StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Brain Training – Neuropriming & VR Technology

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… This week hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice are getting into your head when they investigate neuropriming and VR technology training in sports with Brett Wingeier, co-founder of Halo Neuroscience, and Michael Casale, Chief Science Officer at StriVR. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Nice and this is Playing With Science. Today we take a trip into the inner space of an athlete's brain and find out how and what science is beginning to do to increase the motor cortex's ability to improve control and use of the body's muscle fibers. And helping us plod our course through the neuropathways, we have two guests that are at the forefront of this Interspace Exploration, co-founder and chief technology officer of Halo Neuroscience, Brett Wingeyer, who will tell us about neuropriming, while Chief Science Officer at Stryver, Michael Casale,

will unlock for us the neuroscience behind virtual reality training. So we are going to go to the forefront of science of the brain and its application for athletes, be they weekend warriors or elite athletes, and then find out what it's like to actually put all of this science into a practical environment. Yeah, it's fascinating stuff. And it seems like that this is where the whole industry is going. Like if you're not doing something with the brain,

then you're not doing anything at all. Well, we've worked from the head downwards you know in developing the way that we train the developing the efficiency with the dietary the nutrition the strength conditioning and everyone's gone well without the brain none of this other stuff south of the brain works that makes sense let's kind of engage the brain thing. And then pow, people have unlocked what looks like a Pandora's box in a positive sense. Yes, unless you're dealing with my brain, in which case you've unlocked nothing. And in mine, there's a bit of dust tucked away just in that corner there. That's the one, yeah.

Yes, guest time. That's right. Let's get to our first guest. Joining the show right now is co-founder and chief technology officer at Halo Neuroscience, Brett Wingeyer. Brett, how's it going, man? I'm doing fantastic. How are you? Great to talk. We are good. I love this. Chief technology officer at Halo Neuroscience. Yeah.

That would be me. And Halo sounds so futuristic, but the future is now. You guys basically, well, tell me, did you invent this brain doping headset? Or what exactly is the halo headset and what is neuro priming? Well, so first of all, we wouldn't call it brain doping, but we can talk about that in a minute. Okay. Well, then we will not call it brain doping, although that sounds like the coolest thing ever. Yeah.

The term gets used, and it packs a punch, so I completely understand. But to answer your question, the basic science has been around for a long time. The basic science behind helping your brain get better with brain stimulation. beige boxes in the laboratory and took that and put it into a package of product that an athlete can take to the gym, to the field, to the top of the slope and do what they need to do. So it's no longer Dr. Frankenstein, because that's the whole sort of image you've just painted in my mind, at least anyway. So, okay, we've gone 21st century with it, and we've got these really cool-looking headsets. So what is, as Chuck asked, neuropriming? So neuropriming is brain stimulation that helps your brain optimize itself faster. A huge part of the benefits you get when you train or you practice,

that applies whether you're a skier, whether you're a powerlifter, NFL player trying to improve your vertical leap, or even a piano player or a surgeon or something. A huge part of the benefit you get when you practice is your brain getting better at controlling your body. So with neuro priming, we can speed that up. Your brain gets better faster

and you get better results faster. So this kind of reminds me of a neuroscience saying that neurons that fire together wire together. And exactly. And so what happens is repetition causes a synaptic of, I don't know, imprint, let's call it. So there's a synaptic imprint on your brain when you do anything repetitively. So when you're neuro priming and you say this helps faster, what exactly are you stimulating in the brain to help that process? Yeah. So you're, you're, you're speaking my language here. I think, I think you just gave like half of my talk here. I'm sorry. All right. We'll erase that.

You're spot on like neurons that fire together, wire together. And what, what neuro priming does under the hood is it actually does, it makes your neurons a little more likely to fire together. Stepping back when people first started using this technology, when it was first created by scientists, everybody thought it was kind of juicing up your brain a little bit, making it more excitable. Turns out that's not the case.

What the electric fields do is it makes your neurons just a little more likely to fire together when they fire, and that's what speeds up neuroplasticity. So we would call that, as an athlete, muscle memory, way back when. Exactly. Now, you're like the cleanup team on the freeway where you're getting rid of all

of the rubbish that's blocking this ability for these things to travel at a speed we haven't yet realized they can travel at. I know I'm really sort of downgrading your work here, sir. I apologize. But how fast can we go? Well, I mean, is there a speed limit on this particular freeway oh can we really just whatever if we if we tap this the right way this thing could be unreal well you know you know the brain is the brain is amazing the brain is i mean it's yeah all of us all all of us have this amazing untapped potential and you know there's you know, there's not enough time or physiological resources in your body to train, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to, to, to, to unlock that potential a lot of the time. So, you know, it's not magic. I, I love to say that it's not

magic. It's really important to say because, you know, every, when you train, everybody gets better, but helping, getting results from that training a little bit faster. If you're, if you're an athlete who really cares about performance, especially if you're training at an elite level and you know, you're, you're limited by recovery, you're limited by the amount of time you can spend out there. Even if you're, you know, if you're kind of a weekend warrior like myself, you're limited by recovery. You're limited by the amount of time you can spend out there. Even if you're kind of a weekend warrior like myself, you're limited by startup and kids and stuff like that. So being able to get more results a little bit faster, it ends up being super meaningful to an athlete.

Chuck, if we can go back because I'm really interested in the terminology here because I love being taken to school for this stuff. interested in the terminology here because I love being taken to school for this stuff. What is the plasticity within the brain and how you are through this neuro priming beginning to get the brain into this plasticity and then elevating it even further to do exactly what you've just described? Right, right. So neuroplasticity is your brain's ability to optimize itself. And first of all, that's what your brain loves to do. You know, I'm talking to you here. You know, you're learning stuff. You know, I'm learning stuff from you. Both of our brains are, they're doing neuroplasticity right now. You know, every step you take, your brain is learning a little bit from that and optimizing itself. The way that happens under the hood is neurons fire. Neurons fire, you do your thing. And take training for a ski jump, for instance. You get down there to the end of the ramp and everything fires in exactly the right

way to have a smooth coordinated jump off the end of the ramp. And then you get that loft and you hold your position and you get an amazing jump. So the outcome, that positive outcome means that the stuff that the stuff that fired together wires together fires together wires together you know that exactly what you said the the patterns of neural firing that led to a great outcome are reinforced and and and and that's neuroplasticity. So it's not just muscle memory. You've got a historical memory of this is what it took at a microscopic level, at a cellular level, to achieve this particular distance in a jump, which is what I was aiming for, or this particular speed down a slope, or whatever your event, whichever your sport. So it's not just the muscle memory of, when I need to do this, the muscles fire in a certain way. You're talking about, this is the euphoria, this is the level of technique and performance I'm looking for,

and you're working on that level as well. Well, you know, the reason I mention that is because it's so important for closing the loop, to train mindfully. And we talk about this a lot because this is really important to using neuropriming. If you go out there and you just go through the motions, then it's probably going to be counterproductive. If you use it sitting on your couch, then maybe you're going to get better at sitting on your couch. I like that. That's good. I'm sorry. I really don't think 100% effectiveness can be improved upon.

I'm willing to try. Even though, yeah, I'm willing to give it a shot. We all have some potential to unlock there. Maybe you're just at 99%. Yeah, it's true. So let me ask you this. With respect to what you were just talking about, I assume when you're looking at athletes that you're primarily focused upon the motor cortex if you're looking at physicality. Exactly. But if is there, and I'm not talking about just Halo because I know that's for athletes, but could there be applications for this where you're stimulating other parts of the brain?

I mean, we know from a neurosynaptic standpoint that when you learn new things, what happens is you create new neural net pathways and that actually stimulates, you know, that can happen anywhere in your brain. Could this be used to, to actually help other areas? So for instance, I don't know, like if you're a chess player or like you mentioned earlier, like if you were a surgeon, this is where you were going to go. Yeah. So it's technique, it's technique, it's performance, everything. Could that be the case? Yes, I mean, for sure. You know, the brain is a big place. The brain is everything. So, you know, step back to the science.

There's great scientific results on things like improving memory, creativity. Look to the medical side, stuff like depression and chronic pain. There's great research out there. Okay, so now stop right there because I have a really weird question about that. There's some research out right now where mild, so what you guys do, and please, you'll have to explain how the halo headband works when you answer this question. There's some research out there right now that mild electrical stimulation can help with chronic pain and anxiety.

So can you relate that to the Halo headband and what it's doing for athletes in the same kind of way? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's a little bit different mechanism. but really, you know, it's pretty much the same technology. So what Halo's doing is neuro-priming, and that's increasing neuroplasticity, your brain's ability to optimize itself during training, where and when you want it. where and when you want it. So if you're looking at something like chronic pain or anxiety, probably the best way to do that is you stimulate different part of the brain, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. If you go kind of the top left of your forehead,

that's where that sits. And if you stimulate there, then it increases what's called cognitive control. And cognitive control is your brain's ability to do what it needs to do instead of what it wants to do. So if you look at that in anxiety, you stimulate there, and it probably gives you the ability to step back a little and understand, well, you know, it'll be okay. Okay, Brett, are we talking about an override program here? Yeah, cognitive control. If I'm an endurance athlete, or I'm in, say, let's go warmer and go summer athletics, Olympics, that's so-so, I'm an 800-meter, I'm going to go into an anaerobic day, all of those things where, man, my body hurts like i never knew it could hurt but i have a race to run and i don't like

coming second you know the kind of person i'm talking about yeah the elite athletes i'm and i've spoken to so many tell i mean i've been sitting there going you don't feel pain do you and i can't ask the question but all of a, if you take the ability to feel pain or diminish that ability to feel pain, these guys are going to be able to perform at their peak for longer, which therefore is… I could run until my feet are bloody. Yes, you could. You know, here's the thing for endurance sports.

You know, here's the thing for endurance sports. You know, endurance athletes are already, you know, so enormously goal-driven. And they're so able already to just separate themselves from that. I honestly think there's a better way to look at this for endurance sports. And, you know, so I was a collegiate rower. I've done a lot of masters of rowing since. So, um, you know, a lot of my thinking comes from this, but you know, it, it goes back to muscle memory. If you, the more you ingrain good technique in your muscle memory, then, then the better you are at keeping your act together when it starts

to hurt and holding form and not just starting to flail. And if, if you look at keeping your act together when it starts to hurt and holding form and not just starting to flail. And if you look at the thing that, you know, there's this cascade of failure when you start to, when you start to drop your form, it starts to hurt more and it just goes downhill. So that's what they say that if you're, if you're able to hold form, then first you, you decrease fatigue by holding proper form all the way through. Right, right, right. And there's good data with brain stimulation in endurance athletes, and I think this is why. I think it's anything that can ingrain good form better in your muscle memory, it just lets you keep your act together for longer.

And it, it just interrupts that whole cascade of fatigue and pain and breaking form even more than, you know, that that's what, that's what makes everything go to hell at the end of a race. Yeah. I learned, I learned that from my sex coach. Yes. Brett, don't be offended. This is where every show basically ends up in this particular department of the store.

If we look at your hardware, from what I can understand, you use it for about 20 minutes and then for an hour afterwards, you're able to utilize what it's given you. Are you in the process of being able to expand the length of time you can use it and therefore elongate the period in which it becomes beneficial to the muscles and the fibers that you're trying to activate and speed things up? Well, so here's the thing. What you get when you use the headset for 20 minutes, that doesn't give you increased performance by itself. No. That gives you the ability to get more from the focused training you do during that period. Uh-huh. So the gains you get are real gains like anything else.

So if you pair that 20, 60 minutes with hard, smart reps, whatever you're doing, ingrained it in your muscle memory, then the benefits of that training are going to stay with you like any other kind of training. I get that. Hence the neuro priming. Just like when you prime a pump, you pump it, pump it, pump it, pump it, and then you let it go and everything gushes out. So what you've done is you've added another component to the virtuous cycle of an athlete's training program and regime. Right, right.

That's very, very cool. Isn't that? That is, I mean... Where do we go? Do we change? How deep can we go into the brain tissue? Here we go. Here are the questions.

I'm gushing. How deep do we go into the brain tissue? Here we go. Here's the questions. I'm gushing. How deep do we go into the brain tissue? Do we play with the frequencies? If we do, does that then alter? We've already touched on the fact that geographically around the brain, we can do different things because of certain things are contained within certain areas of the brain. Just how much more?

I mean, as a percentile, how far are we into 100 right now with this? So, you know, I feel like we're kind of lucky to be, the field is just beginning, and we're kind of lucky to be having great effects even at the start because so much of the important stuff in the brain is it's, it's, it's right at the surface in the cortex. It's in this motor cortex, which fortunately for, for us and for our users is, is right under the band of a pair of headphones. But the, the, the thing about the brain is the more you,

the more you individualize stuff and the more you personalize it, um, you know, the, the, the brain gets bored. There's this enormous field out there that's starting to be explored by not just us, but scientists all over the world. How do we make this better and better? How do we go deeper? How do we focus it more? And how do we take you as an individual athlete and craft the program just like your trainer crafts a workout for you? How do we craft the optimum neuro priming exactly for your brain?

It's a hugely exciting field. So it's not as simple as me just plugging your headset into the national grid. grid? Well, you know, the, the, the, the cool thing is, um, the right now, um, right now it works, um, because everybody's brain is different, but also, um, you know, there's, there, there are a lot of commonalities and the key is you pair it with training. So you, you pair, you pair the stimulus that, that elevates neuroplasticity across the board. Wow. Pair that with the training on exactly what you want to do. And, you know, so in a loting is electrical in nature, which means that you could actually take the signal that is created during the training.

You could record that and then somehow recreate that in another person's brain, thereby giving other people the benefit of somebody else's training. Let me think. Does the person you're thinking of, the letters U and B, I'm getting Usain. Dude, I mean, yeah. It's almost like the matrix. It's like the matrix where you jack into the brain and you take somebody else. So it's just like, I need to learn how to fly a helicopter right now. And then they jack you in and it's just like downloading program. Boom. Like this could be like the beginning of that, man. You know, there's a wide world of stuff.

Next 20, 50 years in the brain, it's going to be an amazing time. We're not there yet. That's not what Halo is doing. But, you know, the brain's amazing. Yeah, it's good stuff, man. Oh, man, we're out of time, but this is really exciting stuff, man. Awesome. I think you fired some synapses.

You either fired some synapses or fried some synapses. I think you've been able to achieve both, but in a positive way. Absolutely. Brett, thank you so much. I mean, Brett Weingeyer from Halo Neuroscience. If you haven't heard of them, check them out. And if you've got enough of those pennies left, go buy yourself a headset and make yourself an elite athlete

or at least take yourself towards being an elite athlete we're going to take that break coming up we'll take a look at the neuroscience of virtual reality training with none other than the chief science officer at striver don't go away we're back shortly welcome back i'm gary oReilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. Yes, he certainly is. And this is Still Playing with Science. And today we're exploring the way athletes can dope their synapses using brain technology to improve their plasticity, how they get going, how they fire things up. Don't like to be called brain doping, does it?

Yeah, they don't like it. But, you know, it's a cool term. I don't care what anybody says. Brain doping is awesome. It's like your brain's getting high on itself. I wish I could do that. Kidding me? All this money I'm paying my dealer? And moving on quickly.

And joining us now to talk about this. That skipped us on a few beats. now to talk about neuroscience. Behind the virtual reality training is Michael Casale, who is Chief Science Officer at Stryver, our good friends at Stryver. So Michael, thank you so much for actually still being here after that introduction. It is Friday afternoon. Oh, yeah, it is. I totally get it. It is one of those days. It seems to be Groundhog Day.

It's so cool to have a title, Chief Science Officer. Gary and I were talking, like, it sounds like something on the USS Enterprise. I really do hope you've got a badge on your little comm on your chest, like, you know. Where I go, people know I'm the USS Enterprise. I really do hope you've got a badge on your sort of... Yeah, a little comm on your chest, like, you know. Yeah. Everywhere I go, people know I'm the science officer. They don't know quite what it means, but they know I'm the science officer. Do they salute?

That's a great idea. I think you should make them salute. You ought to start that, yeah. Science salute, that's right. It's funny, I'm doing a lot of reading. You know, first of all, let me just say, congratulations to Stryver... Yeah.

...on how widely adopted you guys and your technology is being accepted across different sports platforms. And maybe you can talk to us from a neuroscience perspective as to why you think that is happening. You're seeing a really increased adoption of this technology. Sure. Right. So I think for any athlete, and even if you're a casual athlete, for you to be able to participate in the game, there really is no substitute as far as your performance improvement goes.

Now, obviously, with professional athletes, between the travel, the injuries, the offseason, this access to the real world, the real games isn't always available to them. Obviously, they do things to try to surrogate that. They do practices in the offseason, scrimmages, they'll do weights, they'll do drills, they'll even look at film. And so that last point, the film session is something that we found a really valuable opportunity that we thought to improve. And so the idea of being there, if you look at the current film sessions, they're often done in a kind of disenfranchised, detached way, right? It's a guy sitting.

Maybe he's paying attention to the video. Maybe he's not or she. And there's a coach, and they're instructing them. But it's this really kind of passive experience, right? So it's that they're looking at something, that they're having to kind of manipulate the information that's coming from a 2D environment, from a third person perspective, and so that information doesn't always resonate. With the experts, they're able to probably do a little bit better job of taking that information and understanding how that would apply in the real world situation, but for many athletes, especially the young ones who are up and coming, it's really

critical for them to get in the game. So, you know, with virtual technology and the ability to kind of get that easily, and this is only a recent thing in the past few years where folks have been able to get virtual technology in offices in their homes for a relatively cheap price, this has allowed us to be able to put folks into the game in a way that they haven't before. So to get that first person perspective, to get that experience of what it's like to kind of nail down the timing, to feel the stress and pressure of being a quarterback, of being a point guard. And so these things are really important from a neuroscience perspective. We know that in order to really facilitate transfer of training, which is the goal of any training, is to be able to apply it in the real world.

It needs to map onto the same perceptual inputs that you would get in the real world, right? So it follows that if you're looking at a 2D video from a third-person perspective, those inputs, you might be learning something. something but the translatability how that actually applies in the real world is limited by getting all those kind of same perceptual inputs um that hit the visual cortex that hit the other sensory cortices that ultimately play into the decision making you're able to really experience firsthand what the real world performance would be like not just some again you know 2d learning that may or may not transfer into the real world so we you hear about it a lot, the 10,000 hours equals the elite athlete, the quality of training. For me, that's not always possible. If we took, for instance, alpine skiing, I've got to get the snow. I've got to get there when the snow's good. I've got to get

in this chairlift. I've got to go up the mountain. I'm going to spend a minute or two coming down the mountain to get back up, wait my turn to come. I'm not going to get 10,000 hours, but all of a sudden I'm sticking on this virtual reality headset. I'm there. I'm doing the mileage as it were. I'm putting in those hard hours over and over again. It's not just for the athletes themselves. It becomes a coach's boon to be able to have their athlete go through all of this. And then you can turn around and say, this is closer to the finished article than three, four weeks, three, four months ago. So this is why it's probably being embraced as far as I can see. Yeah. And what you mentioned, I think we can kind of sum up as the phenomenon of repetition learning, right? And that's a pretty, that's practice, right? In the latest terms. And that's, that's critical. And obviously if you can get more practice, that's

going to lead to better performance. And for a lot of these guys, and I'll take the quarterback example, you know, during the week, they are seeing a kind of almost a countless number of variations of the defensive looks. And so they have to be really good about how do I learn this in just a few trials as it were, or a few snaps during practice? Well, chances are they're not learning everything to the best of their ability. They're kind of doing what they can with what they have, which is a limited practice time. To your exact point, to be able to then kind of multiply that to get those additional mental repetitions so that they can hone in on their decision making better. situations so that they can hone in on their decision making better. And we know at the elite level, it's not necessarily all about who's the best athlete, but it's about who's the best

decision maker in a quick enough amount of time. That's what we're really training with VR right now. At some point, I think in the not too distant future, we'll be able to get more holistic experiences in the virtual environment where you can actually move like you would in a real game, get hit like you would in the real game maybe, but we're not quite there. But that said, there's still a lot of value for just the decision-making component, all the cognitive components that we know are important. The training physically can take place anywhere. You can simulate what it's like to be in sprinting up and down a court by just doing that on

your own, but you can't always simulate what it's like to kind of have a defensive trap in the backcourt when you're playing basketball or to have a blindside defender coming at you when you're a quarterback. You can simulate that in VR and make those decisions accordingly. You can't do that watching a 2D video. And so, and again, from all the things that we know about how the perceptual inputs work and how that plays into learning from the neuroscience, we know that that's a better way to learn. Now we have the ability to do it. So it's the last few years with this technology, these technology advancements that have really allowed us to do that. And so teams are really making use of it. And it's great for us to be in a position to be able to kind of understand what their needs are from a training

perspective, and then quickly be able to adapt the technology accordingly. So that's, yeah, so we've experienced a lot of success in that domain and hopefully continue to grow as we learn about what's valuable and as the technology continues to rapidly develop. Let me ask you this about when you, when you talked about the, the situations and I read where especially in the NFL, particularly backup quarterbacks benefit greatly from this because they don't get the reps during the week for those who are not. Who was the Vikings quarterback? The young, the young. Well, I know Carson Palmer was using it. I forget the.

Case Keenum was a big case that's what it was why did i ask you yeah should i ask him yeah michael knew i'm sure he actually gave it to case keenan personally that would make a lot of sense but he all of a sudden he just went pop yeah so now here and and listen they all swear by it because they said that basically it's it's a matter of getting the reps. And everybody knows that in order for you to play on Sunday, the big question is how many reps you got during the week. What are they seeing is what I want to know. And where are you getting the imagery to put in the headset? Because I would think that you can't or can you? You can't manipulate these images, can you or can you you can't manipulate these images can you or can you so let's for

instance for instance i wanted to i want to show a fake blitz to a quarterback and i want him to understand that look this is what a fake blitz is do you create that or did you film that or how does it work this is a great question um and right now what we're doing is we're using 360 video so we're using live footage um that we can then put into the VR experience for the quarterback to learn. Now, all these images, because they're live video, they have to be shot with extreme high fidelity of the perceptual ability. So for timing is critical. Milliseconds are critical. So we can't fudge that.

In other training experiences that we're getting into now, the timing isn't quite as critical as it is in like professional sports. So you can give a little bit more room, wiggle room when it comes to creating the experience. And so you can start to kind of use other techniques and technologies. But for football, we've used 360 video that does limit us in the sense that like you just mentioned, creating a blitz, like on the blind side, we'd have to go out and film that. But as it turns out, we've really done a lot of work to create great efficiencies in that process. So at the last, you know, 15, 20 minutes of practice, if even that sometimes it's just 10 minutes, they will actually dedicate time to be able to look at the different formations they need to work on and simulate those. And so whether it's,

you know, different blitz packages, whether it's different, you know, defensive formations that they haven't been able to get to that week, we'll go ahead and we'll set up the camera technology to be able to capture that in a really efficient manner but that's that's the limitation we're at with 360 video there are a lot of cool techniques coming online right now and this is what you're alluding to which will allow us to manipulate that space which will allow us to be able to say okay now i want to move this player over to this position yeah so that world is like it's kind of here it's just not you like, it's kind of here. It's just not scalable.

It's not as good and crisp as it should be right now, but it's getting there. That's going to allow us to do a whole host of other. So what about this? What about the marrying your technology to video game technology? When you look at these games like Madden, okay, and you see how the way they, and they're doing it digitally. They're moving the camera on the field digitally from a above the grid view to a quarterback first person perspective to, you know, a two shot, the whole deal. guys might be able to do something like that where you're taking um you know basically what would be a construct and then building the field and the team and then placing the player in that construct that's exactly the ambition ultimately is to be able to do that to manipulate ways guys in ways which are really conducive to the training experience we know it's better to have

different looks of the same defense right now we're getting one look at that or maybe slight variations of that um that technology that they use to do that is really costly it's really not efficient but it's there your point and and as we know with all technology when it's there it will eventually scale down and be able and will give us the ability to use that when it's cheap enough and efficient enough right but there's a lot of value for obviously just what we're doing now but that isn't the next level kind of thing that we need. Is it the quality that you require and the athletes will require? So the point you made, so you mentioned the point about Madden earlier, and that's something that I really want to address.

So there are other folks who are kind of experimenting with this idea, but what if we just, because they value more than you can manipulate at this point. So the trade-off is that they use this kind of like video game-like technology. And as you know from Madden, you can learn like concepts, but you don't know what it's like to make a decision under pressure. You don't know these guys are going to move in a kind of a goofy way and maybe they kind of stop and start again and the system. So it's really important that we don't mistrain guys, right? So with Madden type of technology, you can maybe learn concepts, but you might not train the right perceptual inputs. And therefore the learning doesn't translate as well. And, or in fact, in some cases you might be hurting learning. I was going to say, you could end up screwing a guy up because you throw his timing off.

He's waiting for a player to stop in the glitch for a second. You laugh, but that's, if you think about the way the brain, the map side, that's exactly what's going to happen if you do that at the time. We've decided to not go that route for those principled reasons. I think other people have just decided, well, that's a cool thing to do. That's a feature they request. So we're going to do it that way. And we know that that's just not a good way to train.

So once the technology gets there, we can do both. And that is the ideal world. That's going to open up so many more opportunities for us. But what we're learning now from these organizations, just about how to use it, how to integrate it in their current training, that's going to help us when that technology comes online. We'll be ready to go to be able to implement right away with all the best practices that we're learning now from how to do this within these organizations. So that's really a good place that we're at. a good place that we're at. Is your technology best suited to sports,

to positions within certain sports that are very technical, very technique, say golf swing, quarterback, you know, that kind of element that requires an awful lot of technique. Is that where you're finding it has its ultimate benefits? I would suggest more broadly that it's anything that really requires what you would call, of course, experiential learning. And that just means any time you can't substitute the experience with words or even like a different perspective. And so we're finding actually outside of sports, there's a lot of interest in what we do. And we've started working with big organizations on training, even their employees, not sports players, but basically

people who need to learn skills in the real world who don't have the ability to do that because it doesn't lend itself well to like being read in a manual, for example. So timing definitely, because we're able to get that timing down in a realistic way. So the quarterback thing is an obvious example, but even other skills like learning to make decisions on the fly, learning to improv, learning to kind of see things in context. And this can be a variety of things. This could be decision making when you're looking at like whether or not to send someone out to battle or not send someone out to battle or whether. And in a lot of instances, police are using this to know when to like shoot or not shoot. of instances police are using this to know when to like shoot or not shoot um and that's a really these are kind of really powerful day-to-day things that we have to kind of deal with um

impact a lot of people's lives so even beyond sports we're finding that the realistic decision making component of all of this is important anytime you need to kind of you know uh replicate the stress of the environment to replicate what it's like to have a lot of chaos in the environment that's a good that's a good place for vr to to really shine when it's like to have a lot of chaos in the environment. That's a good place for VR to really shine. When it's something that you can learn from a book, then great. VR is probably the best case for that. So I don't want to limit it just to sports. We're finding a lot of value outside of sports.

But obviously, sports was the first place that we started that. I love it. How amazing. It's got real-world implications. That's what it is. And you're taking from, in a sense, of sports strategies or even just the sporting world strategy and implementing those into a real world scenario, but using your technology to achieve the same thing, which is a positive outcome. I love it. I just I can't wait for you guys to come up with a parenting version so I can just slap a headset on my kids. That would be awesome

bango's your dad of the year award yeah so i mean it's anything you know at the end of the day the core things that are governing the learning so the brain science behind the learning what a quarterback has to do in the decision making so that that's the same decision making process this is the same neural processes that govern a lot of other types of learning. So it's not that just like there's a quarterback specific part of the brain, right? These are mechanisms that we have generally to learn other things. And so anytime those learning systems come online to help you learn, that's where VR is going to be really good for. And it goes beyond sports. Amazing. Amazing. So listen, I was reading a thing about the U.S. downhill ski team. I forget the athlete who was injured used your Stryver technology to

help in the recovery, which is what the article was talking about. Now, is that just to stay familiarized with the motions or how do you help in the recovery? Yeah. So again, I think the idea that you, and this is true for basketball, this is true for any other sport, probably a lot of other applications, but sports, the most obvious one where if you're not able to get on the slope or you're not able to get on the court or the field, your ability to kind of take in and process information like you would in the real world. So all the things that happen, the kind of speed at which things happen, the motion is something that you can always kind of replicate, depending that you're not injured, in a different environment. But what you can't replicate is what it's like to feel that

pressure, that stress, to make that kind of like millisecond decision making. That's something that you can't do by just thinking about it necessarily, or even kind of watching yourself do it in a TV video, you actually have to see the same visual inputs and react to them the same way that decision making. So, you know, obviously, if you're injured, you're going to have to go through that physical rehab process. But even when you kind of fully recover physically, you still have that kind of mental recovery, right? You have to kind of get adjusted to the game. They talk about this all the time when players come back on the court, you know, they may be physically fit, they may be physically fine, but adjusting to the speed of the game, as it were, or in the case of the skiing, adjusting to the speed of the slope,

like that's something that is difficult, if not impossible to get, unless you're on the playing field. That's what we're trying to replicate. And that's where they find a lot of value right now, is being able to replicate those environments. Because's what we're trying to replicate. And that's where they find a lot of value right now is being able to replicate those environments because then you, then when you're physically fine, you're mentally fine right there as well, right? You don't have to spend that extra time doing the mental recovery.

You keep it. You're, you are endeavoring to keep game sharpness in place within a manageable bandwidth. Yeah, exactly. That's so cool, man.

And I must ask you before, before we shamefully have to let you go, cause we want to keep you here for ages, I think, how far away are you from the sort of impact sensor within the whole athlete? For instance, if I'm the quarterback, and I'm going to be a very bad quarterback, I can tell you right now, but I need to know what it's like. Not just the fact that there's a big guy coming from my right, the left, there's an even bigger guy coming straight.

I need to feel the fact that, you know what, you should have thrown it because boom. And I can feel that through my whole body. And there's another level of education and learning. So please, how far away are we? Are you? Us? Whoever? Yeah.

So to have it commercially available for us to scale it with our teams is probably a couple years away. The good news is that technology exists and that's growing rapidly. Wow. You're on it. In other words, you are on it. Yeah, we're on it. That's awesome. Yeah, it's hugely important. That is awesome. And you say it's a couple of years away. That's a blink of an eye when it comes to how fast technology moves. That's very cool. So the technology to create the sensor environment, you experience that same sensor input is definitely there. I think the trick is going to be how do you then make sure you customize it for each of the individual applications? So do you need to get hit a certain way when you're a quarterback or is it enough to kind of feel it?

But I think those are the open questions that we still need to answer. And on the athlete, because sometimes the coach will tell you, the athlete needs to get hit that little bit harder before the athlete realizes that you need to do this thing quicker. Oh, that coach is a dick. No, no, no. Each athlete. Chuck, we've mentioned this. Each athlete learns in a different way,

and each athlete has to get the best brought out of them in a slightly different way. Sometimes it's enough. Sometimes you've got to hit harder. I learned through coddling. Yes. That's because you're a prima donna. I've experienced that, but maybe that's where we should go next.

Oh, dude. So have you guys ever thought about taking this technology, and I don't mean now because I know that right now you're, like I said, you're being widely adopted across so many platforms. But from a consumer recreational standpoint, do you guys ever think about if this gets small enough that you're able to jack into the game from home and in an instant replay instead of seeing like the Fox instant replay. It's the Stryver instant replay where you put on your headset and you actually get to be on the field and see exactly what just happened on the field. Why am I getting so excited about this? It doesn't even exist.

But it's so cool. It will do. And secondly, you'll be Tom Brady. I'd rather be Nick Foles. That's a really interesting question. We've obviously thought about that. Other organizations are trying to do that right now. And so I think it would be interesting for like the average consumer to be able to see what it's like to see what Tom Brady sees. Although I would question whether or not that's a good way to watch a game. But, but, but that might be a, that might be some insight that people can get about, well,

what is it like to kind of be blindsided? Right. Cause everybody always sits in their chair watching the game, thinking that like, Oh, okay. I could have easily made that path. He had a ton of time back there. Right. But if you look at what he's looking at when, you know, that might be a kind of a cool insight time back there. But if you look at what he's looking at when he has a lot of field, that might be kind of a cool insight for the average football fan.

Just to answer a question for the fan who wants to see what Tom Brady sees, as an Eagles fan, let me just say that what he would see is defeat. Oh. Oh my God.

Sometimes, Michael, you just got to let Chuck get things off his chest. Yeah. Move on. It's been a long time for Eagles fans.

Yeah. Oh yeah. It's been a no time. And let me tell you something and to all the Patriots fans, so we haven't been on the air for a while and talking about this.

We all know now that the Eagles won the Super Bowl. I'm not a person who likes to gloat, OK? And I'm not going to gloat, but I will say this. As a Patriots fan, the one thing that you did not need was another ring. I'm sure you wanted another ring, but you didn't need one. Eagles fans needed a ring. We needed it, OK?

So that's all I'm saying. All right. Michael, you're an incredibly patient man and we appreciate that. I think it's been brilliant. Thank you. Michael Casale from Stryver. Yeah,

Michael. Science officer. Dude, such a pleasure. Yeah. And we've got to come up with a salute for you. That's, that's most certainly ready for you guys.

Oh, brilliant. Um, very best of luck, sir, with everything's most certainly ready for you guys. Oh, brilliant. Um, very best of luck, sir, with everything. And thank you for what you've given us already. And on behalf of every athlete so far,

brilliant. Thank you so much indeed. Absolutely guys. Thanks a lot. Well, that's our show Chuck. Oh my God. It's so fascinating.

Now I feel smarter for some reason and more athletic and I've done nothing, but that's the whole idea. Being able to use the power of the brain to achieve so much more. And we've got Brett at Halo. We've got Michael at Stryver. And they are at the forefront. They are pushing the boundaries.

They are giving athletes that extra percentage they didn't know that they could access. Absolutely. I can't wait for these guys to come up with a technology that actually turns you into an athlete while you eat sandwiches and sleep. When that happens, oh my God, am I going to be a Viking? That's just abuse of technology.

It's a great abuse of technology, but it's still abuse. Yeah, absolutely. And while Chuck and I go off to snack, I hope you've enjoyed this. Playing with science has been an absolute blast. And we have been in the front row of class once again for technology and the use in the brain. Yeah, playing with science. Hope you enjoyed it. We see you all soon, I'm sure.