Lazy Sunday #20

Hello from Bangalore,

(where the temperature is more moderate than it was in Chennai, but monsoon started. A bit rainy, to say the least…)

There are still a lot of changes happening in large companies. Many lay-offs, cost-cutting mentality is real. Morals are down. On the other side, start-ups feel the difficult markets, but people are motivated, hungry, in a better mood.

Mood and performance are some topics we will be looking at today.

Let’s run!

Find my research: neuroscience

Morning-type person vs. evening-type person decision-making differences

Night owl or morning bird - are there any differences in the decision-making or risk-taking approach? It is similar to asking how are extroverts and introverts different when it comes to seeking rewards. The answer is, there are differences.

Morning-type people, who wake up easy in the mornings and get to work out at 6am are seemingly more risk-averse, a study suggests. They tend to spend more time on tasks and decisions, be more diligent on reviewing high-risk situations. On the flip side, evening-type individuals were more risk-taking.

(Journal of Biological and Medical Rhythm Research)

Build-up of glutamate over the day impacts decision-making

Difficult decisions need to be made early in the day. It makes sense to start your morning with outlining the biggest decisions you’d have to make on that day and start with it.

The longer the day and the more decisions you make during that time, the more glutamate builds up in the prefrontal cortex - the area we engage for making decisions.

Glutamate is a neurotransmitter, relevant for learning, memory and a sleep-awake-messenger.

Its build-up triggers a mechanism, where your brain signals you tiredness and making difficult decisions becomes much more strenuous. Your brain wants you to stop because it needs the energy to regulate glutamate levels down.

See, I did not say the brain will use more energy, because we know that the brain requires the same amount of energy almost all the time. It redirects the energy to different parts of the brain that are more important for your bodily regulatory processes.

(Cell)

Can mental health be “transmitted”?

If you are in a bad mood, can you make the mood of others bad as well? That’s the underlying question. Not transmitting like a virus transmits.

But think about it: you come home, your spouse or family member is in a bad mood, you engage and become angry, more emotional as well, just by what you hear from them. The reason might be unrelated to you, but you feel “engaged”. There are social processes, where we mirror the mental state of others - this is real.

A similar theory was studied in classrooms in Finland. The findings suggested, that if one student had mental problems, like depression, others in the group were more likely to fall into depressive behavior. As students engage with each other, talk to each other, they might spiral into bad mental states together.

This is a low-volume study, meaning the results are not necessarily statistically significant and more studies need to be done.

But the existing correlation shows how we are human beings and feel with each other. This also shows, how important it is in offices to keep negative topics spreading like wildfires.

(NewScientist)

Find my research: office

David Rock on why behavior change in companies is so difficult

First off, David Rock wrote a book called “Your Brain at Work”, and it was the first entrance into neuroscience in combination with work. He also leads a research center focused on the intersection of neuroscience and performance in the office.

In this article, he shares his views on why changing behavior through “typical” tools don’t work:

• Change is like physical pain, we want to run away from “errors” (normally)

• Carrot-stick incentives don’t work in the long-run, as it doesn’t help intrinsic change

• Empathy does not work effectively, as it does not promote engagement and hence learning

Instead, we need to focus teams to:

• Let them be able to focus, distractions distract

• Let them feel real ownership over a problem, not just ownership over a solution that needs to be implemented

• Expect (read believe) them, and foster the thinking that they believe in themselves.

The article is a couple of pages, but it really shows how new ways of thinking based on neuroscience research (e.g. how do we learn?) can help to develop better and more efficient tools.

(Neuroleadership)

More questions the right way

Knowing what to ask and how to ask, and then to listen - that is an art. I have interviewed over a hundred applicants for various jobs. I have talked to hundreds of founders. I still struggle with framing the right questions at times. Only if you ask, will you get what you want (to know).

A couple of good ideas for framing questions to get most out of it:

• Invite reactions: “I am thinking X, what are your thoughts?” —> gets people engaged, shows their thinking (skills).

• Clearing the stage: “Let me summarize what you just said (…). Is that correct?” —> aligns both and allows for better discussions.

• Question vs. Statement: “Do you think we should do X?” vs “I think we should do x!” —> it is impressive how often we are directive and not engaging. We should be more inquisitive, especially with younger employees or as mentors working founders.

There are some more interesting thoughts, article is a quick read.

(FastCompany)

A basic guide of investing in (neuro)tech

Investing in companies is fun. When I talk to investors, they often mention the wide array of mental stimulation. Every conversation is within a different industry, with different functions, different markets. I enjoy that. Lately, I have been looking more into health as an industry (duh, really!). Not just because of my interest in neurotech, but also because this industry is so underserved from a software and technology perspective for its basic operations. The amount of paper in practices is just 🤯.

Neurotech is definitely another frontier. Medical devices, a totally different beast. It is not your B2B Software-as-a-Service play.

This article sheds some more light on some nuances of investing in that space. There are some similar trends at work, we have seen play out in SaaS over the last decade:

• consumerization of devices

  • tech devices in pharmacies and / or without prescriptions

• platformization of tools

  • away from 1-trick-ponies

  • larger set of integrations

• marketplace and matching

  • bringing together demand and specific domain expertise, automatic referrals etc.

• hardware + software = 💯x

  • hardware is becoming so much more useful with additional software layers reducing time-to-serve

All of these will serve the health system and hopefully reduce waiting times and cost. Although the verdict is definitely not out on the latter.

(NeurotechX)

On top of tech

Kite Therapy closes pre-seed round

(disclosure - I am an investor)

KiteTherapy aims to lower the cost and access burden for parents with autistic children. Offering telehealth programs and specific content for parents to play with their kids and track their progress, this brings treatments “home”.

As they specifically focus on kids between 1-6 years, the games are interactive with a weekly session via screen with a therapist. I think it is important to not delegate all engagement onto screen games, but interact with a real person.

The therapies and games are backed by research in neuroscience. And the feedback from families has been great.

(SmartCompany)

Neurotech in official healthcare

Flow headsets will be available in Northamptonshire in the UK for patients with depression. It is now also even available in Well pharmacies in the UK.

Slowly, these technologies are going to become “normal” in our lives.

(NHFT)

Learning from the brain: topographic deep artificial neural networks

After 7 long years, researchers managed to develop an AI system that mimics the visual processing of images in the human brain.

The neural network has multiple layers, constraining digital neurons within a proximity in space to function and react similar to the input given. Thus, after self-supervised learning cycles, the deep neural networks became much more energy efficient, almost like the human brain.

(TechnologyNetworks)

Media Box

Australia’s role in the future of neurotech

This article by Rachel Slattery, Director at a think tank and consultancy called SilverFutures, gives a good glimpse into Australia’s innovative capabilities as well as its difficulties being able to play a major role on the global stage. Australia is birthplace for so many great, well, thought-through companies, especially on the deep-tech side, which includes neurotech. And with neurological conditions on the rise, treatments are paramount. Cochlear implants, which you can see almost every day now, were invented in Australia.

The ability to expand ideas globally, is a problem I see across all venture sectors, not just health. While Australia has the likes of Canva, Atlassian, Xero, Airwallex and Afterpay, they are rare (but large) spikes. I hope this can become more normal.

(SilverFutures)

Misc but not least…

I have just finished the 3rd book of Martha Wells’ “Murderbot Diaries”.

The story is about a bot, well Murderbot, a security unit built to protect humans and humanoids on different missions. It is written from the perspective of Murderbot, which a whole lot of fun it itself. Murderbot hacks its governor module, which defined its decision-making protocols. Once hacked, Murderbot had to behave as if its governor module was still working, but could do whatever it wanted. And suddenly, it became overwhelmed by choice and deliberate decision-making.

It is a light and fun read, a different tone and style to Asimov’s “Foundation” or Clarke’s “Odyssey” series. And maybe even a glimpse into the future, living with GAI robots and humanoids.

If you are into Sci-fi, then I definitely urge you to put the series on your reading list.

Thank you for reading.

Have a great rest of the weekend. Next week I am back in Sydney again.

Alex