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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
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Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this episode goes deep on the topic of brain training at home and how to optimize our brain states. It’s really cool. I’m talking to Paola Telfer, who has developed a really cool technology that allows us to do things inexpensively at home that were previously only able to happen in a very clinical lab setting. And it’s something I’ve been experimenting with myself and really noticing a pretty profound effect from. And Paola is a tech entrepreneur with a passion of developing technology that improves lives. And the product we talk about today is called Sens.ai, which is S-E-N-S dot A-I. It’s a neurotechnology company that helps people take control of their brain’s neuroplasticity and extend their cognitive health span. And this started from a place of personal purpose for her after a motor vehicle accident left her with a concussion and also with PTSD about being in cars. And she experienced the power of neurofeedback and realized that it helped her nervous system recover, but also enhanced her cognitive performance and helped her deepen her meditations. And so she created this headset that you can use at home that helps with all of those things and more, which she explains in detail in this episode. So let’s jump in with Paola. Paola, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Paola: Thanks for having me, Katie.
Katie: Well, I’m really excited for this conversation because I feel like we’re going to get to delve into an area that even just a couple decades ago was not accessible at home. And now there’s so much we can do within our own homes that can be helpful for us, for our kids in so many ways. I’ve gotten to experiment and we’ll get to go deep on this first. But I know that what we’re going to delve into and talk about related to brain training comes from a very personal place of passion for you and as a mom. So for people who aren’t already familiar with your work and with Sens.ai, can you kind of walk us through your story of how you came to a place of developing this? Because you and I have gotten to chat offline and it’s quite the incredible story.
Paola: Thank you. Yeah, you know, it was probably about eight years ago now. And I was running a different startup at the time. And I was rear ended when I was driving home from a meeting. And, and then what ensued from that was a lot of a lot of turmoil, a really low point in my life. You know, I had musculoskeletal problems, ended up having neck surgery, actually. And the most profound aspect, though, was that I had a concussion. And then I also had PTSD. So it’s really difficult for me to relax, and let alone get in a vehicle. So I really had a hard time getting in the vehicle, letting somebody else drive. And that wreaked havoc on my life, it wreaked havoc on my marriage, you know, my role as a mother. And, you know, I just I couldn’t play anymore. And I didn’t have enough mental faculties to devote my time to anything outside of work.
So I had to kind of choose my priorities, and just focus in. And it really made me not perform in the other areas of my life, as a mother and as a wife and as a friend, really. And so I was very determined to get well, I would not take no for an answer, I would not say yes, this is this is my life going forward. I started in this journey of recovering, sought all kinds of treatment. And in that process, realized that at the core of my healing, I needed to actually relax my nervous system first, before I could do any of the physical healing. And that nervous system relaxation really was about finding that inner sense of safety. And rewiring the story around that motor vehicle accident. And also what my what my current story was around my life, my desperation, my frustration. And then sort of doing everything I could to come back to what I had been before.
And so in that process, I discovered neurofeedback. It’s something I had not encountered before. It’s been around for 50-60 years, maybe now. And so it was really quite surprising to me that I hadn’t come across this. And I came across it, obviously, from a medical perspective, like I needed some healing. But I realized that it was actually being used a lot in the circles of biohacking, and people who are just looking to optimize their performance. And so, you know, and there were there were certain clinics around and, you know, in the world that were charging a lot of money for this sort of performance enhancement. And so I saw the spectrum of potential for this sort of technology. And because it had such a profound impact on my ability to reset my nervous system, I became quite impassioned in bringing this to the world in a way, in a form factor that was more that was smaller, more accessible and for the home.
Katie: I love that your story comes from, I think like many of us in this health and wellness world, from a place of our own personal pain and then that developing into a beautiful place of purpose that hopefully gets to help other people as well. And I also feel like I’ve said so many times on here that moms are such a force of nature. And but like, if you need something actually solved, give it to a mom because we will figure it out. And I love that you took something that seems like an insurmountable field in the field of brain training and figured it out and then figured out how to make it available at home. Because I will say I’ve gotten to do neurofeedback before I met you, but it was in a clinical setting with a lot of really sticky, goopy stuff stuck to my head. And it required like three washings to get it out of my hair afterwards. It was a long process and it like took forever and was frustrating because even the room had to be completely quiet and then nobody could move. And if I moved a little bit, we had to start all over and it was a whole ordeal. And I’m grateful I got to do it because I learned a lot about the brain through that process. But I’m so excited that now this is available in a much easier and less messy for my hair modality and that my kids can do easily as well.
So you touched a little bit on the neurofeedback and brain training aspect. And I would guess this concept is maybe new to some people listening, or at least a lot of people listening may not have firsthand experience with that or have gotten to see what it can feel like or what it can do in your life. So can you give us a little bit deeper context on brain training and maybe what the modality is, how it’s working? Like, how are we actually affecting the brain and the nervous system through this type of training as well as what are the different states of the brain and nervous system and why we might want to move toward or away from certain ones?
Paola: Yeah, for sure. Okay, there’s a lot there. So let’s start with what is brain training. And so brain training is really, I think, I would say it’s neurotechnology assisted meditation. So what brain training is do is doing is teaching your brain how to shift between different mental states. And their mental states that are not ordinary states of consciousness. So they’re non-ordinary waking states, we’re not necessarily familiar with them. There’s they’re more subtle states between what we consider our waking mind, which is very surface level. And I’m going to already bring in, you know, beta brainwaves, much more analytical. And then the lowest of them being the delta brainwaves, which are really slow. And those are where we associate with sleep.
And so in between those is where I would say is the juice of life. There’s subtle states there. And you want to be able to consciously and with awareness be able to shift between those states, between the waking beta and the sleeping delta. And the reason for that is because that’s where you’ll find inspiration, creative insight. And all the various enigmatic states that you would associate with deep meditative practice or long, people have meditated for many decades who have this sort of almost mental athlete aspect to them. So you can actually train all of that and it’s an innate part of our biology. It’s neuroplasticity.
And so another term for neurofeedback, which is specifically a modality we’re referring to here, is self-directed neuroplasticity. So it’s very precise. So I have practiced meditation since I was young. I was very blessed to be in a household where that was really encouraged. We always had a meditation room. But the precision of neurofeedback compared to that sort of trial-and-error approach for me was quite the aha. So being able to know, let’s say an alpha state, right? An alpha state is just below the beta, right? An alpha state is a little bit slower than the beta state. Now you’re going a little bit deeper into the ocean. And I would associate that with relaxation, right? That’s like a very embodied spa-like feeling. You know, you’re doing hot and cold baths. You’re feeling really relaxed, right? You go a little bit deeper and you get into theta states. So a little bit slower. And then those ones are more associated with creativity, creative insight, a deep, deep meditation though. And so a lot of times people have a difficult time staying awake during theta states. You go straight to sleep. And so that’s why the training is required. So it’s the ability to shift, you know, between these various states. And combinations of these brainwaves, like I’m oversimplifying by just saying beta, alpha, theta, gamma, and delta. Really, you want to be able to train some of the subtle combinations of those as well.
And so maybe I’ll address a little bit more there because you were saying, you know, why would you want to train those? Why would you want to do brain training? And, you know, sometimes, you know, I think, the term meditation has become thrown around a little bit in our pop culture. And really, the purpose of meditation is to train in a healthy brain, healthy mind. And a healthy mind has three pillars. And the one pillar is around lovingkindness, right? And so as a parent, lovingkindness is really quite imperative because it allows you to come out of sort of a self-focused attention into being present with the person in front of you and also to see them with compassion and empathy, right? And that’s actually really important when we connect with our kids. And it can be sometimes difficult to shift into that. So that is actually a state that you can brain train.
A second pillar is around open awareness. And that sometimes is referred to as mindfulness. And that mindfulness brain training is really more around being able to come out of that zoomed in state that you get into sometimes with deep work, right? When you’re working pretty hard all day, you’re really focused on the task at hand. And then when you come out of that, you want to shift into being present in the moment, right? You want to be able to see the awe of the moment, right? You want to hear the birds. You want to take it all in, right? So that’s that mindfulness training.
And then the third pillar and last pillar is around focused attention. And that is where you are present , but instead of the zoomed out, you can actually zoom in. And so that’s where I’m paying attention to you and I’m listening to you and I’m curious about what you’re talking about, right? And so those three pillars are actually very applicable both in parenting and in regular life.
Katie: That makes sense. And I feel like our kids can even sense when we are in those different states, because it’s almost like with my younger kids, especially when I’m in that, like, not just I’m present, but I’m present and I’m focused on you and I’m curious about you. It’s like you can almost see their like nervous systems reach out and connect with you. And that’s such a cool state. And I love that you were able to categorize it and that there’s some clarity around you can actually learn to cultivate those states.
And also when you mentioned meditation, I know for me for many years and for many people listening, perhaps as well, meditation can be difficult. And if you’re not trained at it from a young age, or even if you are, it can sometimes be difficult. And I know I had many years of trying to meditate and also having some misconceptions about even what that was or what that felt like in my body, but where it felt really frustrating and hard. And it’s something I slowly learned over time. But I love that this gives something tangible that helps you understand and actually even get to measure the state of where your brain is to know if you’re doing it or not. I feel like I do really well with concrete feedback. And what you’ve developed is so fascinating to me. Can you explain some of the, I believe they’re called like neurotechnologies that are included in Sens.ai and why they’re in there?
Paola: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I have a headset here with me just to make it a little more tangible. But the first one we’ve been talking about is neurofeedback. And so you can think about these, these are the brainwave sensors here. And we talked a bit about those brainwaves, right, the Greek alphabet, you know, beta, alpha, theta. And what they’re doing is they’re giving you real time feedback on your brainwave, brainwave state. And so traditionally, when you’re meditating, you are relying on your own inner awareness, right? So how has my mind started wandering? Did I did I come back to my breath, let’s say, right? Did I get sleepy? Okay, I got to come back to my breath. Well, this feedback is immersing you in your brainwaves directly, very much like having a wise teacher next to you, right? So it’s this very gentle nudging. And it’s very, what would I say objective, right? It’s very objective. So you take the subjectivity out of it. And you can actually see afterwards in the graph, whether you’ve wandered or you haven’t wandered. And you can be like, yep, that aligned with my experience, that makes sense. So that’s, that’s very useful.
But what we realized, too, is that neurofeedback, even though it’s the core of what Sens.ai does, it’s a lot like going to the gym. And, you know, a lot of us get gym memberships, and then never go. It’s because it is training, and it is tiring. And it takes motivation. And so we thought, we needed to add what we’d call neurostimulation. So that’s another category. So the first one was around neurofeedback, which I would categorize in brain training, teaching you. And then the second one is neurostimulation. Neurostimulation is really related more to, you can think of it like, you know what, getting in the back of a car and taking a taxi to your destination, versus driving there yourself. So where neurofeedback is actually you driving there yourself and you’re learning how to get there, neurostimulation is you taking a ride and getting there. All right, so you still get there, but it’s been stimulated in you, and there’s a temporary effect versus a long-term trait change. And so the neurostimulation that we use, and you can use electrical, we use light stimulation instead of electrical. And so that’s what these little nubs are here, if you’re looking on video. And it’s LED lights, specialized LED lights, which permeate the skull. So it’s not the ones that you might have seen that go through the eyes or through the nose. We’re going through the skull. It’s incredibly gentle. And it has the added benefit of also creating blood flow and oxygenation. The term for that technology is transcranial photobiomodulation.
And then I’ll add that in the training category, we also have a pulse oximeter, which I’m pointing at here, which is actually doing heart coherence biofeedback. And so that is actually bringing the nervous system into play in addition to just the brain. So when you bring the nervous system into play, it actually has a mind-body connection, which brings the brain into like an alpha state. And that heart coherence is really an optimal state of functioning. It’s a very relaxed state, but it’s still a performance state that you might associate with flow.
And so lastly, I would share that we, you know, my educational background is as an electrical engineer. And so I was always very unsatisfied with the results I would get from clinics, like in terms of, did it make a change in your life? You know, what’s the impact on the brain function? And I wanted really objective measurement. So when we started building this tool, I thought, well, I want to give people the ability to directly see whether or not it’s having a functional effect that we could then correlate with life function. And so what I determined by talking to experts was that there is a test that they do in clinics and in research studies to measure the impact on brain performance for any sort of brain intervention. And it’s called event-related potentials, so ERPs. And all it is, is that as you’re doing a task, and there are predefined tasks, we are measuring your brain function. And we’re using those same three electrodes on the midline. And we’re measuring the timing of your brain’s response while you’re doing the task.
And so what we’re able to measure is we’re able to measure to one millisecond precision, your not just physical reaction time, but also your brain’s processing speed. So your thinking speed, the ability for you to have inhibition control as well, your ability to classify new information and your ability to error correct. So effectively, there’s a series of lines that will appear. It’s about a 10-minute test and the arrows will point left or right. And then you’re meant to push the left or right button. And it’s a standard test referred to as the flanker test in clinical environments. And when we’re measuring that, we know that there’s a sequence of spikes in the electroencephalograph and then we’re measuring those with precision. Then you’re able to track that over time. And so what we’re trying to do is also empower the individual to transparently see this is what’s happening.
Katie: Yeah, that’s so fascinating how much you were able to put in an at-home headset. Because like I said, I’ve only seen these things in clinical settings, not in one thing, but separate. And they took up so much room and were so complicated. And I also love how tangible it feels. Because I was the type of meditator, especially when I was first learning, that even if I just thought I was trying to meditate or thought I was meditating, it was like, that was great time to be just quiet enough that my to-do list would resurface. I would get lots of things organized in my brain, but I wasn’t actually meditating. And I feel like having the feedback element of this helps me so much to be able to actually drop into that more quickly every time. It seems like a cumulative, almost like you mentioned exercise as an example. You get to see those changes happening and get that positive feedback, which is really exciting. And I know this can be used in a whole host of ways. But what are some of the use cases that you’re finding that people are using this for? And what do people typically see when they start prioritizing this type of brain training?
Paola: Right. Yeah. Well, we ended up realizing was that there’s a lot of behavior change that’s required to be able to have a practice, right? So it’s just, it’s very similar to any sort of routine that you need to start, right? You need to set a schedule, set it in your calendar. And so what we decided to do was to gamify the app. And so we worked for probably about a year with a company that was a specialist in gamification. And it was actually incredibly natural to put it into a gamification sort of algorithm because there were some very notable parameters that we had to set no matter what.
So when someone first starts the system, they’re going to be able to do some heart coherence training that we talked about, which is very gentle. And it’s a nice way to get familiar with putting the headset on and doing the feedback. And then very quickly, they’re going to be prompted to do this assessment. And then from the assessment, they’re going to also answer some questions, which will help us understand their goals. And they’re going to be recommended a mission. So the gamification has been done with an interstellar travel theme. And, so now the missions in the beginning are going to be based on what I would refer to as self-care. And we call that the me level. So before we can actually really get into any of the stuff that’s deeper ocean, we want to kind of cover the surface of the ocean. And we want to make sure that people are proceeding with safety, with their ability to maintain their attention.
And so we focus on sleep. That’s the most common one. That’s the biggest finding, right? It’s like all our peak performers, the first thing they need is to be able to get control of their sleep. And so sleep is one of the missions. The missions are all between five and eight weeks, and then there’s going to be recommended within a mission, a series of programs, so different kinds of brain training, as well as a series of boosts, which is that light stimulation I mentioned before.
And so every day, you know, you would get prompted on which one’s next and what to do next. And then ideally, people kind of stick to that, you know, three to five times a week, and then they finish that mission. At that time, they would be prompted to do another assessment and then another mission recommended. And then more programs and more missions unlock as you go. So after the me level, we have the we level. And the, we level unlocks more things like mindfulness and creativity, but, and then the, the all level unlocks more deeper meditative stuff, right? But in terms of use cases, you know, we’re finding some really great results with the sleep mission, and brain fog mission, and then the, the more general resilience mission. And so when we look at you know, after one month, people do this test again, and then we’re able to see that their inhibition control has improved their, that’s really like 30 to 40% improvement, like pretty, pretty significant. And their reaction time has improved, you know, close to 8% and their thinking speed has improved close to 8%. And these are, these are numbers that typically just decline over time. So, they’re not unexpected results, but they’re still like, wow, okay. We did it, right? It was like, this is great. We got great results and people are seeing it pretty quickly.
Katie: And I would guess after that explanation, some of the parents listening might be wondering, can kids use this as well? Because I know, unfortunately, from the data, we’re seeing kids struggling with different variations of these things at younger and younger ages. So is this something that kids can benefit from as well? And if so, are there adaptations that have to happen with kids? Or at a certain age, can they just use the programs and missions as they are?
Paola: Yeah. So we have it available to children from 13 to 18, but it’s an abbreviated version. So the app will just have some things available to them, not the whole gamut. And in particular, what we train with kids is at the beta, at alpha, and we do a little bit of gamma. And so what that translates to is focus training. So beta training is focus training. And we’ll do like a low beta, which is referred to as SMR training. And that is very much what we refer to as a relaxed focus attention. And what that means is that will really help kids who are having distractibility problems in school, and it will actually help them with their reaction times for sports. So my son loves that program that’s just called Plain Focus. And he does it, you know, he games. And so it’s like, he feels like it makes a big impact on his gaming, and I’m sure it does. And so that one’s really wonderful.
For kids who need a little bit more, there’s another version of that that’s called Intense Focus. And that’s a mid-beta training. And we encourage people to experiment on which one feels better, right? And they’re going to notice which one feels a little bit better. And neither is better or worse, but regular focus is more commonly preferred.
And then the other one is the Calm Training. And Calm Training is really nice because that’s the alpha training that we talk about as, you know, relaxed. It really centers them more in their heart. It really calms the nervous system. And I think, you know, gets them a little bit out of that inner critic narrative self, so they can be a little bit more peaceful, more engaging, you know, with us, like emotionally.
And then, you know, we do have the gamma one unlocked and I think for kids, what gamma represents is more on the motivation side, right? So that’s our clarity program. And so gamma is one of these very enigmatic states. Traditionally, it was very difficult to measure from old electronics. And now we measure gamma very precisely. And because we’re able to measure it, you’re able to train it. And I think that for mothers, for people running businesses, for adults, it’s really useful for more creative states. But then for children, it’s really, I think, a matter of helping them get motivated. And it’s a very happy, joyful state, gamma.
Katie: And I know you have all kinds of links related to learning more about this, and I’ll make sure those are included in the show notes. But for someone, especially in a family capacity that wants to start benefiting from this, what’s the best way to find out more about it, to get started, to even begin to use this with our older kids?
Paola: You know, I would encourage you to check out our science page. It’s a sens.ai/science. And you can see I think there’s a how it works video. You know, there’s some of the stats that I mentioned on the first cohort results, and a number of studies that are technologies based on. Yeah, that was I think a great starting point.
Katie: And I will make sure those links are in the show notes for you guys listening on the go. That’s always at wellnessmama.com. And stay tuned for the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast because you and I are going to get to talk next about parenting in the age of screen time and how to optimize these things with teenagers, especially. So I’m excited for that conversation to come. But thank you so much for the time today. Like I said, I’m a big fan and I’m amazed at what you were able to put into an at-home headset. I feel like technology has put us in such a cool place now and to be able to benefit from this at home without driving somewhere is so exciting to me personally. So thank you for all of the work that you’ve done on that and for your passion in helping other people to be able to achieve these same things. And of course, for your time today as well.
Paola: Thanks so much, Katie.
Katie: And thank you for listening. And I hope you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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