Founder's Story - How She’s Merging Neuroscience, AI, and Design to Change How We Live | Ep 235 with Lesley Ray Founder of BrainHome

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Lesley Ray, a classically trained violinist turned visionary designer, who’s blending neuroscience, wellness, and AI to create responsive, emotionally intelligent homes through her company BrainHome. From scent-triggered slumber routines to lighting that aligns with your brainwaves, Lesley is redefining what interior design can do—and who it’s meant to serve. Key Discussion Points: Why traditional design ignores most of our senses—and how that impacts our well-being How AI and neuroscience are reshaping architecture and interiors The science behind scent, light, sound, and sleep quality How a childhood of musical performance helped Lesley understand human emotion BrainHome’s bedroom installations that adapt to each user’s stress and sleep cycle The challenges of designing for multiple brains in shared spaces Future possibilities: from personalized hotels to environments that prevent disease Why every home could (and should) function like preventative medicine Takeaways: Smart homes can do more than automate—they can heal Environment is one of the most overlooked drivers of health Design should reflect how we live, think, and feel—not just how we want things to look The future of wellness is multisensory, personalized, and built into your walls Innovation happens when you mix disciplines—like music, science, and architecture Closing Thoughts:Lesley Ray is showing the world that a home can be more than a shelter—it can be a sanctuary wired for your emotional and physical well-being. With BrainHome, she’s turning visionary ideas into real-world change, proving that when you design with empathy, intelligence, and science, your home doesn’t just reflect who you are—it supports who you’re becoming. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

we interview a lot of people and we have a lot of chats about AI we also interview a lot of people we have chats about neuroscience and brain health but we've never had anyone that is mixing AI brain health and your home so your home is built around your brain and it's adapting with you using AI I've never Leslie this is I don't want to say the craziest thing I've ever heard but it sounds like it's something that's already 30 years in the future, but it's actually happening right now. Can you tell me about how does this work? Yeah, so how it works is, so with all the advances in AI and being able to develop technology

more rapidly and allowing things to be able, using machine learning, what we're able to do is we're able to use AI and neuroscience in our design process. So that means that all the design decisions that we are making for the clients up front in the design process are based on their health. and wellness. So their health and wellness is at the forefront of every decision we make. And then we're using those decisions to inform design decisions. But if you consider how traditional interior design works, traditional interior design only counts for the senses of sight and touch. But as human beings, we take in our surroundings through all of our senses. And that collectively informs how we

think and how we feel. And there's a lot of emerging research showing the impact of our environments and multisensory elements on our brain health and our overall health and wellness. And so by making those decisions in the design process and then also integrating those through the technology of the home, then the home continues learning and adapting over time to learn how to support you best. We had Will I Am on as a guest, and he was talking through how he's using his music linked to a Mercedes car that adapts to how you feel while you're driving. Kind of reminds me of obviously this is something much broader, but our conversation was around customization through all parts of our life. So now that AI is so advanced and you're mixing neuroscience and stuff, how do you see this impacting people in the sense of, so if I'm stressed at home, will my home do something to help me de-stress?

Yes, yes, exactly. And so it's really based on what the client is looking for. you know, some clients want the home to adapt more intuitively on its own. Some people want to be able to still have some sort of manual control over that. But yes, exactly. So if you're feeling stressed out or you're feeling anxious, then the home would play a certain soundscape or it would emit a certain scent or adjust the temperature to help you get into a more relaxed state. And it's all happening in the background. So it's not something that you would necessarily notice, but it's all just to help you get back into that more relaxed state and just stay in that state more

consistently. So how does this work? Like, how does it physically do it? How do you set this up? And how do you even, how do you even, when you work with this client, understand, like, what they want or need? Because I would imagine most people, they don't even know the possibilities to know what I want. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, thankfully, because we're based in the Bay Area. So a lot of our clients are, you know, pretty, pretty aware they have some sense of, you know, various capabilities or abilities of AI. So one of the rooms that we focus on or we start with is in the bedroom because the majority of the research is coming out shows the impact of your sleeping environment, specifically circadian lighting disruption, environmental noise, scent, temperature

fluctuation, and various other elements. And that impact on our sleep is showing a correlation to feature neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. And so the way that it works in the bedroom is that the AI, it continues adapting throughout the night. And so that's through biomarker or we have, you know, we've talked to clients about installing sensors for motion sensors, but biomarkers seems to work pretty well. And so it's able to adjust and adapt overnight as well as having a specific slumber sequence in the evening where there's a sequence of it adjusts the lights, it changes the light

temperature, emits a certain scent, it plays a soundscape, and then a rise sequence in the morning. So after you've been doing these designs, what are you hearing from previous customers and clients as to how this has impacted their life? Yeah, so we actually, we just finished a bedroom installation where we did installation very similarly to what I just described, although they didn't want to go quite as heavy on the AI portion of it yet. So we, we installed it to have future AI capabilities. And so then we're just going to continue talking with them to integrate the AI, you know, kind of like ramp it up as they feel comfortable with it. But yeah, they've been super happy. They said they, you know, feel great. It was a couple where she was having trouble

falling asleep at night and he was having trouble waking up in the morning. And so we created a super personalized slumber sequence and rise. sequence to, you know, Taylor for both of them. And so yeah, they were super happy with it. They said they, you know, feel so much more refreshed every morning and they just feel absolutely great because they're able to now have this really immersive experience where the entire room adapts to them to help them, you know, stay asleep and get more, more restful sleep. So what makes it work? I'm thinking like, you know, my wife, same thing. I fall asleep quick. I probably wake up really a lot of times my wife might have harder time falling asleep than I do. We're almost like

opposites many times, which just sounds like that couple as well. So if I wanted to do something like this, I'm genuinely curious like how does it actually work? Yeah. So we go through in this particular instance, because it's with the bedroom, we go through an assessment in the beginning where we are able to assess how you respond to different sounds and different sense. And then we also So we have different pre-made soundscapes that we use, but we also can use AI to create the personalized and customized soundscapes so that those are continuing to adapt to you as well. And then if you use wearables and you use those wearables throughout the night, we can sync it to your wearables as well.

We didn't do that with the project I mentioned, but we can do that. And we're talking with clients about doing that as well. And so by having that data, that's what allows us to have things track along with biomarkers or it really is up to the client because different clients have different comfort levels with different types of biomarkers. And so it's all about what their comfort level is and what, you know, their interest is in, you know, having that data and saking all of it. We were just talking to a company that, um, is at the foremost of checking biological age. And I wonder, as you're talking around how, how does some, you think, what do you see in the future?

are you seeing like, do you think this will kind of link up with maybe a company that checks age? So every day you wake up, you're like, oh, today I'm 45. Yesterday I was 38 or how this is all, how do you see all these things coming together? Because you mentioned connecting with wearables. I mean, it's really mind-blowing. But how do you see the future? Yeah, yeah. So we see your home and your environment as being a preventative medicine tool. So we see all of these, having all of these things sync together. connecting these to your health data points, that this is what is going to be used as a prevention

tool. And so, you know, by having the house being able to adapt and being able to intervene early when it starts to detect any sort of potential health issues, then we're able to really help you live a healthier life and your home is going to be a big part of that. Because if you consider, oh, sorry. Oh, I was going to say, you know, because we spend 90% of our time indoors. So we're in our homes all the time. And so it only makes sense that they should be a greater ally in helping us and protecting us. I can't wait until I have a robot, like a human robot that can also link to my house. Like it knows everything. It hears me upstairs, comes up, you know, get something from the store. I don't know. It's on very fast. It turns on the lights for me.

So when you when you think of like interior design, there's this big talk. around how many jobs is AI going to eliminate? This seems to be deep talk around AI. But I'm like you. Like I'm thinking about ways that AI can disrupt industries, make them better. How do you use the future of interior design since this seems like this will be the future? Yeah. I think for traditional interior design services, there are a lot of parts of it that will be automated or will be enhanced by AI. And, you know, I think, and some of that is the administrative grunt work. Some of that is things like, you know, editing renderings, which can be very time consuming. And so I think those are all great things. I think it'll probably enhance and help with brainstorming and coming up with

different unique ideas. But I also think it can be a great way to really just make interior design something that's different and more unique. And so that's what we're really excited about using it, know, to enhance our service and transform our service in a way that wasn't really possible before or was a lot more difficult to do before. And so I think you're going to be seeing that with a lot of service-based industries because AI is kind of allowing technology to be more accessible to people who previously either might not have had the means to develop custom technology for their companies or it just wasn't really part of the conversation. So I'm really excited to see it. I think as long as people are responsible about how they're developing it, and it's truly to enhance

their product and they're not just doing it just to doing it, just to do it, I think, yeah, I'm really excited about it. I think it'll be, it's really, it allows for a whole new level of creativity that we're not used to seeing. When you told people about Brain Home, did they think you are crazy or a genius? Well, so I came up with Brain Home because of my background as a musician. So I grew up as a violinist and when I was a teenager, I used to perform with all these different rock artists. And so the way I came up with Brain Home was because I realized that I should be mixing my experience as a musician and as a designer. So once I explained it that way, everyone was like, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. Like obviously, this makes so much sense for you.

But without that piece, people were just like, what? Who was the most exciting person that you got to either go on tour with or play with? My favorite artist that I love playing with the band Sticks. I played with them when I was, I performed with them when I was 17. We performed for like 6,000 people. It was incredible. They're just absolutely amazing people. And I just, yeah, it was, it was amazing experience.

How do you get over the nerves when you go in front of 6,000 people? You just kind of get used to it, I guess. I mean, at that point, I had been performing for, that was the largest crowd I ever performed with, but I performed for like 1,000 people or 500 people. So at that point, when you're playing in, you know, massive amphitheater like that, you just kind of look at the immediate crowd and then you just sort of forget about everything beyond that. So you just kind of get used to it. But once I got used to performing when I was a kid, I loved it.

I really, I don't perform as much anymore, but I really miss it. What do you see as the biggest potential of an ask that somebody could do with this? So, you know, right now you're in residential. Could this move into a whole hotel? Could this move into commercial? Like, obviously, you know, some people have a 2,000 square for home. Some people have an 80,000 square for home. Like, where do you see this going in terms of the scale of how this is versus, you know,

just maybe a smaller residential or like a room or a small residential home? So I think there is a lot of capability for it to be used in commercial, specifically in places like hotels and places that are designed for smaller groups of people. The challenge with doing it in a commercial space like an office where you have, especially if you consider like an open office where you have a lot of people because I used to design offices, I used to design a lot of offices for tech companies. And if you consider an open office area where you have like 50 people in one room, then it becomes very difficult to personalize it because you have so many people in one space. And so then it becomes irrelevant because ultimately everybody's brain is different and everybody's brain interprets their surroundings in different ways. So when you start to design or use the technology for that many people,

then it basically becomes irrelevant. Now, AI does enable more of that specific personalization. But ultimately, once you have, if you have that many people in one concentrated area, it still makes it more challenging. But I think in places like private offices, hotel rooms, absolutely. We're looking into hotels as well and other places like that. I think that's definitely an area that we see. So, Leslie, thank you for joining us.

I mean, this is incredible. I've heard everything around the uses of AI. And I have to say, I've never heard AI being used like this. And it's like I'm watching a sci-fi movie happening, but I'm very excited for how it can positively impact a lot of people. So if people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more, how can they do so?

Yeah, thank you so much. You can get in touch with us at our website, www.mibrainhome.com, or also on social media at My Brain Home. The coolest company, Brain Home. I love the website. My Brain Home, but Leslie, I mean, come back in like six months from now.

I want to hear exactly the most wild thing that you've had to create at some home. But I can't wait to see the future of this. just how it really is going to impact the interior design space and how we feel. But thank you so much for all you do and joining us on Founder's Story. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Daniel. I really appreciate it.