Lazy Sunday #17

Welcome to Lazy Sunday #17!

Yes! You are right. I did not send anything on Thursday. Together with some of my readers, I was at “Sunrise” - a startup / investor conference in Sydney.

There were a couple of interesting learnings.

1. Investors in Australia are looking for other regions to deploy capital, but at the same time are limited by the risk appetite of their Limited Partners (LP). To quote one partner: “While we believe India is very promising, our LP’s find it too risky.” Blaming the LP’s is just an excuse for the VC’s own risk aversiveness. Taxes are a reason as well.

2. Many VCs confirmed the larger trend of neuroscience and neurotech. They see more neuroscience approaches and research built into products or being built for. As many venture firms focus on software only, and neuroscience is often a hardware game, investments are still rare.

3. It is easy to hide behind bias. Gender is the obvious. Three panellists for a discussion on bias and heuristics in the VC world were male only. “We tried” they said.

What does this have to do with neuroscience and management? Everything!

But, let us focus on other areas. Banana networks, energy balance, brain age.

Happy Sunday!

Find my research: neuroscience

Not the same brain

You look at a banana. Certain brain cells light up. You look at a blue car, certain other brain cells and networks light up.

The “grandmother cell” theory says that every object is somehow neurologically encoded in neural networks. One could assume that each one of them resides in the same area irrespective of the individual, because why not?

The heart, lungs, liver, muscles, brain - we can find all of these in the same spot across all humans. But, what can be found where in the brain, that is a different story.

A study suggests, that similar neuron networks might be in slightly different places.

As brain computer interfaces and neuromodulation aim to modulate / stimulate specific brain regions and networks responsible for specific activities, these findings could help to make deep brain stimulations more effective by taking personal cortical setup into account.

(Nature)

Sex and gender in neuroscience

Is it important to understand the differences between a male brain and a female brain in animals and humans?

Yes, it is. More and more research points to significant differences in development, reactivity to outside stressors, and so on. Even the brain activity in boys and girls is different.

But how should we engage with such findings? Do we marginalize them? Do we bring them to the front of the page to say “deal with men in way X and women in way Z”? I bet, this will bring up amazing dinner conversations. Try it out and let me know how it goes?

In a work environment, I have always believed that every person should receive the same stretch goals and work under the same umbrella of values. But how to get there, how to communicate with each individual, is very, well, individual. We approach cultural background in different ways (remember Hofstede?), why not gender as well? It does not mean we can not hold both accountable for the same things.

The following comment in the scientific journal “Nature Communications” looked further into gender and sex language in research papers. They aim to provide guidelines for linguistic accuracy and wording, reduce exaggeration of findings and make sure the papers keep readers open-minded.

I actually believe this could be applied to many more areas, such as journalism.

(Nature)

Brain areas regulating emotions

Stress impacts our well-being. When we are hungry or tired, we are less able to “down-regulate” stress, through reframing or re-appraisal. Trauma, stress, even food can impact how we can regulate and react to stressors.

But there are other reasons some people struggle with emotions: reduced release of neuromodulators such as dopamine or serotonin, for example. I have written about dopamine earlier.

Researchers at the University of Dartmouth were able to pinpoint areas in the brain which play a role in emotional regulations within the cortex and amygdala.

From there, the study was able to investigate the sensitivity of these regions to serotonin, which is critical in stress-reduction mechanisms, and found an increased number of receptors in these areas.

Dopamine or serotonin therapies are often used to help emotional regulation. Identifying brain regions in more detail could allow for external deep-brain-stimulations, but also in defining better psychedelic therapies.

On that note, the MIT used fMRI and MEG methods to understand brain regions involved in recognizing visual images.

(MedicalXpress)

Find my research: office

Brain energy balance

I always thought the brain is like an engine and gas pedal. I need more brain power for longer, I press the pedal, feed me some cashews and protein bars and off we go.

One might think that hard mental tasks use a lot more energy; hence we feel exhausted.

Well, not exactly.

It seems like the brain has a mostly constant rate of energy consumption. What changes is the brain’s allocation of energy transformation or metabolism.

The brain distributes energy to the parts that require it most and takes it away from other areas. There is a set amount of regulatory processes required to keep you alive and out of danger. When you focus on reading a long contract, your brain dedicates energy to the neurons that are required to move eyes, interpret incoming electrical signals and make sense out of it. You are taking away energy from the balanced distribution, e.g. basic processes.

After some time, the brain goes into “worry-mode” and gives you a “tired” signal so you stop wasting energy on reading contracts but focus on living.

Hence, brain energy consumption and feeling tired or exhausted are not directly correlated.

(NewScientist)

On top of tech

Healium marries virtual reality and EEG

Healium, a US-based company, offers relaxation therapies combining a VR headset, EEG sensors and your smartwatch. The company has been around for some time, mostly financed through grants.

I found it interesting how the product falls back on existing hardware infrastructure. The only hardware the company developed is the EEG headband. The band measures brainwaves to navigate the user through the exercises.

This device is already being used in school, clinics and veterans, e.g. to treat PTSD.

Similar companies are Muse, Neurode, Neurable or even Flintworks.

(Healium)

GenAI as cure for the health system?

During the last few months, I have seen many startup pitches aiming to use GenAI to help health professionals. From transcription, to summaries through to image analysis.

If the product is a one-trick pony on top of the ChatGPT API, what might sound like a good idea, the companies will fail.

Granted, software in the health industry is outdated, ugly, slow. The number of times I have heard health professionals telling me in one way or the other “just a second, need to wait for my computer to wake up” is almost scary.

AI can, and should, be a layer within the product. But it isn’t THE layer. It is still best at transcribing, not at interpreting. Look at the OpenAI T&C’s, §6: “not for medical advice”.

Also, most patients don’t believe that GenAI will have a meaningful impact on the health system, especially nobody believes it will make it cheaper.

GenAI itself won’t.

Smart application of technology will.

(Techcrunch)

Brain implants for artificial vision

Another area of brain implants will target vision. The Illinois Institute of Technology developed an implant that can help blind individuals to perceive forms or outlines matching to specific objects.

Currently, it requires installing 25 chips in the patient’s brain. 25!

Neuralink has jumped on the bandwagon as well.

(Wired)

AI identifies your brain age

If you have a wearable on your wrist or finger, you are probably familiar with the term “fitness age”. Based on your heart rate, heart rate variability, max. heart rate, weight and other factors, the software can calculate your fitness age, which might differ from your actual age.

An AI-system has been trained to use EEG data and calculate brain age. This could help to identify pre-aging signs and e.g. earlier indications for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

I am not kidding, when I say that not long, and we will have our individual brain age calculated on our phones through a combination of mental tasks results and neuro-data collected from our headphones, heart rates and stress responses.

(Drexel University)

Media Box

The Drive Podcast with Paul Conti M.D. - impact of emotional health on longevity

If you know me, you know that I love Dr. Peter Attia’s podcasts. He is the reason I got into podcasts in 2019 while running. Five years later, we still rock together.

This specific episode with Paul Conti, a well-known psychiatrist, talks about mental and emotional health.

During the first 45 minutes, Dr. Peter Attia and Paul Conti talk about the inner drive (assertion drive) and it’s impact on happiness and well-being. People can be absolutely successful on the outside but unhappy inside. Can we be happy following only our passion?

And why is “aggressive” drive, motivation based on anger or fear, something to be mindful about and dig deeper into?

In the tech, funding, startup world, relentless drive is often admired. Driven and motivated people are often shown to become successful. Let me rephrase: the success only is often shown. What happens behind the curtains is often hidden.

While in typical Attia-fashion this is a pretty long episode, I really recommend this for every one in a fast-paced, environment with a tick to be overly driven and hard on oneself.

(Apple Podcast / Spotify / Youtube)

Misc but not least…

A lesson in how to go from in $US74 million in 2019 to $US750 million in 2023. I mean, that is 10x in 4 years. If that was your SaaS startup, you’d be a billionaire on the Nasdaq. Maybe.

Also think about the following hockey stick graph. Stanley is a +100-year-old company. For the first 100 years the growth was pretty flat. And only in the last 4 percent of the company existence did revenue explode. One version of compound interest! Or just best in class marketing.

Thank you for reading.

Please share the link on social media or by forwarding this episode of Lazy Sunday to your friends and colleagues.

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Maybe they can learn something as well? ;-)

Have a great weekend.

Alex