That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Improving your Brain Health Everyday with Special Guest Jaime Wood

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

On today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we welcome guest Jaime ____ to discuss Autonomic, a biotech company aiming to help you improve your brain health. 

Hi, my name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. So today we have a guest, and it's someone I've known for quite a few years now, and it's someone I've known for quite a few years now and it's Jamie Wood. She is, well, I'm going to let her introduce herself, but Jamie Wood is the CEO of Autonomic and the reason that she's here is they're doing some really cool stuff that is brain-based and helps you become a better version of yourself in some sense. So Jamie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I am so excited

to be here. I guess, well, it's great to have you, of course, Jamie. I guess the simple version is, I sort of didn't give much of a descriptor there because I thought, why not ask the CEO of Autonomic? What is Autonomic? Tell us all about it. Sure. So Autonomic is a biotech company. We focus on building technologies that can help somebody understand and then optimize their own brain performance and brain health. So let's focus on that for a second. And can you give us an example, like a use case? Like we have a pretty diverse audience in that we've got people in the business space. We've got people that are just interested in the brain. We've even got middle school students that listen.

So let's just a generic example of someone that where autonomic would help you out or examples if you want to give a couple. Yeah, sure. You bet. So, I mean, the way I like to explain it, that tends to resonate with a lot of people with our current product that's in the market is it's like having a personal trainer for your brain. So we are able to really analyze somebody's behavior and then customize a training based on the outcome they're trying to reach in terms of their brain performance. So we can analyze different areas of their behavior and how that behavior impacts their cognitive performance and cognitive health, and then customize that training, as well as providing education and accountability, all with this very seamless, integrated product that the client would use.

So as a use case, if you're a student and you're looking to improve your focus, then you would engage with autonomic and get into that sort of flow where you're having this personal trainer that's helping you improve brain function by analyzing where you're at and integrating into your life. Cool. Okay. So focus is one area. And one of the things I love about autonomic is just the wide range of things you can address. So just so our listeners get this, like focus is one thing. So you could improve focus, but if you were going to drop some other words in terms of other things that people might want to improve that you've seen. Yeah, so we actually look at five key brain performance metrics.

So we look at focus, sleep, energy, stress and mood. So if an individual is looking to improve one of those areas, then we help them optimize brain function and behaviors that support brain function in improving one of those key areas. Gotcha. So walk me through this again, because clearly my focus needs some work. So I should start using autonomic. So we got focus, sleep, energy, mood, and stress. I miss those two because I'm always happy and I'm never stressed. All right. And I guess the idea would be then though, that these are all things that if you improve the quality of these things or the way that they impact your life, then you're just going to perform better overall. So you'll make better decisions. You'll learn better, things like that. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you know, there's, there's a ton of neuroscience

researched back studies out there that look at different behaviors that you can train and integrate into your life that have real impact and effect on cognitive function. And again, that's one of the reasons, you know, I wanted you to be on the podcast, Jamie, is since, you know, we've been chatting and we've done some work together, is the fact that I like that autonomic is neuroscience-based. Like, you've done research, you know, what you're saying and doing is grounded in something that's real as opposed to an opinion. And we're going to come back to that at the end. I know that we both have a thorn there,

but I do like the fact that it's research-based. Now, with that being said, autonomics has done some of its own research, right? So can you tell us a bit more about that? Like you've done a couple of studies to see, you know, to prove that autonomic works in a sense. Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the most important things for me in the beginning was really to have a strong foundation and rigor in terms of what is the science we're basing this on? And how can we effectively build products that actually help people improve their brain function?

we effectively build products that actually help people improve their brain function? And I think you and I both really align on this where, you know, it's not, how can I say this? So, you know, if you're going after the latest trend and you're trying to like take some sort of magic pill that helps improve focus or, you know, go sit in a tub of cold water for seven minutes. And that's the magic wand. The reality is a lot of people are missing the foundational understanding and foundational behaviors that help improve cognitive function. So we thought it was really important to start there. I think that the entire industry in terms of, you know, the neuroscience industry and technologies and things of that is very exciting with what's coming

coming up. But we first wanted to build products that were easy for people to use and understand. And so we first looked at behavior, and then we started to do studies around those. So we did one study that was subjective. So individuals would use autonomic for a period of time and they would be reporting daily on how those five key metrics were, they were rating them. So between a one and a 10, how was your sleep quality last night? How are your stress levels today? What different behaviors are you working on and how is that influencing? And we looked at that over a six week period and then, you know, analyze the results. But then we also

paralleled that study with an objective study where we actually were able to use mobile EEG technology and measure the brains of participants. So created a control group, intervention group, measured their brains, establishing a baseline two weeks apart, gave the intervention group autonomic. The control group did not receive autonomic until after the study was done. And then again, measured their brains at the end to see if really there was any difference

or noticeable difference in how the brain was functioning and we looked at 10 different brain health biomarkers in that study i'm kind of familiar with that one i don't mind saying i don't mind saying to the listeners that i uh i played a role in helping with that study. Very, very big role. It was fantastic. You were unreal. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. But I think that's the cool thing I like about that is that's some pretty hard evidence, right? Like, you know, we were able to show that, you know, some of these biomarkers did increase, right? And they improved as a result of autonomic because in principle between the control group and the autonomic group, the other factors in life should even out roughly, right? Which is why the study is designed that way. I think one thing I've realized because I,

you know, when I was thinking about things I wanted to ask you, one thing that I think the listeners might be wondering at this point, like what does the experience look like? So, so autonomic is app based, correct? So this is something you can put on your mobile device. So you decide you want to engage with autonomic, right? What, what is it like walk us through, like, what does your first session look like? What does it look like as you move through it? Sure. Initially, when we were building this product, we were really looking at the stark reality for most people, which is their brains are fatigued and they are under significant demand.

We were targeting high performers in leadership roles. We were targeting students. high performers in leadership roles, we were targeting, you know, students, we were targeting individuals that were in these sort of pressure cooker environments that really have a high demand on cognitive performance. And so what we wanted to, to do is go, okay, wait, well, we can't build anything that takes a lot of time. ultimately you know we should assume that these individuals don't have a lot of time and so I want to sort of preface my answer with that because we strategically built the entire UX UI experience to be rapid time to value so you're kind of in you're out but because it's repetitive, you're able to

develop habit loops and shift behavior. So for an individual, if they're looking to improve focus, they would engage with autonomic, they would choose focus as their primary objective. They would then answer a short set of survey questions that we've created to start identifying where in their routine and behaviors are they either supporting the brain's ability to focus or actually detracting the brain's ability to achieve focus. And then from there, we start customizing this training program. And so for the individual, on average, it's about two minutes and 58 seconds a day that they are in and out of autonomic. Yeah, which is great. We're really proud of that under three minutes. And that includes, you know, logging in, rating where those key metrics are, answering yes or no to questions, and then engaging with their autonomic coach. So it's really a sort of repetitive feedback loop that occurs where you check in, you answer some questions, you reflect on why you've rated your key metrics the way you have, what's going on with the habits that you've

either accepted into your training, any sort of information you're learning, and then that accountability piece from the coach. I think the one thing that really helps anyone shift behavior is first, we need awareness. So we need awareness around, at least our view is what's the neuroscience behind the why you should engage and train this habit. And so you get that education piece, but then you need the accountability. So you need something that's highlighting insights and trends and holding you accountable. And that just repeats. And, and that's sort of at a high level, the experience. Gotcha. That, well, that makes sense. I can, I can see that in my mind. I think the three-minute-a-day piece is amazing and awesome because, you know, the way that a lot of us are forced to live our lives now, we just don't have a lot of free time, right? We have back-to-back meetings. We're always on the go. go. So, you know, if I said you need an hour and a half to do this training every day,

you're probably going to lose 99% of the people that want to improve. But for three minutes, who can't find three minutes, right? Like that, that's good. It's, you know, I relate to this because my max time on my Peloton is 15 minutes. Because if you tell me I have to ride a bike for an hour, I don't have an hour, but I can put in a 15 minute high intensity workout because I can find 15 minutes. Yeah, and I think if I can add to that, I think what's interesting is, especially with how the brain works,

we don't want to throw a bunch of one size fits all recommendations at an individual. We really want to find what is that keystone habit? What's the behavior for this individual? If they just do this, it disproportionately influences other behaviors positively. And I think that's important in terms of that personalization. But I also do want to say that back to the research question, we did show preliminary great results in terms of individuals improving certain areas of their brain, especially working memory,

which is where we reach statistical significance. But you and I also can dive into the pros and cons of some of the technologies that are out there with mobile EEG and how they can influence study results. Well, we can hold on to that one for a second because I got one more question before we go there, which is, is there like a minimum or maximum range for autonomic? Like, can anyone engage in this? Like who would like, you know, I can, there's an obvious mindset of people who would want it, but like, if you're a high school kid and you want to improve these things, is that possible? Or if you're, you know, you've retired, but you're still, you know, engaged and you want your brain to perform better. Is this like a autonomic works for everybody? Yeah. So, I mean, I want to be mindful answering this question.

Currently, as we sit, yes, you could go to the website and you could create an account and you could start using autonomic regardless of what age you're at. I think that the intrinsic motivation around wanting to improve your brain performance is going to help with your engagement. Like if somebody is saying you need to do this, chances are, we're not going to really help you if you don't, if you're not really into learning and adjusting your behavior, because that's a lot of work for the brain to build new habits and adjust behaviors. And so I will say that where, where my brain goes in terms of, can this work for everyone, we focused a lot of our research and studies within sort of a, let's call it 28 to about 48 year old demographic so the brain is fully developed type of thing. fully developed type of thing. We haven't looked at cohorts over 50 and we haven't looked at cohorts under 18. And I think that for me, where I'd like to go next is actually looking in that younger

developing brain. We have done work with that 18 to 24 demographic, and that's where a lot of our focus is now. But I'd actually be curious around your insights around how puberty impacts brain function and, you know, what, what's sort of there waiting for us. focus would be something they could work on. There's no doubt about that. And actually, to some extent, stress, you know, stress and anxiety, you know, these are real things. You know, my son is currently applying for universities and he's going through the whole stress of, you know, like, you know, scholarships and where can I get in? And I think that younger group, they need this stuff as well. And it's a stage where it could have a big impact for them because their coping strategies are not great, or they might not even have any. And if autonomic can give them some insight as to how to deal with these things better. No, I agree there. Okay, we've danced around it long enough. Both you and I have some concerns about what's

wrong with the brain training industry, because there is a whole industry out there, right? There's a whole bunch of people in the States. Some of it's 100% software-based. Some of it involves some form of wearable. So what is wrong? In your mind, and I'll offer my two cents too, but what is wrong? Because you're an entrepreneur in this space. You've got a company. What have you seen that upsets you or gets your goat, if you will? Well, I think that there's a lot of bold claims and a lot of companies that are really great at marketing and throw a ton of cash behind marketing initiatives that claim that they can do certain things and improve cognitive function.

And if we pan out, why they're doing that also is because the industry is rapidly growing because brain health, cognitive decline is a real thing on a global scale. And so there is big opportunities there for companies to make a lot of money. The problem I have is that, you know, they can get caught with their hand in the cookie jar kind of thing, because they'll get slapped with fines. And then that gets blasted all over the news. And so some of these games that claim to improve cognitive function actually have been proven to simply just make people better at playing games. And so maybe I'll pause there because I can see you're like ready to jump in here, which I love. Well, I don't mind saying the name Luminosity.

If they want to sue me, that's fine because there's not much to sue. But, you know, that's a great example where there were some very bold claims made. But yet there's a letter signed by more than 100 neuroscientists. I wasn't on it. No one asked me, basically saying that, hey, you got to take this with a grain of salt, right? So, you know, my take on that specific story is, do those things improve the specific things that they say they do? Possibly not. But is it better to engage your game than to watch television? Possibly, yes.

So to me, it's sort of taking it with a bit of grain of salt, because I know that when I look at these things, the questions that I ask are, you know, do you have a validation paper or validation data for your specific program? So in the case of Autonomic, you've done research with your program, so the data speaks to your program. Whereas some of these other companies, they just point at research articles that have nothing to do with their tech. But by association, they say, well, hey, my program is supposed to help identify something with your brain. And yeah, people can measure brains, so what's happening after the study with these

individuals and are are these shifts changes benefits staying or you know was it sort of a placebo effect or all all these variables that come into play when you're building a real study um i'm actually really curious about neurofeedback in your position because we've talked about that before. So, you know, this is a big trend. You're seeing these clinics pop up everywhere. And, you know, what's your take on that? I would say that not to sit on the fence, but I'd say there's good neurofeedback and bad neurofeedback. neurofeedback. Sadly, a lot of neurofeedback is basically they measure someone's brainwaves and people can push those brainwaves around. That's easy to do. In my lab, we have a little Lego

robot you can drive with your brainwaves and it's real. It's not faked. You can make this thing go forwards and backwards, turn left and right. But what does it actually mean? Right. Like, does it is it? Yes, you can do it. Now, with that being said, there are some good neurofeedback companies because there are clinical trial studies out there that show that certain types of neurofeedback help in certain situations. Right. So I was reading a clinical trial where they were using neurofeedback to help with traumatic brain injuries, but it was a double-blinded clinical trial study. It was a very specific protocol targeting a very specific thing, and it showed some positive results. But the vast majority of the neurofeedback community doesn't do that, right? They just invent their own protocols.

They invent their own what they're doing, and there's no real justification for it other than they point at someone like me with a PhD and say, well, we have a neuroscientist, and they say this is true, right? And then you look at their credentials, and then you find out their PhD is not even in neuroscience. It's like biochemistry or something else, right, Which doesn't make you an expert in neurofeedback. It would make, it would be like me saying that my PhD in neuroscience gives me the right to make opinions about world history or, you know, economics. It doesn't. You know, my PhD is in a pretty niche area. So yes, I guess the message to the listeners is beware and evaluate the tech

you're looking at. Yeah. And I think, I think too, maybe to add to that is that there's no, there's no quick shortcut. I know that we're all looking for this magic pill or magic wand to just skip past steps one through five, but you have to start with the fundamentals. And I think that there's things that you can do in your day that really help influence the brain and really help achieve improving cognitive function. But behavior change is hard. Like it's, you know, I think people don't realize that, especially when the brain is tired. I mean, it's the last thing the brain wants to do is develop any new behavior. Exactly. And I love what you said about, there is no quick fix. It reminds me of a story when I was

doing my master's degree at Indiana. One of the courses I had to teach was called weight control. And it was, it was basically, how do you get your body weight down to a healthy size? And it had nothing to do with neuroscience, but I was amazed at how many students believed in diet pills. And I just say to them, look, if there was a pill that made you thin, everyone would take it. Like your doctors would, you wouldn't even prescribe it. It would just be take this pill every day and you'll have an ideal body weight, right? And it's true with brain training. You know, you got to put in the work. You got to create time.

You've got to have motivation. I love what you said about cognitive fatigue because, you know, trying to do these things is impossible unless you sort of have some level of brain health already. Or at least it's challenging if you don't have some level of good brain health. Yeah. And I think, I think what's really interesting is that when you start with the assumption that the brain is tired, that there's fatigue, then you're able to find what like we call like low hanging fruit behavior. So what's something that should be really easy for this individual to start implementing? Because if we can get that going, and they start to feel a little bit better, then what can we begin to build on to that? And, and I think, again, going back to

the analogy of a personal trainer, you know, you go into the gym, and you're like, Hey, I want to lose 10 pounds here and build muscle here. They're not throwing you under the bench with weights. You can't lift. They're like, okay, great. Let's start with like flexibility and a little bit of weight. And then you build up. And that's what I love about the autonomic, you know, training session being three minutes, which is even if you're cognitively fatigued and you're tired you can do that right like you can say listen i gotta suck it up for less than five minutes in my life and i can i can do this so i think that's a massive massive positive for the autonomic philosophy it's just that simple recognition that you've got to make it doable and achievable. It's just like you're saying.

It would be like the weight training example you used. The equivalent would be saying, well, yes, autonomic will help you improve focus, but it's an hour and a half every day. You're going to lose focus while you're trying to improve focus at that point. Actually, I'm really curious around your insights around all these different brain performance measurement technologies and potential opportunities. Like obviously, right now, we're talking about just simple surveys, and being able to understand somebody from a very sort of high high adoption like hey you just have to answer some questions but if we if we think about all of the available technologies and I'll rattle some off and then

I'd love to get your opinion so you know heart rate variability as a measurement voice as a measurement mobile EEG fMRI implant you, like where are you excited about what's happening? Well, all of those technologies measure things. I think, you know, you sort of said it earlier with the bold overstatement piece, which is what does, you know, what does the technology actually measure, right? And what can you draw from that? A good example, like you mentioned, fMRI. I'll just pick one in the interest of time. Like fMRI measures a change in blood flow in the brain.

The working assumption is that when neurons fire, they need more blood to recharge to fire again. But there's a lot of steps in that assumption. And there's still some debate as to what fMRI results truly mean. In terms of what I'm excited about, we've been doing a lot with FNIRS recently. I'm always going to be an EEG person. It's my bread and butter. And FNIRS is not EEG. It's basically measuring hemodynamic blood flow, but it's doing it using an infrared sensor, and it's low cost, relatively speaking.

But with each of these technologies, it's what it can measure and what it can't measure. So if you wanted to get it at, you know, focus, FNIRS might not be the best tool for that. EEG is probably a better tool to get it focused. But if you want to get it prefrontal cortex and higher level decision-making, FNIRS is probably a better tool than EEG. And this is true for all these techs, which is knowing what they can do is important, but also knowing what they can't do so you don't stretch it too far. I like that. I actually think that knowing what they can't do is really important. And I don't

think that the consumer obviously is that educated because why would they be? They're being marketed to. And then that goes back to why the industry, I just feel like there needs to be more scientific rigor that's coming in if you're building these products. Well, you know, a big delineation that you can see, and I'll end this there, is that, you know, a lot of these companies deliberately avoid any kind of health approval because they know they won't stand up to the test, right? Like they know that they're what they're... So they sell themselves in a different category, right? And that's to avoid that kind of federal or government level of rigor

where they would basically not pass the standard, right? Now, on that note, we have gone long. That's okay because it's been fascinating. But before we go, Jamie, you got to tell us a bit about yourself. You're a fascinating person. Give us, okay, you can just give us the Coles notes. But how did, like, what got you here? Like, what drove you to create Autonomic?

So the Coles notes are, you know uh hopped on the corporate ladder young thought hey i can do this i'm motivated you know let's go burnt out terribly at the end of my 20s and really came up against my own cognitive limitations and not just for a week or two but for months and months on end, there was a significant shift in how my brain worked and how I viewed the world and, you know, my sleep patterns and mood and energy focus and stress, like all of those things. And it really piqued my interest around what was going on and then ultimately redirected my career, my studies, and then working with incredible neuroscientists like you. I'm really condensing, you know, a 10-year period.

But it was a wonderful experience at the time. It was scary and felt, you know, very out of control. But it redirected my interest and passion into understanding the brain and how the nervous system functions under demand and fatigue. And and so it really, you know, has been a wonderful journey to get to here. And and so, yeah, we're we're looking looking forward to continuing this journey and having people like you. Honestly, I think what's important is to really highlight how encouraging you've been because this is not easy to do. And you're up against a lot of hurdles and red tape and things of that nature. And you've really, really encouraged me and the team to keep going and keep building. And we're very grateful for that.

Well, thank you for that. Well, I think Autonomic is a cool idea. Before I do the wrap up, just really quickly, the website, that's how they find it. What is the address? Where do they go? Oh yeah, it's getautonomic.com.

So Autonomic, A-U-T-O-N-O-M-I-C.com. But I think what we should do, since this is a podcast, we want to give your listeners access to autonomic. We should give them, I think, you know, push back if I'm just coming up with this on the spot. But since our study that we did was six weeks long, it'd be great to give your listeners six weeks access to autonomic and get their feedback and see what they think. I think we should do that. So the easiest way to do that is if you'd like to try autonomic for six weeks, email the podcast, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. And I will get you and work with Jamie to get you set up to try autonomic for six weeks. That's great. Let's do it.

Let's do it. There you go. You listen to the podcast and you get to try a brain training program for six weeks. Jamie, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. This has been fun. Amy Wood, the CEO and founder of Autonomic. And you get to try it. Don't forget, check out the website, thatneuroscienceguide.com. There's links to Patreon where you can support us directly. Remember, every dollar you donate, whether it's a dollar a week or a dollar a month, it goes to supporting graduate students in my lab, and specifically Matt, who does all our sound editing and production,

because he's doing it for free. I don't mind doing it for free, but he doesn't make a lot of money, so thanks for the support. There's links to Etsy. Yes, we still have our t-shirts up, and yes, we need more logo ideas, but no one suggested any, so it is what it is. Of course, if you've got ideas, we want to know what you want to know about the neuroscience of daily life. So on X or threads, it's at that neuroscience guy, or you can email us that neuroscience guy at gmail.com. And finally, the podcast itself. Thank you so much for listening.

And please subscribe if you haven't already. My name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.