Train Your BRAIN Like Never Before: Brain Health, Pulsating Light, and the Future of Mental Fitness

Welcome back, dear audience, to another episode of the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Claudia von Boeselager, here to bring you the latest insights and learnings to improve your health, life, and happiness for longer. Thank you so much for being part of this tribe and wanting to be at your best each day. I'd love to hear from you, so make sure to reach out on Instagram @longevityandlifestyle. My guest today is repeat guest Garnet Dupuis. This is going to be our round 2 of 2. He's a pioneering figure in the field of brain wellness technology, particularly known for his work with NeuroVizr. We're going to dig into some of the science around brain training and brain signal variability and some other really interesting developments happening in the space to have optimal cognitive function when you need it. So please enjoy. And for the previous episode, make sure to go back and check that out as well. Welcome back to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast, Garnet. It's such a pleasure to have you back already for round 2 of our conversation. So welcome.

Okay, you've got the steering wheel. Let's go for a ride.

Okay, beautiful. So this for round 2, and for listeners interested in round 1, please just have a look at any of the podcast channels and you can find our initial conversation. And in this one, we want to dig into a little bit more of the science around the brain, right? And perhaps, Garnet, just for in case anyone's missed round 1, can you share just briefly as to your background and your interest around, you know, the brain and what's going on and why it is that you've become so passionate and such a pioneer in this field.

Um, I don't know why. It would have been more of a choice not to do it than to do it. I've always been interested in what we'll call consciousness or the divine or what the hell's happening. And, um, I wanted to start spiritual, but there was no guidance at the time. I was raised Roman Catholic. The religion helped me with morality and the sense of mystery. So I thought, well, I'm going to start with the body because I have one. And bit by bit, I'll go from the body to the mind, and I'll go from the mind to the soul, and then from the soul to the spirit. And, you know, that's a game plan. I'm like a rocket that should have dropped off the booster, but they stick together. So it's all just been one thing for me. And I'm a traditionalist. I'm pretty conservative in spiritual traditions. I'm, you know, smart enough that I can read and learn, and technology now is enabling. So I don't know. That's the short version this time, at least.

But yeah, exactly. But the fascination with the brain and developing NeuroVizr. Maybe you can share a little bit more about that.

The brain, I mean, we haven't really known much about the brain. I say we as a society, as a science. Everybody says it's the most complex thing of all. How do we know that? You know, I don't know because it's complicated. And because I mentioned I've always been in traditional spiritual practices throughout my life, it's sort of home for me. And so it's this curiosity. We experience something called the mind, but I know that we have a brain. And so what's that? And then there's the issue of aging and like, hmm, what's going on? And I've seen people that don't age well cognitively, and that's scary. And then so the One of the goals of science is for science to prove when science is wrong. That's the thing science should do. And we had a very wrong understanding about the adult brain. And now, you know, the magic word is neuroplasticity, that our adult brain will keep on learning and changing and morphing according to experience. And you can have that as a negative slip and slide or as a positive grow and gain. So that got me back interested. I've worked with technologies in the past, usually more esoteric, unusual things. And, you know, I'm here in northern Thailand. I was living up in the mountains in the rainforest doing wild animal conservation work, have a lovely spa in Bangkok. It's like, ah, and then it just became too intriguing, essentially, that, wow, wait a minute, So if this possible to make, help your brain stay better, I'm not going to argue what is brain, what is mind, whatever. But I do know that we do have a brain and it's better when it works better. And so like, well, with what I know and what, with what is happening now, that would be really interesting, a good thing. I like doing good things if I can. This would be a good thing to do to see whether there's some way to help our brains be better. So I have this attitude that whatever state of our brain today, it can be better tomorrow. The brain is—

Irrespective of age, right? So just to make that point for people listening, because I think there is that—

Let's get realistic, you know, because the brain is physical, like the rest of my body. So yes, my body can be better tomorrow than it is today, but it's never going to be like it was 40 years ago. So, you know, let's not get—

Well, but I guess the point of the question is, like, can Can you maintain it at an optimal state for longer through brain training, et cetera? Or do you think that you would still have a decline but less so?

I think there's a lot of positive that we can do, a lot that we can do. I'll say this just as a reference, not because it's prideful, but I'm 75 now. Cognitively, of course, I have to be careful because it's on my own bias and metric.. But I feel that I'll say the creative or the intellectual insightful thing, I'll call it my mind. I mean, I'll say it, I feel that it works better than when I was 45. So I don't know if that's true, but that's my sense of the experience. My body's getting slower. I don't do enough exercise. My muscles are— I was raised a farm boy, strong. My body is not as strong. I've always been smart, but it's a different kind of— it's a different kind of sharpness, would you say? Cognition. It's a different— okay. And also, you know, I, I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke weed, I don't do those things. Um, I've been a lifelong meditator, whatever that means exactly. So who knows, maybe it all adds up. I just feel lucky. But, but, um, there's something there's really something going on in terms of mental wellbeing and what I'll call brain health. There's something there. And we don't know much about it, but we do know is encouraging against a backdrop of very scary stuff.

For sure. And I mean, my mother suffers dementia, so this is a very close to, close to heart thing.

Yeah. In classes, I oftentimes say, who wants to live a long life? And most people raise their hand and I say, you know, do you know that industrialized nations between the age of 80 and 85. I'm 75. 80 used to seem like a long ways, like, you know, on the other side of the planet, and now it's only 5 years. That it's a 50-50 statistical chance of dementia between the age of 80 and 85. Well, like, wow, that's, that's okay. So, you know, because it's in your family, it's a big, it's, it's, um, it's a scary thing. It's an uncomfortable, bad, scary thing.

Yeah, but I'm actually less scared of it now. I mean, maybe just as a side thing that I've, you know, had different neuroscientists on as well, like Dr. Dale Bredesen, who's identified 38 underlying drivers that lead to circumstances that cause neurodegenerative diseases and how to test for those markers. And essentially his view is Alzheimer's should be a disease of the past and dementia. Because if you ensure that you maintain optimal vitamin D levels, magnesium levels, insulin resistance, or mitigate insulin resistance, head trauma is obviously another thing, hormone levels, etc. So there are different drivers around it. Toxicity in the body, right? Mercury, black mold, etc. If they're all kept in the right parameters, then you should not— even if you're genetically predisposed— predisposed— predisposed— predisposed. There we go. That you won't have issue. And interestingly, my mother does not carry either copy of the APOE4 gene. I have a single copy, but turns out my father at 86 has one. He's doing okay. So again, it's lifestyle plays a huge role into it, into these factors as well, which I find empowering for people to understand that it's not a death sentence that, you know, it runs in your family.

Yeah, I, I'm sometimes a bad boy when I hear, when I hear that, I think, well, I'll say it in a crude and stupid way, and this is not referring to your family. That's great news for rich people. But, you know, that lifestyle and circumstance right now, you know, I have friends that are, you know, prominent biohackers and influence leaders and the whole thing. And, you know, I say, well, you know, this is great. Most people don't have $2,000 a month to spend on supplements. They don't have their own cryo chamber. In their, in their exercise room. Yeah, I'm trying to, uh, you know, I used to think I'm special and I'm not. I realize that I'm pretty average in most ways, and I'm thinking about the average person and, you know, what can we do? What can we do? And, um, yeah, that's my sentiment. So it's not to contradict what you're saying. What you're saying is true.

I hear you. Yeah, no, the testing, etc., is pricey. The supplementation can be pricey. That said, Exercise, going for a walk, going for a run. You need to buy a pair of sneakers. You can find them on sale for $10 if needed, I think, somewhere.

All of that.

There I go. Right. Breathing well, sleeping well, meditating, intermittent fasting where appropriate. So, there are different components. There's other components that are a bit pricier, but some of them are essentially free.

I was on a podcast some time ago with one of my buddies who's one of the leaders. I'll skip his name. It's Jean Fallacara. And of course he's a friend as well. And he's a good friend of mine. And, you know, he's— and now he's starting his lifespanning longevity thing. He was extreme biohacker. And I said, Jean, kind of what I already said to you, I said, with all this stuff you're talking about, please can you help me understand something that a single mother with 2 kids and 2 jobs can do from the biohacking perspective. So obviously she doesn't have much time, energy, limited budget, the whole thing. And he was very clever, and I give him credit for that. He said, okay, give her the advice once in a while when she has a chance to just walk backwards here and there within her apartment or house. And I thought, oh, good move, good move. So I, I have a kind of a sensitivity towards what I'll call the average person because I think I'm one of them. And, you know, I used to get asked because I was in healthcare practice, what's the kind of exercise— sports medicine stuff— what's the best kind of exercise? I said, well, that's easy. It's not easy. There's so many kinds. I said, come on, it's really easy. They said, don't shit me. What's the best kind of exercise? I said, well, it's easy. It's the one you're going to do. It's this compliance thing. Yeah. It's this compliance thing.

And consistently do and not overdo, et cetera.

Yeah. Okay.

So Garnet, so let's talk about neuroplasticity and maybe you can just, for those unfamiliar, define what that is and how is neuroplasticity supported by pulsating lights, which is essentially part of the NeuroVisors. Yeah. And you incorporate music into it as well. So could you walk us down that path?

Please? Sure. Um, there's an awful lot that I don't know and, uh, a few things that I do, and I'll do my best to be honest, uh, about that. Sure. The neuroplasticity, uh, is pretty simply the ability for a physical organism to respond to challenges by making positive changes. And we didn't think that was true about the adult brain. We thought the adult brain pretty much finished at around 23 to 25 years old. And I don't know if you know the old stuff, they say, you know, you only got a certain number of brain cells, they're gonna die off and you're screwed.

Right? Oh yeah. When I was growing up, you bumped your head, you lost 100 brain cells, like, oh, you know, they're never getting them back.

Really? So, but the idea is that's still partly true because the plasticity of the growing brain is outrageous. Outrageous, and that outrage slows down into early adulthood. However, it does not mean change is not possible. Certain areas of the brain can change quite impressively. Fortunately, one of them is the hippocampus, which is basically memory central in the brain. So if we recognize that our brain is physical, it's as physical as your heart, as your spine, as your hamstring muscle. The things we know about our soma are in many ways true about our brain. It's kind of artificial to even separate the brain from the body as a whole. So what we know about the body, if you do little challenging movements, or call them exercises, whatever, that the body will respond. Because it's a little bit of an insult, but it's not an injury. And if you do that, that the body will say, well, hey, I don't want that to happen again, I'm going to change. And we can do that with our brain. So the question is, well, that's great, how do I do it? And most of the early processes have been neurologically what's called top-down thinking stuff. Well, you know, your brain is good for thinking, then thinking stuff should be good for your brain. And it turns out if you do certain puzzles or certain games that you will improve. That's the good news. Not so good news is that the brain will improve only in that silo. It'll improve in relation to that game or puzzle, but it doesn't diversify into other areas. So like, well, like, oh shit, I thought it was like that was the thing to do. It is good to do, but it's, it's It's too narrow. So that's what's called top-down. Bottom-up is direct sensory input, and sensory input has a great deal more diversified applications than simple top-down. So what you want to do is— it's absurd to separate them because it's impossible to separate, but you want to have bottom-up. So what's bottom-up? Immediacy, sensory input. Like you said, like exercise, you know, by moving your body and doing things, actually you're moving your brain. There's nothing— right now you're looking at a human brain. This is what it looks like. It has a somatization, but this is my brain. So when I wave my hands around, I'm waving my brain around. So the NeuroVisor, which is a light and sound stimulation device, non-drug, non-invasive neurotech, is a way of activating or exercising your brain with direct sensory input. So it's not cognition, meaning you don't think it to activate it, you feel it to activate it. So neuroplasticity does respond to immediate sensory somatic processes like exercise, like dance, like the NeuroVizr.

Yeah. Is there research around how much more receptive the brain is to that sensory input versus the thinking input, as you were calling it?

Well, yeah, you know, the kind of the hottest new, you know, sexy brain model right now is predictive coding. And that concept of the brain always seeking patterns and recognized safety, trying to avoid surprises and novelty. I have a little conflict with Friston on that one, but the— I mean, who am I? But that the, the idea is that the brain, our brain, your brain and mine, basically it's a pattern-seeking organ. It tries to, you know, okay, so bottom-up is always right now, you know, Carhartt Harris and Tropic Brain. He says that's primary consciousness, and that over time secondary consciousness says, hey, I've got all this experience, why don't I do something with it other than just feel it? So we start to develop a library of the past and a crystal ball of the future, and we, we use that Actually, almost all of our experience until you bump into this thing called now is a virtual projection that we're always testing. Is this correct? Is this correct? Is this correct? And the example I give, pardon me, maybe I've done it before. I live, I have a house up in the rainforest. So this is like understandable. You're walking, you know, around. I don't have a garden. I just have a forest. Walking around, you look down and oh, there's a snake. And then I look down like, oh, what kind of snake? I look down, oh, it's a piece of an old garden hose. So that's an example of a reference from the past projecting into a future. It's a better safe than sorry thing. Better safe than sorry. So I was wrong. So that's called a prediction error in the model. And the idea is we keep on updating that all the time. Well, the danger there is this active— I'm speaking in the model of predictive coding— this active inference. Basically, active inference is like a confirmation bias that we want to confirm that what we believe is true.

Yeah, and because it's, it's the path of least resistance, right? It's like the known, so it tries to go to that straight away and to expend less energy, essentially, even if it's wrong.

That's the problem. And this is where the neuroplasticity comes in, that when you want to affect and improve the brain by modifying it with neuroplastic processes, we have to understand that, call it a pattern, call it a belief, call it a habit, that they resist change. That we, so much of learning we realize is actually not additive, it's subtracting. There are a lot of things we have to unlearn. We have to unlearn. And a good part of neuroplastic growth is sometimes, you know, that pattern doesn't work anymore, that process doesn't work. But the problem is it's kind of glued. It's kind of glued. So processes that affect neuroplasticity oftentimes fail because they come in with the expectation, oh, I'm just going to tell Claudia how to change and she's going to do it because psychologically now she knows, not knowing that there is an actual neural conglomerate of neurons that are habituated. So the idea is when you want to provoke change, you have to expect you, I, me, who, The pronouns are interesting, but that we have to—

a person—

the first thing to do is that we have to soften the glue of habituation somehow. And that's where Carhart-Harris and Friston, you know, Carl Friston, they came in with this REBUS thing, the acronym REBUS, like a school bus. REBUS, it's an acronym. And, you know, they're involved in psychedelic research. So it references, we'll talk about that, but that relaxing existing beliefs using psychedelics. So it's PS, it could have been rebuff, I guess rebuff sounds better. But so rebuff, okay, so my position is relaxing existing beliefs or patterns or habits, relaxing existing beliefs using something. Something. And that's something I call a psychoactive agent, something that softens the glue and then moves the activation up to higher levels where new possibilities can happen, then taking them back down again. And in my estimation, which is limited obviously, is that techniques that work and don't work is because they're not softening the glue first. And that it takes some kind of activation, some kind— it could be, I don't know, cold plunge, it could be fasting, it could be drumming, it could be pranayamas, it could be NeuroVizr, it could be psychedelics, it could be a painful suffering condition, it could be a lot of things can do that. And to recognize soften the glue, loosen it up, create an opportunity for imprint, then let it settle down. That's actually, in a kind of a graphic way, what neuroplasticity is about.

So softening and then the rewiring, essentially.

Yeah, yeah. And you can't rewire— you know, my— the old analogy I used to use is you have honey and you put a bunch of toothpicks in it and then you put it in the refrigerator. It's a stupid example. You put it in the refrigerator, you take it out, you want to change the toothpicks around. Well, the honey is hard like a rock. So first is soften the honey, you know, heat it up or something. Then you can change the toothpick patterns, then put it back in the fridge again. But it's this process of brain prime, brain time.

That's really helpful for understanding, um, that softening importance of it. And so can you expand on how using pulse relaxating light, right? So through the eye and sound, how that is supporting neuroplasticity and the softening and rewiring.

Well, I'll try as best as I understand. You know, I started doing it based on a lot of overlapping principles. They were like, what's your research? Well, I'm using all of this elegant research and I'm trying to put it together in a way that seems reasonable. So there is this extraordinary quality of mind. It's exceptional. And we usually call it attention. All right. Can you pay attention? Do I have your attention, please? Right. This thing called, you know, it's in Qigong, you know, it's in biofeedback, it's in meditation, it's in marital arguments. You know, are you paying attention? So what this thing called attention is, I think, the primal psychoactive agent. You know, when I think about it, and this is going to answer your question, by the way, but there's a kind of a logic, I think, that, um, what do pain and pleasure have in common?

They are triggering strong emotions.

That's a result. Okay, okay, I apologize. I use the same example. I still think it's funny. I don't think anybody ever thought it was, but I do. Okay, I'll do it this way. I have a, I'll say an ice pick, but I don't know if anybody even knows what an ice pick is anymore. A kind of a knife. I have a knife and I start to jab it repeatedly in your left knee. Okay. Or, and I, okay, I don't mean to be rude. I don't know how it happens, but somehow you have this intense orgasm in your left knee. So meaning one is very painful, one is very pleasurable. What do they have absolutely in common other than my insanity?

I won't play— triggering an impact in the brain. Um, I don't know.

Tell me. Your attention goes to your left knee.

Your attention goes to—

okay. I mean, that's the basic thing. You may not have been aware, even right now, for me to say your left knee.

Of course, the mind goes to it.

Okay, just that. So what's that? Like, Why do we do that? Because, you know, people that don't feel usually die young. So, you know, what is it about attention that is such a big deal? Well, attention is involved in neuroplastic change. You know, there are different, 2 or 3 different sayings in neuroplasticity. The most famous from a Canadian, Donald Hebb, used to be called Hebbian learning. 1949, his book, um, Fire It to Wire It. He's the one that laid that down as a premise. You've got to activate something in order to engage it. And then, uh, the other, of course, is use it or lose it, which is kind of the opposite, but we hear that. And the third thing is really important, although it's a little less evident: the brain changes what matters. The brain changes what matters. And here I'll go a little bit Buddhist. It's like, what's this thing called suffering? It certainly engages your attention. And the brain changes what matters. I think what becomes attentive, what we become aware of, is the initiating process in change as a whole. We're getting information. You know, sleep positions. I like laying on my side, bed pillow, right side usually I start. After a while, the yumminess goes away. It's like, I don't like it anymore. I want to lay on my left side. Well, what's wrong with you? Make up your mind. Well, I don't know what happened. You know, so I have to go through the process, which is, by the way, predictive in intent, but chaotic in achievement, where I start to roll over, my leg gets caught in the pillow moves and things like that. But I do finally end up over there. So what is like, what got my attention, something called discomfort. So in neuroplastic processes, the first thing is the— I'll say the fundamental primal organics biological thing called attention. And this is why— and I, I've been involved with the brain stuff for a long time. Brain entrainment is, you know, people know about it. It's called the frequency following response. Now we call it brain entrainment. And what does that tell you? That if you induce a rhythmic periodic signal for a few minutes, it's called superimposition. You're kind of making the brain do it, then the brain starts to do it. So you don't have to pay attention for it to happen. So the brain will just do it. You don't have to pay any attention at all. So that's going to tell you, hmm, would brain entrainment be a dynamic neuroplastic methodology foundation? Nope. Step number 1, it doesn't, there's no need for you to pay attention. There's no focused intention, attention there. And so that's the first thing. Then the second thing is, and this is why I'll tell you why the light and sound do it. The second thing is there has to be what's called marginal demand. Just a little. This is true in flow state and Chick sent me high and the whole thing. Is that there's this thing called I'm okay right there, and then there's just like a tiptoe past that line.

Out of the comfort zone a little bit.

Yeah, just a tad. I call it marginal demand. Those two things combined with a third thing, it's kind of more diffuse. We'll call it belief, open-mindedness, willingness. That's like, I hate this shit, I have to do it, but I'll, you know, I'll go. No, that's some amount of faithfulness or willingness or open, willingness maybe is the most general feeling. So focused attention, marginal demand, and willingness. Then a fourth thing that is the secret sauce, makes all of those other things work better. And it's a very complex neural hormonal chemical state, and it's called enjoy. If you enjoy it, okay, so With those 4 things, focused attention, marginal demand, open-minded willingness, and enjoyment, the NeuroVisor design uses a compositional integration of light and sound so that it says hello, and then it creates a destabilization that's like, you know, that is kind of like the dagger in the knee thing that it gets attention because what starts off is, oh, that's nice. I wonder what's happening. That it creates an appetite for signal. Our brain is always trying to find signal and noise. It's always trying to figure out what's happening. And when it doesn't know what's happening, I don't really spin the body around, but it's kind of like spinning the brain around, spinning the mind around a little bit in the beginning. So it's like, whoa, what's happening? You know, I'm not a Sufi or a 4-year-old, so I don't like it. So at that point is the first introduction of imprint. It's the first time the vector starts to come in. I can't make the brain do anything, but I can create probability states, probability. So it says, let's consider this. So that process is part of what softens the glue. It gets things like, wait a minute, I don't know what I was thinking before, but what am I doing right now? It does that. So once the brain starts, and this is all in the brain signaling and the sound, so it's not brain entrainment. I don't just like play Celtic harps and do binaural beat of something, you know, that it's, it's like it's a story. It's a story that the brain understands because the brain always encounters this in life. It's like, what's happening? Do I understand it or not? Is it new? So, and then once the brain starts to lock in and it says, oh, I got it, I say, oh, you really got it? And then you create some conflict. You slap it left and right a few times. Like, are you sure you've got it? Yeah, I got it. And then you reward it. Then you reinforce it. So it's a very templated, conscious structure that uses light and sound to do that stuff, pay attention, marginal demand, open-minded willingness, imprint, and it does it incrementally. So last thing I'll say is there are two ways to do that. One is short-term state shift. Oh, I feel better or I feel different, I feel good. And the other is to do it repeatedly over time for long-term. So you've got short-term state shift, Long-term trait shaping. And you can do it with light and sound.

So I want to ask a couple of questions around that, Garnet, and thank you for breaking that down. But for people listening in particular, but also watching, just to understand, I know that Garnet was referring to stabbing in the knee. And just so you know, the sensation of using the NeuroVisor is not like being stabbed in the knee or in the eye or anything like that. So just to make that point.

Well done.

So that people are aware. And so essentially, and I'll just try to describe it, it's like a band that goes around your head and then around the back of your— so basically once around your head, and then there is almost, I guess, like a visor, essentially. You want me to show you one? Yeah, I don't have mine in the room here, so maybe you can show for people watching. But if people are listening as well, maybe if you have one in front of you to show.

15 seconds.

Hang on. Okay, I'll continue describing it while Garnet quickly goes and gets his device. But it essentially, on the end of the visor, is a clip-on light panel, and you keep your eyes closed during the process, and the light is pulsating, flickering back and forth and causing you to see different colors and constantly swirling and moving around. And so that is the physical device. It is not painful. It is definitely, if you've never Tried something like this before. So Garnet is thankfully modeling this here for us. So yeah, that's the clip-on light panel.

With headphones or earbuds.

Yeah. And then with the headphones and earbuds. So you were explaining, Garnet, that this, the light unglues the beliefs, right? It unglues the neural pathways for certain belief systems. But does it also help to rewire them into the positive?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

On, in the app, there are different programs. So maybe you can talk about that, like you're doing the ungluing to be more receptive and open to a new way of thinking, a new way of doing things. And is it also doing that during the process too?

And how? Okay. Yes, just like you said that I use glue. I'm a visual guy. So I like, you know, imagining sort of analogies, not actually glue, although amyloid plaque might who knows. But there's no glue in that sense. And my camera's gone out of focus here. That neurologically, it's called a fixation. Hang on. I want a new camera for Christmas. Oh, here. Now I'm back in focus. There you go. My autofocus. It's okay now. Maybe it was my mind. I'm not sure. But it could have been. You never know.

All the brain training.

Yeah. Yeah. So Technically, it's called a fixation. It's when the brain kind of gets stuck into certain frequency bands. In neurofeedback, it's called a fixation. I say it gets glued. Also, we all know that habits, good or bad, are hard to break. So if there is something that goes in that wants to enable change, the first thing is to consider the fact that the brain probably doesn't want to change. Yeah. And that we have to do something to soften that resistance. So when the process begins, there's a little bit of funny stuff, and that works towards creating an appetite. I'll say a neurological appetite for signal, because basically it says, well, I don't know, maybe I'll like it, maybe I won't. I'm just going to sit and wait. So I don't let it do that. Then once things loosen up that's when new information can be induced or suggested. Imprinted sounds a little bit like mechanical, but that's a time when, you know, like if you're really hungry, if I don't let you eat and you're really hungry and I give you a piece of raw kale, it might even taste good. I mean, strangely enough, you know, if you're hungry enough. So it's this thing again, I'm using analogies or metaphors perhaps. But that it's a way of getting the brain hungry for new information that it may not normally want to consider. And you get that going by some destabilization that— and that's not that difficult to do. I mean, there are a lot of sound light patterns that can destabilize.

And is it like 30 seconds, 1 minute? Like, is it the, you know, because the sessions are let's say 7 to 11 minutes, right? So is it the first few minutes that it's the destabilizing in order to open up the receptiveness to rewiring?

It depends on the session design. Okay. Some are, uh, you know, it's like slow dancing. Some are a little bit more demanding, uh, because they're different people, want different things at different times. The, the basic Light sound session, I've chosen 11 minutes for almost all of them, not all, but almost all, because the average human adult brain can maintain focused attention for 10 to 12 minutes. That's a kind of a psychological neurological average. And then depending on your local neurotransmitter pool, then you can refresh it one time again, which is why we end up with a 20-minute TED Talk and 20 minutes of TM meditation and You know, even the old TV that had half-hour TV program without the ads, that was 22 minutes. Like, what is this 20-minute thing? Well, that's just the way our brains are. So 11 minutes is what I call the brain prime with a P. Brain prime, 11 minutes. It's difficult for me to convince users that the real great amazing stuff begins when the light and sound end. So analogy again, eat a meal, it's delicious, you love it, enjoy it. When you finish eating, you start digesting. So the major impact of an 11-minute NeuroVisor session can be compounded, can be amplified, if when it finishes, you go from brain prime with the P to brain time with the T. Like that. And what do you do? You feel what you feel and you follow the feeling. What is the psychoactive agent there? Attention. You normally— not you, a person, me— doesn't normally sense the subtlety of information that is in us all the time. All the time. You know, when you do body scan techniques, we're just, it's just the icing on the cake or the tip of the iceberg or something. At the end of one of these sessions, there is, I'll call it feeling, sensations, emotions, thoughts. I don't know what to call it, but there's a lot happening that is usually obscure. It's hard to connect with that. Maybe you do your breath meditation or, you know, something, It's there, like, you know, sensation maximus is happening. If you are consciously aware, if you give your attention to what you're feeling and you follow that feeling, it is potency of effect that is so much greater than the light and sound itself. I won't get into the technicality. You wanted science, but it's too much. This is a very predictable, well-known periodicity in neuroplastic neurology. It's neurostimulation, neuromodulation, neurorelaxation, neurodifferentiation. You know, this is known. It's just a question of application that may not be so common or evident.

Or understood as well.

Yeah.

Something like that. And there was, or it is recently, There's really interesting research recently out of MIT around pulsating light and its impact on clearing amyloid plaque, which we understand the brain uses to protect itself and which some people previously thought was the cause of Alzheimer's, which we now know is not the case. But still, the fact of being able to clear out the amyloid plaque obviously allows for better brain function. Can you talk about this and what your view is, what is happening that the pulsating light is able to do it?

I have a bone to chew on this. So, okay, yes, it's true. It's not false. However, the perspective is a dangerous one in my limited, honest opinion. We are philosophically mechanistic. We are reductionists. And even how we've interpreted chemistry in terms of, you know, bonds and everything, And even the concept of the active ingredient, you know, if you look at an herb, well, what's the active ingredient in here? Isolating, reducing, conceptualizing is our sense of reality. That's what we understand. Okay. That thing gave us the magic pill delusion, right? If there's this chemistry involved, there must be some kind of Isolated, pure, like forget about all that stuff, you know, all the chemical noise, like what's that? And I think right now we have, this is my opinion, everything what you said is good, true, and positive. However, the danger of falling away from the magic pill into the magic frequency is a danger.

Can you define what that means in terms of the magic frequency?

40 Hz is the magic frequency. 40 Hz does not exist in the brain. It's a mathematical lie of convenience. Brain waves don't express in whole integers. Most, I mean, the most aggressive will use 2 decimal points. But it's the question of how do we deal with complexity? You know, what's coming out of the top of the head electrically for EEGs is a volcano, an electrical volcano. And the algorithms will say, close enough, you know, like 40. We do have 40 Hz, so it's probably 1 in a million that we've got 40.732244, 38.76542, you know, that there is this constantly fluctuating fuzziness, this variability, and I believe that our brain can understand 40 Hz, but— and I'll do this some other time. I hope I never did it with you. It is like— I'm doing a Stephen Hawking voice. It is like me talking to Claudia like this. She can understand everything I'm saying because I just said that a black dog came in my room. But there's something weird about that. It's not prosodic. It's not the way we converse. So that's just symbolic. There are two kinds of signals fundamentally: symbolic signals and performative signals. A symbolic signal is a signal that has a meaning. Symbolic signal. The word dog, chien, in French, right? Dog. It has a meaning. It's just a sound. Performative, like to perform. Performative signals don't have meanings. The signal is the meaning itself, like the color, like the color that you're wearing, whatever the name of the color is. That purple?

Yeah, we couldn't figure that one out.

Yeah. Or cobalt blue, one of my favorite colors. When you see it, you have an experience. There's no associated meaning. So I think that our brain says, I get what you mean, but it's not really a natural signal yet. That I think we have to have, you know, that's why I said about the danger of reductionism and mechanism. I want the pistons in my car to be very regular, not, but I don't want that in my heart. Heart rate variability, the, you know, the, this microsecond adaption of the autonomic nervous system, that's also in our brain but hugely more complex. There are at least 10 different types of variability. So my proposal is that, I mean, if I could run a study, I'd run it, or design it, I wouldn't run but that I would like to have a very fuzzy 40-hertz-ish signal and compare it to that whole number integer of 40 perfect hertz. Because it's an organism, it's biological, that so much of what the algorithm— because it's all the algorithm. The algorithm says yes and no at an average. It takes a mean, it makes an average. And that's what it tells you. But that's not it. When you park your car in the garage, as long as you don't hit the sides of the garage door, it's okay. But I bet it's not exactly at the same position in millimeters.

Yeah. Like they say, there's no straight lines in nature. Right.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

So that's my— I guess it's a perception. Caution that it is true, it does work, it does do that, but I suspect that it is a limited effect. And it may even— that the danger of using exactly the same signal over and over is habituation. That's the danger.

And then it doesn't have the same impact on the brain because the brain— oh, I know it's coming.

Yeah, it worked, but why doesn't it work anymore? Well, you've habituated it. There's no novelty. There's no surprise. You know, the guy that taught me the most about what is information, Gregory Bateson, a brilliant anthropologist, giant mind, now dead. And I struggled for a long time. What is information? You know, matter, energy, information. 1, 2, 3. 2 bumper stickers did the whole thing. I still use it. It's the core of my design process. He says information is news of change. Information is news of change. So no change, no news, no information. Same, same, same, same, same. The second one, which is an elaboration, brilliant. I worked with a bunch of Russians that really elaborated on this. We didn't get it in the West. Information is a difference that makes a difference. So not every change is significant. So yes, information is news of change, and information is a difference that makes a difference. And I think that when we hit these highly repetitive whole integer frequencies that are a very limited dialect as to how the brain signals within itself, that we risk the danger of missing a broader opportunity plus inducing habituation. So I just pulled up a paper. I saw the one you sent over, you know, that for global gamma throughout the brain, if you want to induce a more globalized— I mean, there's never only one frequency, but globalized in typical mature middle-aged adults, 36 to 38 Hz created better global gamma. And for older persons, 32 to 34 Hz did. And in these kinds of studies, if you really want to get like specific, go to at least 2 decimal points.

So it's— yeah, it's so specific and to the actual hertz frequency as well. Yeah, because I think that's the challenge of something that is so complex, as you said at the very beginning, to bring it down into a scientific method to be able to analyze it in a clinical setting, to have a, you know, clinical trial and research then off the back of it. And what are the outcomes? And to better understand it. But what is coming out is obviously very promising.

Well, it's super promising. Absolutely. I just wish we would be a little less mechanical and reductionistic. Don't make, you know, mathematical lies for convenience. Organisms are a lot dirtier and noisier and detailed than your new car. So that's what I would— that's why I say I have a bone to chew or whatever I said.

I understand. I understand. I want to touch on brain signal variability. Oh boy. So what is brain signal variability? Can you compare it with HRV, like what HRV did for the heart? Is this what is going to be the term for the brain?

Yeah.

What is it? Why does it matter? Why is it interesting?

It's really interesting. It's really interesting because there's a lot of what I just said that, okay, I mean, HRV, I think, is relatively well known. Heart rate variability. If a person has a heartbeat of 60, the conventional thought, well, that because there are 60 seconds in a minute and it beats 60 beats per minute, it must be beating 1 per second. That's pretty easy. And if that's true, the person's probably about to have a heart attack. It may be true, but it's not a good thing. So it turns out that between each beat, you know this, between each beat, there has to be some temporal difference. What that's reflecting, pardon me, what's that reflecting is autonomic nervous system, sympathetic, parasympathetic adaptation. But in microseconds. Like, one whole second is way too long for what needs to happen. You know, we're biased by the size of our body and how fast we can move. Is an elephant big? Yes. Is a mouse small? Yes. Compared to what? Size of my body. You know, is a cheetah fast? Yes. You know, is a snail slow? Yeah. What? Compared to my body. So we're so human-centric that we don't understand that there are different time periods. Like now in the Olympics and other sports, we see who wins and loses in a hundredth of a second.

Yeah, it's wild.

You can't see that with your eye. So heart rate variability says, hey, guess what, that there should be a temporal difference between each heartbeat. And that's what you also wonder, like when the doctor puts a stethoscope on your back, breathe in, breathe out. It's like, what the hell? You can't— you want to hear me breathe? What are they doing? Well, when you breathe in, your heart should speed up. When you breathe out, it should slow down. So they're checking at a very crude level your heart rate variability. Cool. Brain signal variability, I love. Very complicated. Oh my God. Yeah. Anyway, so it turns out that the brain also has a lot of this variability. Up until rather recently, 10 years for sure, 5 years almost, when the algorithms check what's happening in the brain, like amplitudes or frequencies or networks, the algorithms threw out all that stuff because it was just noisy, getting in the way of a signal. So by design, people make the algorithms that, you know, AI didn't do it, at least not yet. People make the algorithms because there are certain— that comes out of cybernetics and actually radio technology, where you don't want a lot of noise, you want purity. So the noise-to-signal ratio is a big deal in communication theory. Well, guess what? We thought that was also true in the body. So that noisy stuff, throw that away. Oh my God, wait a minute, that's really important information. Oh, oh, oh, oh. So now we understand that in the brain there is a lot of this fuzziness, this chatter, this noisy stuff. You know, I say, you know, you can't have fun if you're afraid to get dirty. You know, you've got to appreciate that. So it's too dangerous to go too much further with But the important thing is that, well, I don't know if it's the important thing. One of the important things is if we want to somehow with technology to communicate with the brain for brain change, we have to be careful that we don't make it too pure mathematically because the brain will kind of understand, but it's weird. It's not really, okay, the example of the early music synthesizers in the MIDI board and, you know, way back was Moog, forget that, that like you have a keyboard and, oh, I want to play violin and you choose violin and you play the keyboard, but it sounds like a violin. And now, of course, it's a huge expanded elegant platform and software. But what was weird about that? Is that it sounded something like a violin, but it didn't really sound like a violin. Why? Because it was too pure. There is no violinist in the world that, one, they wouldn't attempt it. The other is it's impossible to not have these fractional distortions of that note. As a matter of fact, like blues guitar, you're like, you bend like that, that So wait a minute, now the sound music software has this process generally known as humanizing. So that when you do these things, except for Auto-Tune, which is like in the head, but that the idea is in nature, mathematical purity is an abstraction that we put on it, that actually there's all sorts of, I say like my brain, your brain, the human brain, well, maybe brains in general, that they shimmer. They shimmer like, you know, starlight over water at the ocean is shimmering or on snowfall. So that shimmering aspect is brain signal variability. And that we need to work with this kind of, you know, sophisticated musical quality. Like somebody on a conga drum— conga, yeah, drum— different. Um, it's the drum machine sounds different because it's too perfect. It's like looking at somebody that's had plastic surgery where the face is now symmetrical. You look at that face, you say, you're weird, what is it? Because there's no human face that is symmetrical. So this little bit of non-perfection is actually natural. It's adaptive. It's meaningful in and of itself. You don't have to apply a meaning to it. So working with the brain, I think we've learned a lot from music. And now we have instrumentation. Like I say, some— maybe I said it to you— there was no saxophone music until the saxophone instrument. The musician may have had the feeling, but they couldn't express it with their flute or their trumpet or something. Then Adolphe Sax, 1754, I think, made this thing. So right now, we're creating instrumentation for light, and we're expanding sound to be closer and closer to the brain's native language. And as we do that, I feel confident that enhancing neuroplastic change and other elements of cognition and information processing, it's going to get really good.

Because it will understand it a lot better because it will be able to understand the noise. Is that essentially?

Yeah. Well, it's like, you know, the sitar. How many harmonics do you hear off of that? And even, you know, this head bobbling thing. Right. It's because if you bobble your head, it does the wah-wah effect on sound. Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah. So, you know, I don't know. It's just, it's like great stuff. It's so interesting.

And with the brain signal variability, excuse me, how much is it looking at the different brain waves, right? So alpha, beta, gamma, etc., theta. Yeah. Versus actual the the signals and the frequency going on. So what is happening exactly there with measuring?

Well, if I knew how to answer it exactly, I'd be famous, but, and I'm not. So right now there are 10 different types of brain signal variability that you can examine. You know, you don't know how to measure until you know what you're trying to measure. You know, I can have a thermometer for heat, but it doesn't measure humidity. So although there's a correlation, it's not the same. In brain signal variability, we're interested in things like, oh, from one frequency to another, how much change happens? Or how about amplitude? How high does it spike or not spike? Or like there, it gets too technical.. But right now, unlike heart rate variability, where it is just a measure of time, all you're doing is you're measuring change in time. Is the beat between— is the time between one beat and another longer or shorter? That's all. So the dynamic is temporal. It's just time. Well, we can look at the brain variability in terms of time. But we can also look at it in terms of amplitude. We can look at it in terms of localization. So most of this is really new. It is the, for me, the holy grail of like, what are we actually trying to figure out here? Well, that stuff wasn't a bunch of noise. Guess what? That's where the information really is. So the going back to Bateson, information is news of change. Change, difference, variability, it's all the same thing. You know what I mean? The delta for math— not delta brainwaves, but delta mathematical change. I do, I work with delta dynamics, delta deconstructions, because like the I Ching, different types of change. So brain signal variability, I believe within a relatively short period of time, maybe like 5 years or something, is going to open up a ton of understandings and applications about how to interact with the brain, because the brain is not a piston-driven engine like in my car. It's not mechanical.

There's more fluctuations around it. So by understanding the brain signal variability, essentially, you believe that off the back of that, there can be more customized, personalized brain training, brain neuroplasticity improvements. Absolutely.

Potential is— Absolutely. 6 months ago, MIT again released a study plotting brain signal variability on 6 executive functions. Okay, you know, the things we do to figure stuff out. And they plotted it from 0 to 90 years old against a broad population. So 6 different ones. And these 6 different lines just tightly clustered, starting at the zero, peaked, and then dropped like a perfect arc, like a nice Bayesian curve almost. And the average— it's not common— the average adult brain in terms of these executive functions, as measured with brain signal variability, peaked at around 45 to 46 years old. And then was a frighteningly regular decline back down to zero again, paralleling the mirror of the ascent from birth and the descent to a long-laid death. So if we can find ways of exercising the brain's ability to change, that's my motto. Get the brain to— if the brain can change when change is required, that's a healthy brain. There's no ideal state. Stop that thinking. There is no ideal frequency. Stop that thinking. That there is a spectrum of dynamic change capacities and being able to— like, the most simple one, yeah, well, the most evident one is now I'm awake, now I'm asleep. Can your brain make that change? A lot of people can't. And fortunately, the, you know, the NeuroVizr is quite successful in helping to regulate sleep. And I think it's because the circadian biology is so pleading for help that as soon as you loosen up the glue and as soon as you move things around, the circadian cycle says, hey, you know that sleep that I've been wanting? Give it to me. So the, this issue is, I mean, going back to me sleeping on my right side to my left side, if I can't change when I need to change, I got a big problem. And that's true of the complexity of our brain, that our brain is highly adaptive. Yes, it seeks ordered patterns. However, it's encountering an environment that is always demanding changes. Hunger changes, temperature changes, pain changes, you know, change, change, change. You know, they say the only constant is change. I don't know if that's true. So that's what I think. I think the variability thing is actually as much of a monster change to go from the adult brain sucks to the adult brain can change, neuroplasticity. I think brain signal variability is, I don't know, I'll make up a number, 10 times more important than neuroplasticity as a whole.

Yeah. Very exciting times ahead. As we finish up today, Garnet, can you help people to understand what are some specific use cases or what would you recommend if someone would be interested in trying the NeuroVizr but wants to understand, you know, how can I apply this in my day-to-day life? Like, what can it help me with? You mentioned sleep? What are some other modalities that you recommend for, um, the use of these nerve—

something else that I said earlier, because I think it's kind of fundamental. One is short-term, the other is long-term. That, uh, right now I'm sitting in this chair, I've been sitting a lot today, my low back's a little bit stiff, you know, I can get up and stretch and I have a bar hang from a little bit, and that gives me quick relief that is quite attractive. But it's not going to solve a long-term chronic low back pain if I have it. So one is you can use the NeuroVisor process for very quick, very satisfying state shifts, basically from discomfort to comfort, or to go from crazy to sane, or to go from I'm thinking to I'm meditating. It's just, it's this wow thing that happens quite regularly for most all users. It's one of the things I call it help right now. When you need something just right now, maybe it's not forever, that's not the point, but you know, either this or I'm going to scream. I'd rather not scream. What can I have? So there's that. Then there's when you, well, okay, your brain is physical. We've already, I think we agree on that point. So if you want to help your body, your physical body, soma, head to toe, then some kind of structured, reasonably regular reinforcing, we'll call it exercise or just call it activity, is going to give you things that are really attractive, but they only really come with time. Basically, you're going to develop new habits, and there are people that use the NeuroVisor to kind of rewire, you could say. It's a bit graphic, but to shape the trait. You know, a state requires the stimulation to be present. A trait is something learned that you don't need the stimulation, maybe periodically as a reinforcement, but your body has kind of learned it. Like, once— so, you know, the brain prime, brain time, you could think of it as Here's the lesson and here's the learning. Right. So it's a tool. It's an instrument. It's a mind mirror. It's a lot of ways of characterizing it. It is the experience itself is oddly both foreign and familiar. It's something like, oh, wow, I've never seen that before, but somehow I recognize it. And I think it's because it's innate. It's an innate neurological state.

And it's coming from within, essentially, what you are seeing, right? So the visuals, etc.

Your eyes are closed, you know, even though there's flashing or flickering light, everything you're seeing is internally generated, which is why we call it neuroreality instead of virtual reality, augmented reality. You know, I playfully say neuroreality is when you turn virtual reality inside out. I don't know, just words.

But yeah, but so for things, use cases like focus and calm for sleep, um, you have one.

Yeah, yeah, that, that's the pretty much the easy stuff, you know. I would say, and I'll use the, the vernacular, the people that have a little bit of a, not a hard time, but they don't like yummy it right away, are control freaks, uh, people, you know, that just want to keep it together. And, you know, that kind— and I'm speaking in a very common term, but you know what I mean— that letting go or accepting it, surrender, you know, that the benefits are really quite evident and attractive. And it's like, oh, you know, well, don't be afraid, it's not going to hurt you, it's just, you know, some flickering lights. But yeah, overtly in a larger model, reinstituting normative sleep is probably the most common. And the other most common is, I just love this thing and I can't wait to do it because I get to have my me time. And, you know, I try to meditate like, ah, and wow, this is great. So I'd say in a macro scale, recalibrating normative sleep in the circadian cycle. In the mini-me world, it just feels great and it's great relief and it doesn't hurt you. You know, it's kind of nice.

It's good for the brain. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Garnet. So if listeners are interested in understanding more about brain, brain signal variability, pulsating lights, what are some online resources or books even that you would recommend they start with?

Well, online stuff is tricky because there are a lot of things said. Of course, I have my own website, the company website, neurovizr.com, V-I-Z-R. Of course, I'd recommend that. There are a lot of people doing really good things out there. Unfortunately, some of it is more on the scientific side, and you may not be so comfortable with the language. As far as neuroplasticity, the books by Norman Doidge, D like Dodge with an I. Norman Doidge. They're a little bit dated, but they're fantastic. He's a medical expert psychiatrist, and each chapter— I think one of the most famous is like The Brain That Heals Itself. But Norman Doidge, and there are two popular books. Each chapter is kind of like a mini short story, very readable, very inspiring, and, you know, authoritative. He doesn't get into the, you know, the nitty-gritty of EEG, this and that, but fantastic, fantastic stuff. Wonderful.

Do you, where can people follow you and see what you're up to, Garnet? Any social media links or websites?

Your podcast. Okay, they can follow you because I'm following you. Thank you. I do some other podcasts. As I mentioned, the neurovisor.com is— I write tons of papers and I talk a lot, as is evident. So, you know, there's YouTube stuff and things around, older stuff that I'd say I'm embarrassed by. But, and if you have a NeuroVizr, we have a new community built on the Circle platform that people are— we just started it like, I don't know, 10 days ago or something. So if you happen to have, you're a welcome participant. I'm creating courses, basic concepts, and videos and all of that.

Amazing. Garnet, thank you for coming on for round 2, Garnet, and taking the time to share your wisdom with us. Thank you everyone for tuning in.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Garnet. I appreciate it.