Dana Jonson [00:00:09]:
Hello and welcome back to Special Ed. On Special Ed, I’m your host, Dana Johnson, and I’m really excited for our episode today because I’m welcoming Dr. Steve Gullins, who is a trailblazer in the realms of biotechnology and cognitive enhancement. I want to give you a little bit of his background. He has a distinguished background that includes serving as a Harvard Medical School professor, co founding Excel Venture Management, and authoring Evolving Ourselves. Steve has consistently been at the cutting edge of life science innovation. He’s at the helm of think.com that’s t h y n k.com where he’s pioneering the use of video game based training and brainwave technology to boost mental focus and cognitive skills. Think’s revolutionary approach, exemplified by the headset and Skyler’s Run game, has shown promising results in clinical trials, offering new hope for enhancing cognitive development.

Dana Jonson [00:01:06]:
In our conversation today, Steve will shed light on the science behind this groundbreaking technology, its journey from concept to clinical success, and the ethical considerations of applying these technologies in many settings, but specifically in educational as well, offering invaluable insights for parents and educators in the special education community. So thank you Dr. Golins, for being here. I appreciate it.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:01:30]:
Oh, it’s a delight to meet you, Dana. I’m looking forward to chatting.

Dana Jonson [00:01:33]:
Excellent. But before we get chatting, got to play my disclaimer as always, so let’s get that out of the way.

Disclaimer [00:01:40]:
The information in this podcast is provided for general informational and entertainment purposes only and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction at the time you’re listening. Nothing in this episode creates an attorney client relationship, nor is it legal advice. Do not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included in or accessible through this episode without seeking appropriate legal or other professional advice on particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer or service provider licensed in your state, country or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction.

Dana Jonson [00:02:00]:
Hi and welcome. Thank you so much for being here. I would love to start with just your background. How did you get to think.com and how did think.com become a thing?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:02:13]:
Great question. I’ve been around the block a couple times in innovation in both the academic sphere and the corporate sphere. I’ve also worked with a number of leaders across all kinds of technology. My fundamental love is science technology and my fundamental mission is helping people who have challenges in health or even just living in a well environment. Day to day. I bring technologies that are really, really strong and promising out into the world. And that’s a. It’s been a mission for decades now and something I Live largely because it’s personal.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:02:50]:
It’s personal in terms of the people in my family, in terms of friends and everybody else. As a Harvard professor, I actually, in the late 90s, was looking at neurodegeneration because I passed in with ALS and my father Parkinson’s. And I said, well, we gotta do something here. Let’s start looking at the new technologies that are coming to the fore. See if we can find, for example, existing drugs that might change the outlook and the treatment of things that have never been tried with funding from actually Hollywood and Wall Street. Because NIH didn’t think looking for a drug in the pharmacy was a useful tactic. And high school students from Boston Lab, we ground up every pill in the pharmacy.

Dana Jonson [00:03:33]:
Oh, wow.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:03:34]:
I was about 60 minutes with some others talking about this new revolution of science is taking charge, trying to help patients with a better outcome. And that really drove my interest in doing things that were not just delivering new scientific ideas, publishing papers and writing grants, but would have impacted the everyday lives of people. I bow forward many years and my interest in the brain has always been there. I actually was involved in many disease areas, cancer and as you heard, neurosciences, kidney disease, diabetes. But in the 10 years ago, I became fundamentally interested in how we actually monitor the brain and think about it. I participated in the John Cabot Zinc course at UMass on mindfulness. My wife was delighted because I was quite stressed leading the life of a, an investor and a scientist and traveling globally, getting lectures and all sorts of things. And I failed miserably at it.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:04:32]:
I was not a very good mindfulness person as it was being taught. But I had the great fortune of meeting Dr. Judd Brewer, who was running the center at the time, who had organized a study using simple EEG system. Not simple, simple in the context of a medical grade EEG system. And followed feedback. And he was tested to see whether it would actually improve ability of people like me to meditate. And lo and behold, being in a dark remote with a skull cap with 64 electrodes on my head. After six weeks of trying once a week, I started to get into a mental state that I didn’t know even existed.

Dana Jonson [00:05:10]:
Wow.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:05:11]:
I now know that it’s just the fourth step of the nine steps of the Buddha’s journey. But I got to a place that was so peaceful, so gentle, so effortless. And for those of you who’ve tried to meditate or just be calm and everything, your mind’s just distracted and filmed all the time. And this was really a revelation for me. I said I’ll never learn this on my own. Let’s find the technologies. And at that point, as I said this is about eight years ago, I went on a journey looking at all the wearables that might give me information about my body. So I was wearing everything, it didn’t matter.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:05:45]:
Earbuds that had certain, you know, would listen to the heart, wearables on my wrists and my chest everywhere. I was meeting with every small company to see what might work. And what I discovered was everything told me what I did yesterday, but nobody was improving me. Certainly not improving my mind. But they told me how many steps I took yesterday or maybe what my heart rate was right now. But nothing that really taught me how to change my behavior and my focus. And another element of this was I realized we measured everything about our bodies in our annual physical. We actually measure our blood pressure.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:06:20]:
Even at home, you get on a scale, if you want to lose weight, you measure it. And so we have no measurements of our brain and its function in any independent way other than just surveys. And so as a result of that, I actually discovered the technology that basis effect, it’s not a neurofeedback, it’s a feed forward technology which is far more powerful for teaching new skills. And so with that I actually with some friends acquired the technology. It already been developed completely, it had already gone through clinical trials. And what we’ve done in the last year is we’ve redirected it from a medical utility case which was an ADHD with remarkably great results, but training tool for anybody who needs to improve any cognitive function, which we can get into later. It ranges from reading and writing to being a better artist, being a great basketball player. Imagine you can make more free throws because you could focus.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:07:21]:
And for lay people, this is training you to be in the zone. This is training you to be in flow. This mental state that you achieve with this technology is identical to the state and that state that I felt in my meditation exercise.

Dana Jonson [00:07:34]:
Wow, that’s fascinating. I know one of my children did the bio. I think it’s the biofeedback with the watching something. And the EEGs are the pictures of the brains, right? A brain and where it lights up. Right. So for people who don’t know what an EEG is, it’s literally a picture, looks almost like a cartoon picture of your brain with different colors of different areas that are lighting up. And we definitely saw progress with my daughter, it was a little slow going and she decided ultimately she didn’t want to be off her meds. To do it because it was the better result at the time.

Dana Jonson [00:08:06]:
If you were off your medication, does that impact what you’re doing now? Like if somebody’s on medication, do you recommend they go off it to do these exercises?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:08:15]:
No, we’re compatible with everything. When you talk to clinicians who know our technology very well, the world global leaders in adhd, we met with them in January at their conference. They were using the headset in person. They all said, go digital first because it’s available tomorrow morning. Yeah, there’s a problem if you want to improve in a skill and you can always add medicines and other things to it if they’re. If it’s inadequate. But back to the point of the EEG sample, frankly, it’s just a microphone that listens to your brain chatter. It’s been around for 150 years.

Dana Jonson [00:08:53]:
Wow.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:08:54]:
I didn’t realize that neuroscientists know every imaginable signal. It’s not just focus and attention. Impulse control. There’s short term memory signals, memories of how your vision is working, memories of hearing, memories of signals for depression. These have all been mapped in excruciating detail. And what we now have is, because of Apple and all the technology, very inexpensive components that can be put into a headset to just listen to your thoughts. It’s not your thoughts, it’s just your ability to focus. 100% safe.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:09:29]:
We collect no data.

Dana Jonson [00:09:31]:
Right. It’s not mind reading, not mind.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:09:33]:
And it can control the video game, Just your ability to focus and that as a result, you actually have to learn. A child or an adult has to learn to pay attention in ways they didn’t know were possible in order for the game to function at all.

Dana Jonson [00:09:49]:
I know where you get into all of it more specifically later, but I’m curious about when you say that it teaches specifically with children. I know that a lot of children will get very frustrated when they’re asked to meditate or when they’re asked to focus because it’s so difficult. Difficult. Do you ever see that frustration at the beginning of this or does this really sort of supersede that?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:10:09]:
Yeah. Let me explain the game and I’ll explain.

Dana Jonson [00:10:12]:
Okay.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:10:13]:
Batch of an iPad with the video game that looks like Temple Run or Subway Surfer. Our game is called Skyler’s Run and in fact it’s modeled after those games, which is a adventure game with little Skyler running across the planet. And there are certain bowls Skyler has to achieve. There’s certain obstacles and things you need to avoid. But embedded within the mechanics of the game are 13 cognitive skills you’re challenged to learn. The only way sky runs in the game is if you’re mentally focused, meaning at the science level, your alpha and theta waves are balanced correctly. Our tool, which is the simple headset measures that says, oh my gosh, you really well focused. And you can see it in how fast Skyler’s running.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:10:57]:
If you’re looking out the window like a lot of these eight year olds that I see, Skyler doesn’t move an inch in the game. You achieve no points, you get no medals, nothing else. And so in 20 minutes, three times a week over eight weeks, you can learn 13 skills that you’re actually probably pretty poor at. Nobody’s poured all of them. We all learn everything at different rates.

Dana Jonson [00:11:20]:
Yeah.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:11:21]:
And as a result, these functions of focus or attention and impulse control, which the first two base core skills we’re putting into the game, are key to any learning of any type in your entire life.

Dana Jonson [00:11:35]:
Wow. And it’s so fast. I mean, the brain is so interesting to me. It’s just so much there. And I, you know, especially for me, coming from a special education component, people also learn things differently. Right. So not everybody learns the same way or intuitively. So this sounds like an amazing assist, really.

Dana Jonson [00:11:56]:
Right.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:11:56]:
That’s, that’s what it’s. If I said to you right now, data, focus, concentrate, would you know immediately know what to do? If I said, open a door, you’d go over and open the door. But if I said would, you know.

Dana Jonson [00:12:09]:
I’m not sure I would know exactly what to do. I’d need a lot more instruction than that, I think.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:12:13]:
Exactly. But this game has little number in the bottom left, which is every tenth of a second. You can actually see between 0 and 100, who’s the best, how focused you are.

Dana Jonson [00:12:24]:
So they’re being rewarded immediately, sort of, because.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:12:27]:
Exactly.

Dana Jonson [00:12:27]:
The game works. And there’s something, there’s something to see where you’re like, oh, I am focused. I’m doing the right thing.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:12:33]:
And so kids suddenly learn, oh, it’s a relaxation state. I’m not gritting my teeth and trying really hard. It’s a totally different state. And it’s just getting into the zone. You always hear about athletes, I was in the zone. I didn’t hear the crowd, I was just smoking. That’s exactly the state that anybody can get into playing this video game.

Dana Jonson [00:12:54]:
And it’s improving. You said 13 areas.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:12:58]:
There’s 13. Scientists like to get very detailed in everything they look at.

Dana Jonson [00:13:02]:
Give me the details. I Love it.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:13:04]:
Exactly. So there’s two broad classes that we work on. One is the ability paying attention and the other is impulse control. Thinking about a newborn baby. The baby doesn’t know to wait their turn to do anything for young child. So there’s impulse control. It does not exist. Some kids easily develop it by first grade.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:13:25]:
Other kids are leaping out of their seats running around the room. Is that impulse control is not there. And by the way that inhibits their ability to learn. Turns out. And the same thing for attention. If you’re just focusing out the window or talking to your friend and not able to look at the paper and dedicated. Those are the two large class but within those two classes we have five different attention sort parameters and other and. Or maybe it’s 6 and 7 inhibition parameters where it’s like multitasking are there.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:13:57]:
Can you actually discriminate between three different objects at a time? So while sky is running there’ll be a red, a blue and a green triangle coming at you and you’re supposed to match the red one. Only impulsive, impulsive people, impulsive kids will click on every single one because they cannot discriminate with what is coming. And it’s this delayed gratification skill among all the skills that exist in our brain that some kids develop slowly. Some people as adults have a problem. And you can imagine as we get older, the other piece is cognitive decline goes in reverse. We start to lose these skills first before the higher order thing. We still know how to talk when we can’t remember things.

Dana Jonson [00:14:36]:
Yeah. And I always with particularly students with adhd I also find that it is important for them to learn how to focus. But a lot of times we give children meds so that they sit still. Because you mentioned jumping out of the seat. And that’s not the only thing that works. Right. Because they still a lot of times kids have these other issues like executive functioning and things like that that they need to be taught as well. But it’s making them available for the learning.

Dana Jonson [00:15:04]:
So if we have them available and we’re not teaching them anything, that doesn’t really help. Right.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:15:09]:
And that’s why we’re complimentary to everything in education right now. There are many different approaches. Teachers are very good one on one tutoring or online schools to learn your arithmetic, to learn your math, to learn your grammar. But the core function that underlies all of those are a bunch of things that include short term memory. So working memory. If you give a child three steps instructions they have to remember that and then even some Adults can’t follow directions. You don’t know where to go. So you have, you have these core skills that are fundamental that everybody needs to learn and not everybody learns with the equal rate or with equal ability.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:15:48]:
And that’s what we’re training.

Dana Jonson [00:15:49]:
So it does. It also works on that short term memory.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:15:52]:
Then what we have added that module that’s on our in our plan right now. But within the game, as I said, there’s these 13 different skills. We’ll be adding more as we go with different features.

Dana Jonson [00:16:03]:
That’s so interesting that you can do it that way. But I mean it makes sense. It’s. It. To me it sounds almost like extra practice. Right? You need to practice to get good at anything.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:16:13]:
Absolutely.

Dana Jonson [00:16:15]:
If it’s a challenge, you don’t necessarily have all those opportunities. And if you said if you don’t know how to do it, practicing it. What?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:16:21]:
Yeah, there’s nothing in athletes understand a completely lift weights, they shoot endless amount of free throws. You know, they do things that are for the benefit of improving because these are core keep your muscles going. And as you get up, elderly people now they do wordle they do. You know, it’s even a group thing. We. So we’re moving toward elder care facilities where this is part of the training program. You train your body already with your, your yoga and everything else. Let’s train your mind at the same time to retain that capacity that you already have.

Dana Jonson [00:16:56]:
Because the brain’s a muscle too, right?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:16:58]:
Absolutely.

Dana Jonson [00:16:58]:
You have to exercise it and work it. I know my mother has her little list of all the things she does every day to help keep her memory in check and help her to keep those cognitive skills as sharp as she can.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:17:12]:
And what’s interesting is we can go back to ADHD briefly but a lot of particularly women who are older have never been diagnosed with these individual symptoms that particularly attention and self regulation that are core. And so any time in life you can actually improve on things.

Dana Jonson [00:17:30]:
That’s interesting. So it doesn’t have. Because I know in special education a lot of times it’s like, well, you have to get there early and if you don’t get there early enough, you’re going to miss windows, et cetera, et cetera. But this can be applied at any stage of life and you’ll see results. Does it differ the kind of results you’ll see? Like is there a time when it’s going to be more effective?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:17:49]:
We know that the key learning period for kids to acquire these skills is between the ages of 4 and 7. Or 8. So we like to get involved then. Because the problem with kids who struggle, it doesn’t need to be a full blown ADHD add, ASD thing. It just could be you have trouble sitting in your seat, that’s all it is. Or you get distracted for whatever reason, you can’t hear. Well. We just need to get kids to learn these core skills because when they fall behind in reading, they fall behind in anything.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:18:19]:
They lose their self esteem, they don’t want to be at school. I see this with my grandkids and other kids as well, because they’re just not keeping up for no fault of their own. They’re just missing the skill that they were never able to learn.

Dana Jonson [00:18:31]:
Yeah, well, that. Yeah. And so at any point that it can be useful. It’s probably most useful during those times because then they’re more on track with their peers. Unfortunately, we don’t often identify those skill deficits until older and they have less support. Although I think Covid did a huge service to us in one way, which was parents realized that kids were not independent. You know, they weren’t able to sit there and, and do their work independently. And I think that was a very interesting.

Dana Jonson [00:19:05]:
Without the, without the cues of the classroom and the teacher paying attention and all of that. And I think that was an interesting, enlightening thing for most of us parents was finding out no one could sit still. And as you said, that doesn’t mean they have adhd, but that not having those, those skills to be able to sit and focus for an extended period of time.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:19:26]:
So I have a good personal story about that. I was actually retired when Covid arrived, wasn’t planning to go back to work. And my three grandkids at the time, I now have five, lived in California. And about a month later they got on a plane and moved back to. Moved to Boston, where my wife and I lived because they had no daycare, they had no preschool, they had no school. There was no one to take care of the kids while mom and dad were working.

Dana Jonson [00:19:51]:
Yeah, a lot of mom.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:19:52]:
So we got this. They didn’t have a house to live in here, so half time they were with us. So we got to see firsthand my granddaughter in first grade. And I gotta say, I love the teachers. They would jump through hoops, entertain everything possible, even teaching me pe. But at the same time, I saw this is a struggle that is not the right medium to engage kids with because they could wander out of the room, they go to the refrigerator. And it really got me back thinking that’s when I jumped off the couch, said, we gotta do something. And I put things together to do this.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:20:24]:
So I’ve gone back to work full time, I think as a result of that.

Dana Jonson [00:20:28]:
So that Covid pushed you out of retirement, basically.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:20:31]:
Exactly. And we had a joyful about a year and a quarter while they were part of our three generation family. But now they live nearby and are fully independent. And it was a really incredible bonding experience.

Dana Jonson [00:20:43]:
That’s wonderful.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:20:44]:
And they’re using Skylar’s Run now themselves, the kids.

Dana Jonson [00:20:46]:
That’s wonderful. And that’s neat to be able to see those missing components, you know, right in front of you, you know, absolutely being what needs to be addressed.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:20:55]:
In fact, one of the things that happens that we don’t. You don’t publish this kind of data. We actually are focused on real world results. There are, you do clinical trials. There’s FDA requirements about measure this measure that, this is the gold standard. We actually, when the trials were run, they actually met all the criteria that the pharmaceuticals met in terms of efficacy in treating the symptoms of adhd. But as we look at what we’re doing, we only care about the real world. What does mom care about? What does dad care about? What does the child care about? They care about grades.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:21:32]:
They care about whether somebody is behaving well in class. Let me tell you a very short anecdote. Someone who works with me who’s a trained. He’s a clinician at Children’s Hospital in Boston. A child psychologist was four kids, three with some, you know, some issues. One was having a challenge in school. She, she said. And I said, well, I don’t have any money yet to pay you because she’s looking for a job.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:21:55]:
And they said, why don’t you come try the headset, see what you think. She tried it with her kids and one of the teachers wrote and said, I don’t know what you did to your son. He’s six years old.

Dana Jonson [00:22:04]:
Wow.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:22:05]:
Different child. And as my colleague said, it’s great that they can do really, really well on the Vanderbilt rating scale, which I know but don’t compare. It does. But what I care about is that he stops throwing silverware at me at the dinner table.

Dana Jonson [00:22:18]:
Right, exactly. I mean, I love that as the measure is, you know, and I think that goes back to, and I talk about this a lot is that when children have these quote unquote behaviors, it’s not because they’re trying to be mean to you. That’s not, that’s not their goal. They’re. They’re not able to focus on what they need to focus on. And they’re trying to just fill their, you know, meet the needs of their body to be active all the time.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:22:43]:
And I see it all the time with some of these kids. It’s remarkable. I mean, they’re sweet kids. They get trapped into the self esteem issue, having to lie because they did something crazy. They don’t even know why they did it.

Dana Jonson [00:22:55]:
Right. Yeah.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:22:56]:
So the behavior side is we have well over 100 testimonials from parents, teachers. But as you say, it’s remarkable to change behavior.

Dana Jonson [00:23:04]:
That’s. That’s incredible. How do you see this fitting in? Or do you see this fitting into the educational model? Because I mean, I don’t know that it would. But where do. How would this impact the educational model that we have today? I mean, I think our educational model is pretty antiquated.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:23:23]:
Yeah, we agree on that. It’s been around since the 8 hundreds. If you go back and lectures of people going through the history of it.

Dana Jonson [00:23:31]:
Yeah. Well, the bells. The bells between classes were meant to get children accustomed to the sounds in factories.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:23:39]:
I know. The reason we learned trigonometry is because there was a shortage of surveyors in this country in the late 1800s. It wasn’t taught before Harvard was the first place to teach it. That was because there was no surveyors.

Dana Jonson [00:23:52]:
Yeah. I still haven’t figured out where I’m using my trigonometry ever, so.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:23:57]:
But where we are right now is we know the traditional classroom’s not going away anytime soon. We tried to shove technology into it, but it’s actually fitting into the existing infrastructure both in terms of workflow and the content. There are people trying to push that along. We view this as a supplement. This is a supplement which belongs in an after school program. The same way that kids go to coding or they go to gymnastics or whatever. Let’s do something and improve your test taker, improve your sports, the athletic sport. Well, we’re in the.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:24:27]:
We have a ring of pilot right now in a boys and girls club with 14 kids in the class playing the game side by side. The other 105th. This is not. This is after school academic tutoring. The only requirement to get into our program was you required tutoring. That was it. And we’ve actually given test the woodcock shots math in writing or reading. And our prior data in a school in New York showed that kids that were way behind in math and reading after playing stylus run for eight weeks improved eight months in math and six Months in reading on their score test.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:25:02]:
Their test score. So we’re showing that the ability to sit and focus. Yeah. How many kids go into an SAT and sit and stare blankly for the first four minutes?

Dana Jonson [00:25:11]:
Right.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:25:12]:
Their mind cannot focus.

Dana Jonson [00:25:14]:
Right.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:25:15]:
And that’s a challenge.

Dana Jonson [00:25:17]:
It is. I think even just, you know, sometimes coming home off the bus. The bus can be a chaotic environment and that transition does not go smoothly. I. At least not in our house. A lot of kids.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:25:29]:
So in terms of education that. The way we view it is that there are lots of. There’s been a lot of neuroscience research in all aspects of monitoring your brain passively. It’s not injecting any electrical currents or doing anything crazy. It’s just measuring the same way you do with blood pressure, something benign. That doesn’t bother you. There are so many training tools that we can apply that belong in the world. And we now have the ability to do it very inexpensively because components are cheap.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:25:58]:
AI cleans up the signal to noise in ways that were not imaginable 15 years ago. That’s an enormous advance.

Dana Jonson [00:26:05]:
Wow.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:26:06]:
So seeing that signal in your brain. Right. Forehead, that is focusing. Concentration is very hard. We had a team of neuroscientists and engineers work on it for 10 years to get it absolutely right. So when you blink, you turn your head, there’s no, there’s no miss signal there. If you’re chewing at something, you just. It’s just every tenth of a second we’re getting that measurement.

Dana Jonson [00:26:26]:
And that headset can identify that. Through listening to your brain, they can identify all of those components.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:26:35]:
People ask if we can use as a diagnostic. We’re not going that way, but we. But it is a good gauge of where you are and how you progress. The game adapts. First of all, the first mission measures your brains like the fingerprint. This is where you are, these skills. And then you are adjusted to your ability, whether you’re 4 year old or 15 year old with, you know, no matter where you are academically. And then it adjusts dynamically in the game every tenth of a second to be just hard enough that it’s interesting but not so hard to hate it and not too easy or you get bored.

Dana Jonson [00:27:12]:
Wow. I mean, seriously, this is just so fascinating to me, but. So it’s not diagnostic, but it’s sort of a baseline. You can get a baseline from that?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:27:22]:
Absolutely. We’ll see over time how that comes out. But you know, when you get. For example, there was anecdotally, there was a child that had a discussion in the trials, the mother didn’t mention that, but he was. Baselines were very poor, which was unusual just given his background. And suddenly he took off. Now, we have no idea if the game was improving or not, but we could actually see his ability to play the game was accelerating faster than we’d seen before. So that’s the day he should have gone back to school.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:27:53]:
What do you do now? You have no way to know, right?

Dana Jonson [00:27:56]:
No, no, I mean, that’s a good point because we don’t know how to assess those skills necessarily, or where you are with them. And I would think that would, that would be a great tool for someone like that, for a child with a concussion. When you see that elevation, then that’s when they’re ready to go back to learning.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:28:15]:
And while we have no data, it’s just anecdotal, we know that when you come out of surgery, in the old days, even you’d have a baby, stay in the hospital five days. Now you get back or knee surgery, you’re walking the next day.

Dana Jonson [00:28:29]:
The drive through brain. The drive through procedure with our brain.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:28:34]:
Why not look at these technologies, see if we can actually exercise it to rebuild these circuits very clearly.

Dana Jonson [00:28:42]:
So when you say that they need a tutor, do you mean is there a specific type of tutor or.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:28:47]:
No, what we’re saying is when the tutoring programs are already designed to take kids that have an academic challenge, doesn’t matter what the reason is. We know that the core skills of focus and innovation are necessary to do well in school. So when we bring kids into a tutoring program as a group, they’re already there for the very specific purpose of improving their learning. We know they will do better on standardized tests. We know that we’re generating data about grades. We know that teachers say the kids are doing better after they come to the program. So when these children programs, we don’t care why are they there. We just know that these skills are likely to help on entry.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:29:26]:
Some kids are great at math, but still are having troubles in school. Some kids are struggling. Our game adjusts to all of those to be sure that they’re in connection with the game.

Dana Jonson [00:29:35]:
So you don’t need to have like. I guess I’m thinking, does somebody have to have special skills to implement this?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:29:41]:
Oh, it’s. You can do it at home.

Dana Jonson [00:29:43]:
Okay.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:29:43]:
You know, we have lots of people have taken it home and use it themselves, even on kids who are just neurotypical, brilliant kids. And they actually show improvements, focus by the traditional methods. The only reason we could Ship it in a box, comes right to your house and you scan a code and there’s a little video of a little boy putting the headset on and teach you how to do it. The only thing we see at home is these are very busy families, two or three kids, kids sharing finding time between all the other activities. It’s hard to kids stick to the program every three, four days a week. But there are plenty of people do. That’s why when you get to older kids it’s fine, it’s part of your homework. Go do this.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:30:27]:
In fact what we found in our school studies if they did scholars run before their homework, they completed it more frequently.

Dana Jonson [00:30:33]:
Interesting. Because they’re right in that mode and in that zone.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:30:37]:
Exactly. They’re already in the zone. So it’s a good, you know, it’d be a great setup at home you do this for 20 minutes before your homework.

Dana Jonson [00:30:44]:
Yeah.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:30:45]:
The other thing I forgot to mention is unlike medications this the benefits are sustained for months after you stop playing the game.

Dana Jonson [00:30:52]:
Oh, interesting.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:30:54]:
So you actually can we in that with trials kids were given the exact same gold standard test one month, two months out to five months and they sought benefits generally they were about equivalent. Although it does wane over time. We have people who go back that just will be coming out with more games, you know, follow up games and in fact the idea is you build sequels that say you know, you were really good at cognitive skills 1 to 6 but 7, 8 and 9 you were pretty poor at. You’re now going to get your stylus round two where that is the purpose of those.

Dana Jonson [00:31:25]:
So, so, so when children get into that zone when they, when they improve in all those skills if they just stop doing it completely eventually it will become difficult again.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:31:35]:
We believe that’s true. We don’t have data on as people who are just normal everyday kids.

Dana Jonson [00:31:41]:
The question that’s what I was going to ask was for children who, who.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:31:44]:
Don’T have those suspicious if you already have these skills, you’re just improving them. Maybe you’ll just already, you know, it’s like being a basketball player learning one new move. But if you’ve never played before, you need to practice regularly to keep it going. But it’s, it’s in the idea of you know, they had the simple headset should become ubiquitous. And as every game, for every skill you want to learn across life, spot the headset on you know how to use and let’s just do a gamification. That’s a very powerful way to engage.

Dana Jonson [00:32:15]:
So how do you measure it for children who say don’t have adhd. Right. So you’re looking at real world outcomes. How does that then how do you measure that?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:32:26]:
So right now, a couple things. We do adopt some of the ADHD rating scales just because the clinical world does watch this. They do pay attention. If we can say all these kids who are in the tutoring program, we have no idea if any are even diagnosed with adhd. We have no idea whatsoever. But they come in. In the survey done by the teacher, you know, it’s a questionnaire by the parents and by the tutor. The tutoring site gives us an entry and after eight weeks their exit value.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:32:56]:
We then see the metrics during the game and how they did. On top of that we give a Woodcock Johnson test, which is this academic test, been around for a long time to see how fast it’s a time math and reading test. See how the kids do before and after. Our experience is everybody improves. Almost every 83% show significant improvement of the people.

Dana Jonson [00:33:17]:
That’s a lot.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:33:18]:
It’s a lot. Absolutely. And. But we’re going to be moving into a more real world opportunity. For example, we’re talking with an E learning company that’s 450,000 kids on their platform. They’re measuring in their elearning arithmetic game their ability. We’re going to be able to see while they’re playing the game on the same iPad, they’ll do Skyler and then we’ll go to that one and we’ll see. Oh my gosh.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:33:41]:
The rate at which they’re accelerating is uncharacteristic. We’re seeing improvements or this child’s struggling. Let’s slow down the game and adapt for that based on their how they’re playing, you know, home or something else.

Dana Jonson [00:33:54]:
For the kids who the. That 17%.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:33:57]:
Yeah.

Dana Jonson [00:33:58]:
If I’m doing math right. Do you see any common threads between those. Those people? Like you know, are they already very good at these skills or is. Is there any common thread or have you not looked into that yet?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:34:11]:
We don’t have enough data. What we do know is in the early going for kids who are a little bit of a. Who are younger, there’s not even a challenge. So what I want attention is ideal because it really gets them in sync. This is a new event. It’s video game. They’re excited but you have to. We don’t tell them how to focus and concentrate.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:34:30]:
They have to figure that out themselves. And they all have. You asked me, I’ll say, oh, I will. Watch Skyler or I watch the distance in the background or I just close, you know, I close my eyes. You just thought about style for a moment. They got me in this. Everybody has their own little method and. But we do know that if you stick with it, you actually will do better on the metrics that are clinical.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:34:53]:
But we’re also pushing to do all the metrics that are in real life. And so we’ll be coming out eventually with our own survey that says this is really what parents care about. You don’t want to wait until the grades come out at the end of the semester to see some other indices.

Dana Jonson [00:35:06]:
If things will progress, do you find? I’m just curious between parents of children who do have deficits versus those that don’t. Do you see one more interested. I just, I think of how we’re in such a competitive world right now and having just gone through my fourth child college applications, you know, it is really, it is a little bit insane. I know people who are hiring coaches in middle school with the aim of getting kids into like Ivy League schools. So do you find that certain types of parents are more interested in this than others?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:35:39]:
Definitely. I mean, there is a subset of parents, I won’t tell the stories I know about that, who really want their kids to get ahead of her, you know, Russian math class. It’s funny, you know, there are times where every kid has to get ahead in math even though they go listen to the exact same lecture they heard last week from the Russian math teacher. That’s always going to be a part of it, frankly, for elite athletes, they’re immediately attracted to this technology. I can increase my padding average by 10 by small amount. If I can throw football more accurately. I’m interested. We’re going to see the same thing in athletics, especially when it comes to testing.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:36:17]:
Think about the SAT and everything else that’s interesting.

Dana Jonson [00:36:20]:
I have an athlete and that was the first thing that popped into my head was, you know, the focus and that, that component that, that would increase those pieces. And I think we, you know, when we think about attention, for the most part we think about kids misbehaving in schoolwork.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:36:35]:
Right.

Dana Jonson [00:36:35]:
We don’t think about athletics or other hobbies or interests that children might have because your attention would impact anything.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:36:44]:
Right. So we hired, in the summer we hired college students to be insights. Just part of my makeup. I always like the energy and it was great this summer because this past summer, because they knew GPT and they know how to edit videos. All the things that we were Hoping to get to. They were suddenly delivering. One young man, I was a junior and an engineer was helping us debug the program to make it more user friendly for kids, parents. And he came and I said, you know, I empower everybody.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:37:14]:
Come in and tell me something I don’t know every week because we’re not the authorities. You’re not just here to listen. He came in on a Friday morning. So you know, I’ve been playing the game all day, every day to help debug it. He want, you know, and I said, I’m a V gamer, video gamer. My scores have been increasing this week and I can feel when I’m in the zone, I can feel that difference. I can’t force myself into it yet, but I can feel when I’m there. So you can imagine we talked to people in the east, you know, the Professional Gaming League and they are ecstatic.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:37:46]:
This is going to be an amazing event.

Dana Jonson [00:37:48]:
That’s really wild. That really is. So are there any ethical concerns or considerations that we need to think about?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:37:57]:
There’s a few. One is access. Because like all technologies, they show up in wealthier communities. And that’s why we’ve opened this program with the Boys and Girls Clubs in Orlando, because we know that there are ill philanthropic government dollars available for that. This is not overly expensive in those cases. And we’re actually looking in Massachusetts as well. You can get local celebrities, professional athletes and others come in and help sponsor the program because it’s a do good in the community. So that’s one ethical thing and we struggled a lot with that.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:38:30]:
But we know that once we prove that it works in that setting, both in terms of workflow, groups of 14 in this case, it’ll actually work very well. The other ethical worries are privacy and bunch of data and safety. There is zero safety concern in the eyes of every engineer and every clinician who’s ever been in the space. It’s a passive microphone. No different than putting a microphone next you. It’s actually more passive than the phone that people put in their pocket which is emitting signals all the time or the earbuds you hear which are emitting signals. This is just a microphone listening to what’s going on in your brain. There’s nothing, there’s no way to read your mind.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:39:13]:
It’s just a very single. It’s like a monotone. Imagine a monotone that gets us up a little bit frequency here and there. And we don’t collect any data, it just is transmitted wirelessly to the iPad to Inform it how Skylar should run. The only data we get which is captured in a parent or a report just is the data about how you did in the game, which is no different than playing any other video game where they collect data and put you on the competitor board. But we’re giving you a score around the 13 skills so you can see the end of every episode what you did. Another key component is there are other video games. There are other things out there that can do this.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:39:52]:
None of them have an EEG that works like this. And the real measure is what’s the real world transfer. If I play a video game like Mario Kart, I am not going to become a better driver ever. That’s perfect example of a video game that’s entertaining but doesn’t teach a new skill. Every single mission we have, first two thirds is teaching the skill. The last third is testing in the different environment whether you learn that skill. And if you didn’t, you repeat that mission at least up to two more times. So in on top of that, we have the real world experience of academic performance, behavior and everything else.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:40:30]:
It says outside, applying this game, you’ve learned something that changes you.

Dana Jonson [00:40:35]:
Interesting. Yeah. No, there are so many things that we do that don’t teach us anything.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:40:44]:
The gaming community is excited by this because this can be implemented within the context of existing games.

Dana Jonson [00:40:51]:
Yeah, well, that’s what I was going to ask, like, what is the next step? Where is this going to go? Where do you see something like think evolving?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:41:02]:
So it’s. There’s going to be a few directions. One, it’s going to, you know, in the education world, it’s going to just be one of the core things you learn, like your ABCs or whatever. Let’s learn how to focus and pay attention. And then we’re going to have more modules like working memory and things like that. It’s just one of the modules you do. And as education modifies, it’ll be more and more personal. It’s less of a group.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:41:24]:
So it’s, you know, playing a group outside of education. It’s really going to be about improving performance for those who have a declining problem, like the elderly or someone who’s had an accident or something, or somebody who just wants to improve on a new skill. I believe that there will be other because as I said, the neuroscience community has spent decades working on this. We know those signals. We now have the gamification tools, which is another researcher. Which specific element of our game teaches X, Y or Z? Those will come together. But one of the instructions has been every device that’s ever been moved forward in this field, it’s been a high quality device, has had to have a medical reason to pursue it. We’re not putting that as front center.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:42:11]:
This will be part of your everyday life, like going to the gym.

Dana Jonson [00:42:14]:
That’s what I was wondering because I was thinking just like say ABA services for children with autism. At what point would, would insurance at some point cover this for a specific type of child or a specific type of disability and is that a possibility moving forward?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:42:30]:
So it’s different approach. I do talk to people who are the insurance guinea keepers. They’re locked in with. You must have a medical diagnosis that determines how you’re paid and everything else. Well in many cases just a simple improvement. Or even in the case of ADHD, you know, 20, 30% of kids that get tested are adults now don’t test positive and they know they have a problem.

Dana Jonson [00:42:54]:
Yeah.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:42:55]:
The other thing is bluntly, if everybody with ADHD, all 5 million kids got a script to borrow, it would break the bank at these companies because it’s expensive. The idea is in a consumer retail world, things come down in cost. We can now begin to think about it in the benefits package at work along with going to the gym and all of those things. There’s a, there’s a co pay or a supplement.

Dana Jonson [00:43:20]:
Right.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:43:21]:
And in fact there are studies of people in Silicon Valley won’t name the companies but where they, you know, the coders will work 40, 50 hour weeks but their most, their, their best time is the eight hours when they’re in the zone. They don’t really get it. So if we can go to a payment system where you get paid for the time you’re in the zone.

Dana Jonson [00:43:42]:
Right. Where you’re actually productive doing something real, increasing productivity. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean it does, there is something about it that feels a little movie ish, you know, like.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:43:53]:
Absolutely. The idea right now the idea is we have zero need for doing anything that is compromises safety or security under any circumstance. Privacy. This is very personal. Expect you and your iPad and a report that you get back and nothing more complicated and you can choose to share it with anyone you want.

Dana Jonson [00:44:13]:
I’m just thinking school wise, like if. And you’re talking about proactive. Right. So you know, when we talk about gym memberships and things, insurance pay for those things, it’s, it’s proactive. It’s not, it’s not reactive. And I would be fascinated to see, you know, I don’t know what the ethical issues would be with the school having this and saying, you know my classroom is going to, you know, I’m going to assign those. How often does somebody use it and for how long?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:44:39]:
Three or four days a week for 20 to 30 minutes. And first three, first three times he. It depends on the age the first but for younger students, first three times mom or the teacher, someone has to help get it on, set it up. But actually that’s fun. Put it on.

Dana Jonson [00:44:54]:
Yeah, I just, I’m wondering what those, what under what conditions someone will be able to say look I’m going to purchase this for my classroom and I want all the kids to do it. Like are they allowed to do that? And I don’t know the answer to that. I mean I obviously need permission from parents but as far as the, the school district, I don’t know how that would play but I couldn’t imagine not wanting that.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:45:15]:
I can tell you the education challenge right now. The gap one to two years, it’s national in this country. It’s actually global because we hear from others. When we, when we started talking with the Boys Girls Club, we’re running a an eight week pilot with Baptists to show it works in their location. Not whether the technology is used, it actually delivers, but how you use it here with your population. The superintendent of schools of Osceola county in Florida where they have a little different perspective on things like this said I wanted in three schools immediately. So we’re starting in three after school programs after school.

Dana Jonson [00:45:51]:
Wow.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:45:51]:
There. And he said if this works we’re better push it very quickly. And I my business model says zero revenue for public schools for the foreseeable future.

Dana Jonson [00:46:02]:
Wow.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:46:02]:
But again if it’s an after school program, parents love it. You drop your child off. Sure it’s part of. And I just. When I was in the Boys and Girls Club I said who likes to play basketball? It’s gonna teach you to be a better freezer shooter.

Dana Jonson [00:46:15]:
They were all in, right? Exactly. That’s what I’m picturing with my athlete. I also just wanna list specifically the 13 I’m on your website and the website will also be in my show notes. So anyone who’s on the go while they’re listening to this, I will have all the information that you need in my show notes. So just go back and look at those. But the 13 cognitive skills that are being trained through the think the Schuyler’s run the think process are focused attention, sustained attention, selective attention, alternating attention, divided attention. Those are all the Attentional components. And then the inhibition components are cognitive inhibition, behavioral inhibition, motivational inhibition, interference, control, which I think is interesting.

Dana Jonson [00:47:05]:
Novelty, novelty, inhibition, inner voice, delayed gratification and self regulation. And I see so much of the delayed gratification and self regulation as an issue for children that those tend to be the most disruptive. I guess. So that’s why we see them the most.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:47:24]:
Yeah. And the inner voice is interesting because parents can actually use that to say, you know, don’t you, don’t you know what you can say to yourself, I should do that. That’s the inner voice. You know, don’t leap out of your seat. There’s an inner voice you can learn, which some of these kids also don’t have.

Dana Jonson [00:47:41]:
Yeah. Well, this sounds amazing. And I’m. I’m fascinated to hear how it goes in schools and if it really does take off. And I’m. I’m fascinated to see what the next steps will be, you know, what additional components you’re going to be able to add to it. I think you mentioned a couple. Do you have specific areas that you want to add to it or are you just in the process of figuring out to it?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:48:06]:
Working memory is the next one for sure.

Dana Jonson [00:48:08]:
Working memory.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:48:09]:
We have about another 10 we’re looking at and we actually have some of the best PhDs either on our team or available to us who been studying the gamification of certain cognitive skills for 20 years now. And they have so many learnings, but they don’t know how to develop a game. We have professional video game creators on our team.

Dana Jonson [00:48:30]:
Wow. So can people just go to your website and buy it?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:48:34]:
Yeah, we don’t have them to sell this week, but we will have them very soon. Get on our mailing list and I will be happy to let you know. Right now we’re working in these. So group settings just prove to everybody it works.

Dana Jonson [00:48:47]:
Right.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:48:47]:
There’s no doubt that people can enjoy it at home. And if there’s a particular challenge or need, just contact, contact me and contact the company and we’ll see. Put you in the queue.

Dana Jonson [00:48:58]:
That would be amazing. Is there anything I’ve missed? Is there something that we haven’t discussed about it? Because I feel like we’ve covered a tremendous amount of ground.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:49:06]:
There’s two things that I’m particularly excited about. I’ve been involved in literally over 60 companies, have new technology in my life. This is the first time I’ve ever been involved in one where every single person I talk to says, I love it. How can I help? Usually It’s. Yeah. But you’ll never raise money. No. The FDA will never approve it.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:49:27]:
No. This is. Everybody has open. I want to help you. So we’re talking to the leadership of. In California and Florida and Texas about education and other, you know, we’re talking to NFL agents of NFL athletes who say, this is fantastic. We want to put this into our camps. The other thing I love is everybody on our team joined mission.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:49:48]:
Like you said to me earlier, we all have a little bit of a history in mental health or whatever. You look at our team, every single person on the team has said, I love this job because when I come to work, I feel great. And I actually have people contributing for no cost. Expertise, intellectual property, everything else. This is an important mission. Let’s get this done.

Dana Jonson [00:50:09]:
It’s very exciting. It really is exciting. The concept of being able to better your brain, which, I mean, just our neuroplasticity was sort of the. Sort of. In the. In the grand scheme of science, that’s a fairly recent discovery. Right. So, you know, it’s.

Dana Jonson [00:50:25]:
It’s. Our developments in science and tech are happening so quickly now that it’s wonderful.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:50:32]:
Now it’s a black box, fails one day. We don’t know about it.

Dana Jonson [00:50:36]:
Exactly. Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for joining me. This is fascinating information. And to parents who are out there, go to my show notes if you want to reach out to think.com or if someone wants to reach out to you, Dr. Gollins, how would they reach you?

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:50:54]:
Just go to our website. There’s an info button there.

Dana Jonson [00:50:57]:
Okay.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:50:58]:
The other thing is we’re looking for people who, you know, run tutoring programs or training. Training programs. We’re talking to some people about, you know, elderly groups, new things. The elderly are great because they’re very compliant. They do crossword every day. They’re going to put this on every day as part of a group together. And we want to find some more groups that we could bring in to see to show that this works in the community in an everyday way.

Dana Jonson [00:51:23]:
That’s wonderful. Okay, so if you think you’ve got a good community out there, go to think.comt h y n k.com and send them a message and let them know. Thank you so much for joining me. This was really wonderful, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

Steve Gullans, Phd [00:51:40]:
Thank you, Dana. It’s been a joy.

Dana Jonson [00:51:43]:
Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don’t forget to follow this podcast so you don’t miss any new episodes and leave a review when you have a chance. If there’s anything you want to hear about or comment on, please go to my Facebook page, Special Ed on Special Ed, and find me there. I’ll see you next time here on Special Ed. On Special Ed. Have a fabulous day.

Disclaimer [00:52:02]:
The views expressed in this episode are those of the speakers at the time of the recording and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company, or even that individual today.