this was Kevin's comment where he's telling probably some super accomplished musicians. Hey, that's a little too catchy. Can you tone it down a bit? Cuz like I stayed up all night doing that.
Eric Rieger
1:17:37 Yeah, it'll be I'll save the the awesome tracks that you can't use anyway.
Unknown Speaker
1:17:41 I'm terrible with
Ken Brown
1:17:44 money. You're like yeah, no.
Eric Rieger
1:17:49 Well, that is awesome. Kevin. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today. Brain FM for lay people soon to be for healthcare providers. And this is episode 64. Please like and share. As always check shownotes will have all the details how to connect with brain FM, Dan and Kevin and as well as some examples I think that we'll be able to incorporate and references hopefully you're updated in nature when that publishes absolutely all this
Ken Brown
1:18:19 is real. So if you're a provider, gastroenterologist, ophthalmologist and orthopaedic surgeon, anybody that does these different procedures as an outpatient basis. Take a look at this. If you're somebody who has anxiety, if you're somebody who has trouble sleeping, take a look at this. If you're somebody that knows anybody that has either some attention issues, anxiety, sleep issues, everyone can benefit from that. Just share it. Let them know.
Eric Rieger
1:18:45 Alright, that's gonna do it for episode 64. And we'll see you next time.
Unknown Speaker
1:18:48 Bye bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai