Speaker 1: M beautiful. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations, military news and
Speaker 1: straight talk with the guys in the community. Hello, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Software Radio, Software Bradio on Time on Target.
Speaker 1: We have a very special guest with us today, Dr
Speaker 1: David Eagleman is going to talk to us about an
Speaker 1: issue that's near and tad to a lot of veterans.
Speaker 1: It's uh, tonight's are ringing in the years, I guess
Speaker 1: you could say. And I was just telling the doctor online.
Speaker 1: I know audiologist called it by a different name, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that. I felt kind of dumb when
Speaker 1: I found out that. But uh, it's it isn't a
Speaker 1: laughing matter. I mean, a lot of us suffer with this,
Speaker 1: myself included. I've been suffering with this ringing in the
Speaker 1: years for over twenty five years. Uh. And so we're
Speaker 1: gonna welcome Dr Eagleman to the podcast. Doc, thank you
Speaker 1: for taking the time with us today, because this is
Speaker 1: uh an issue that probably affects more than a billion
Speaker 1: people were wide, I would imagine, Yeah, that's about right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fifteen percent of the population has this ringing in
Speaker 1: their ears. And obviously this is more common in the
Speaker 1: military because of the damage to the inner ear to
Speaker 1: what are called the hair cells. They just happen to
Speaker 1: be called that in the inner ear um, which you
Speaker 1: can get damaged with really loud sounds like explosions and
Speaker 1: gunshots nearby things like that. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: people suffer from this um. For anyone who doesn't have
Speaker 1: tindis or tonitis that can be pronounced either way. For
Speaker 1: anyone who doesn't have this um, you know, this is
Speaker 1: something that drives people often to the point of to
Speaker 1: the brink of suicide. I mean, it is a really
Speaker 1: big deal to have a constantly screaming sound going on.
Speaker 1: It can be ringing or buzzing, or cicadas or static
Speaker 1: e noise, but it's it's a sound that never goes away,
Speaker 1: and it can be really distressing to people. Right And
Speaker 1: before we get any further, and I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about this at length. Uh, you know, Dr Eagelman's
Speaker 1: an author, he's a neuroscientist, he's a technologist, he's an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: And can you fill us our listeners in a little
Speaker 1: bit about your own background, Yeah, very briefly. So I'm
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist at Stanford and I UM and I love
Speaker 1: to write books as well. So I've written eight books
Speaker 1: now about the brain. Different books. They've been I'm very
Speaker 1: happy that they've been UM international bestsellers. And I've been
Speaker 1: able to teach a lot of thirty two languages, that's right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I've been able to bring the stuff that
Speaker 1: you know gets me out of bed in the morning
Speaker 1: to to a wider audience. And then I made a
Speaker 1: documentary on PBS called The Brain with David Eagleman, and
Speaker 1: that is also around the world, so that's really nice.
Speaker 1: And that what I did is about six years ago,
Speaker 1: I spun off a couple of companies from my laboratory
Speaker 1: UM and I'm now spending about ninety percent of my
Speaker 1: time running these companies UM instead of just running a lab.
Speaker 1: So that's an entrepreneur part, you know, when you talked
Speaker 1: about tonight, it's so I'll just keep calling it the
Speaker 1: way I learned UM. The most frustrating thing for somebody
Speaker 1: who suffers from that is that you know it only
Speaker 1: you can hear it. And like when I've been to
Speaker 1: the v A, they told me, oh, you don't have that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, how can you tell me what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing? And and as you mentioned a few moments ago,
Speaker 1: it's it's extremely frustrating, especially when the room gets very
Speaker 1: quiet and you're trying to go to sleep at night
Speaker 1: and that that buzzing gets really loud. It gets seems
Speaker 1: to get louder. And you know, my wife was one
Speaker 1: that had to have the room completely silent and completely dark,
Speaker 1: and because of my issue with my ears, we sleep
Speaker 1: now with the television on just for the background noise
Speaker 1: and it kind of drowns it out and softens it
Speaker 1: a little bit so I can sleep. Is that common? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so again, it's about fifteen percent of the world
Speaker 1: that has this. It's more common in the military, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just unbelievably frustrating. And I'm actually really surprised.
Speaker 1: I don't know why the v A told you don't
Speaker 1: have it, because tip really it's just a matter of
Speaker 1: subjective report, as in, this is what I'm experiencing. It's
Speaker 1: typically caused by damage. So when when you're losing part
Speaker 1: of your hearing, essentially your brain is running a defensive
Speaker 1: activation and it says, oh wait, I was expecting this
Speaker 1: frequency to be coming in, but now I'm not really
Speaker 1: getting that anymore. So your brain starts generating that frequency.
Speaker 1: So actually, like all of hearing, it's really not that
Speaker 1: much to do with your ears, it's everything to do
Speaker 1: with your brain, and your brain starts screaming off some
Speaker 1: particular tone. Yeah, and if the frustrating part is that
Speaker 1: there's no there's no available, there's no cure for it.
Speaker 1: There's nothing easy that can be done. People are working
Speaker 1: on genetic techniques, for example, to say, hey, can we
Speaker 1: actually genetically engineer the birth of new hair cells in
Speaker 1: the ear? You know, things like this, which are very
Speaker 1: admirable pursuits, but it's gonna be a long time before
Speaker 1: something that actually exists. So in my company we ended
Speaker 1: up um developing a very simple approach. It's not a
Speaker 1: cure it but it drives people's tentatives down by about
Speaker 1: by about thirty which is quite significant for people's lives. UM,
Speaker 1: should I tell you about that? Ivan Shay? Yeah, absolutely good.
Speaker 1: I wanted to jump into that and explain how this
Speaker 1: works because I saw you on the podcast talking about it,
Speaker 1: and I read an article about it, but it kind
Speaker 1: of went and went right over my head. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really yeah, it's really straightforward. It's just what we're
Speaker 1: doing is we're so so we've developed this wrist band
Speaker 1: that has vibratory motors on it. So it's got these
Speaker 1: different motors on it and so different frequencies of sound,
Speaker 1: yet you feel them on your wrist in different places.
Speaker 1: So high tone you feel, let's left side, low tone
Speaker 1: on the right side, and everyone in between. Okay, what
Speaker 1: we do then is we play tones boo boo, boo,
Speaker 1: boo boop, and as that's going, you're feeling this on
Speaker 1: your wrist. So every time you're hearing a sound, you're
Speaker 1: feeling it as as a vibration on your skin. And
Speaker 1: you do that just for ten minutes a day, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that what this teaches the brain essentially
Speaker 1: is what is the difference between an external sound which
Speaker 1: gets verification on your skin versus an internal sound like
Speaker 1: you're tonitus, which is only heard in your head and
Speaker 1: your wrist is not feeling that, And that teaches your brain, oh,
Speaker 1: this is actually just an internal sound, and so it
Speaker 1: starts paying less attention to it, and it becomes less,
Speaker 1: less loud and less aversive. And so this is something. Technically,
Speaker 1: this is called bimodal stimulation, which just means it's in
Speaker 1: two modes. We're playing a sound and you're feeling something
Speaker 1: on your skin. We didn't come up with this. It
Speaker 1: was actually UM at the University of Minnesota, and then
Speaker 1: a group in Ireland did this where they were shocking
Speaker 1: people on the tongue at the same time they were
Speaker 1: playing notes and that worked super well, and those results
Speaker 1: they published UM a couple of years ago now, and
Speaker 1: when I saw this, I thought, wow, I wonder if
Speaker 1: this would work. Not shocking on the tongue, which is
Speaker 1: by the way, very expensive and you have to go
Speaker 1: into the audiologist office every day to do this UM,
Speaker 1: but instead, you know, with this wristband that we already
Speaker 1: had developed for other purposes, and so we started testing
Speaker 1: with this almost a year ago and it works exactly
Speaker 1: as well. So we have UM. We've been making this
Speaker 1: into a two month rental program so that people rent
Speaker 1: this and get shipped to their house. They download the
Speaker 1: free app, they listened to Boo boo, boo boo. They
Speaker 1: listen to these sounds every day and they feel in
Speaker 1: tendens a day, and then after two months they just
Speaker 1: stick it in the box and send it back. And
Speaker 1: it's worked so well for thousands of people. So it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's been it's been a really lovely thing to to
Speaker 1: see this, you know, take a hold in the market. Now,
Speaker 1: Like the two month program? How did you guys come
Speaker 1: up with that? Is? Is like, after two months, is
Speaker 1: your brain trained enough that you you really don't require
Speaker 1: that anymore? Is that how you come up with that?
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. So when we look at the studies,
Speaker 1: what we find is that after two months you have
Speaker 1: about as big a result as you're going to get.
Speaker 1: In other words, over the first you know, six seven weeks,
Speaker 1: things are really steeply changing. By about week eight it's
Speaker 1: pretty stabilized. And then it lasts a long time. And
Speaker 1: so in this study from Ireland where they did this
Speaker 1: bimodal stimulation UM, they tested people a year later and
Speaker 1: found that the results held the amount of improvement they
Speaker 1: had stayed stayed the same after a year of not
Speaker 1: using it any longer. Really, and you know UM company
Speaker 1: Now it said you said, people just rent it UM,
Speaker 1: so they what is your your company name is what
Speaker 1: neo sensor? Is that the name of it? It's Neosensory
Speaker 1: dot com. Yeah, neo like New Senses, Yeah, Neosensory dot
Speaker 1: Com and uh and this program is called the Neosensory Duo,
Speaker 1: this thing with the wrist band plus the plus the sound.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we offer that a
Speaker 1: lot of people really liked is we pair this with
Speaker 1: um two audiologist visits, So just for a little bit extra,
Speaker 1: people can get these telepresent visits the audiologist at the
Speaker 1: very beginning and then at the end of it so
Speaker 1: they can check in and if their questions answered, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. That's been really that's been really useful
Speaker 1: as well. And yeah, so this is available to anyone.
Speaker 1: Anyone can contact your company and well within the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're only we're only shipping within the US right now.
Speaker 1: Eventually we will keep expanding to the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: But right now, do you have audiologists that like, say,
Speaker 1: for instance, I live in this state of Florida, do
Speaker 1: you have somebody nearby that you would pair up with?
Speaker 1: Is just what we're doing now. In this of course
Speaker 1: is inspired by you know, coronavirus is everything is virtual,
Speaker 1: so we're doing telepresence visits, yeah, which is super useful.
Speaker 1: It actually makes the whole world easier. And and you know,
Speaker 1: coronavirus has really been awful in so many ways. But
Speaker 1: one of the one of the tiny silver linings is
Speaker 1: that it's really increased telemedicine. Uh you know, ten years,
Speaker 1: it's sort of punched it up like that everyone everyone's
Speaker 1: expected tell medicine to be a thing, and now it
Speaker 1: finally is a thing that's cool. And um, what what
Speaker 1: is the cost of this? It's two d per month um,
Speaker 1: and then it's an extra ninety nine dollars to see
Speaker 1: the to see the audiologist, so be about three fifty
Speaker 1: dollars for for like the the entire program for per
Speaker 1: month for two months. And then it should you know, uh,
Speaker 1: decreet your you're ringing by about a third, which is
Speaker 1: that's pretty substantial. I would substantial in my year exactly.
Speaker 1: And not only does it drive it down, but what
Speaker 1: what almost everyone reports to us is that they just
Speaker 1: find it less aversive. They just find it sort of
Speaker 1: less anxiety provoking. Um. Now, by the way, it works
Speaker 1: for eight seven percent of people in in our studies
Speaker 1: and in the other studies in Ireland, and um, you
Speaker 1: know about people find success with this, don't we don't
Speaker 1: yet know why we're still um exploring who those percent are. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know we have a thirty day money back guarantee.
Speaker 1: So anybody who after you know, during the first thirty
Speaker 1: days feels like this is not doing any because because
Speaker 1: during the first thirty days you can clearly tell that
Speaker 1: it's working, and if it's not working, you just return
Speaker 1: it and get your money back. Also, wait, I should
Speaker 1: just mention because on this podcast that we have a
Speaker 1: discount for veterans UM. So that's running for the next
Speaker 1: for the next week, it's UM yeah discount code Honor
Speaker 1: and uh and you a discount for that. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And now you know the wrist band itself. I know
Speaker 1: you said there's a sound, is there like an electric
Speaker 1: impulse or some kind of a pressure thing as well?
Speaker 1: It's vibration, So so think about it like you know,
Speaker 1: the the buzz of your cell phone. Your cell phone
Speaker 1: vibrates and you feel that buzzing. So imagine multiple of
Speaker 1: those motors along your wrist and so it feels just
Speaker 1: like a little pattern of vibration on your wrist in
Speaker 1: different locations. Yeah. Yeah, and now UM and I can
Speaker 1: show you for those for those who are not uh
Speaker 1: listening to the audio only about watching this on YouTube.
Speaker 1: You can see the wristband has these bumps on the
Speaker 1: inside and these are each these actuators, these vibratory motors there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are along the inside on the wrist. And I
Speaker 1: know that I was reading somewhere. You know, for most veterans,
Speaker 1: the causes uh, you know, exposure to weapons, explosions, artillery,
Speaker 1: take your pick. But I was reading somewhere that a
Speaker 1: lot of the population, the causes are quite different, aren't they. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Actually it's it's essentially anything that's causing these cells in
Speaker 1: your inner ear to die. And there are million reasons
Speaker 1: for that. And even for non veterans, you know, they
Speaker 1: go to a loud concerts, they whatever, They work in
Speaker 1: a kitchen where there's lots of banging of pots and
Speaker 1: pant whatever, So there's a lot of reason that can happen. Actually,
Speaker 1: there there are two hundred and twenty different genes that
Speaker 1: have been found that correlate with with people losing hearing um.
Speaker 1: And the reason I mentioned that number is just to
Speaker 1: illustrate this just the enormous number of ways that you
Speaker 1: can lose the integrity of your inner ear and all
Speaker 1: of those can cause tendinus exactly right. Yeah. I remember
Speaker 1: after I get out of the military, I was already
Speaker 1: suffering with I had the uh good fortune of being
Speaker 1: on stage because a friend of mine was traveling with
Speaker 1: the band Metallica, and I was on stage at a
Speaker 1: Metallica conscient in my uh my whole head was ringing
Speaker 1: for about four days after that. Oh no, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's so because of the world. Well, that's interesting because
Speaker 1: sometimes in retrospect people would trade these things. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: tough because kids really want to go to concert, you know,
Speaker 1: young people want to do things that are a loud
Speaker 1: you know, I have two kids and I'm always I'm
Speaker 1: probably overly protective trying to get them to not do
Speaker 1: loud things because I don't want them to suffer when
Speaker 1: they're older. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, is there is
Speaker 1: there any hope on the horizon for someday being a
Speaker 1: cure for this or are we looking way away in
Speaker 1: the future. Unfortunately, think we're looking way in the future.
Speaker 1: And as I said, I think the best hope is
Speaker 1: going to be figuring out how to use genetics or
Speaker 1: stem cells to regrow damage cells in the inner ear, uh,
Speaker 1: to make them healthy again. But but these cells, just
Speaker 1: like all the cells in your brain, actually don't divide anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're already they're set, and when they die,
Speaker 1: they die. That's it. You don't get new ones. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that's the problem generally with hearing loss, and
Speaker 1: tenetus just goes hand in hand with hearing loss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I was curious, I mean, you know, reading about it,
Speaker 1: I was curious, do you consider it more of a
Speaker 1: brain issue or ear issue or is it a little
Speaker 1: bit of both. Well, it's mostly a brain issue. It
Speaker 1: starts in the ear because so the brain is expecting
Speaker 1: a certain amount of input coming in through the ears,
Speaker 1: and then eventually, let's say, post Metallica concert, you're not
Speaker 1: getting any you know, this particular frequency anymore coming in.
Speaker 1: Then your brain says, what is going on, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I should generate that frequency. Um. So you know, after
Speaker 1: the ear gets damaged, it's all about the brain from
Speaker 1: then on. And you know, by the way, we we
Speaker 1: originally developed this risk band for hearing loss in general,
Speaker 1: not for tennis in particular. It was just for um
Speaker 1: when people have let's say, severe or profound hearing loss.
Speaker 1: What what this wristband does. There's a microphone built into it.
Speaker 1: It's listening to all the sounds and it's representing those sounds.
Speaker 1: It's breaking them up into frequencies from low to high
Speaker 1: and putting them on your skin and you can hear
Speaker 1: the world that way. So for people who are deaf,
Speaker 1: they say, oh, you know, someone's knocking on my door,
Speaker 1: there's a dog barking, there's a car passing, there's a
Speaker 1: baby crying, my doorbells ringing, these sorts of things. They're
Speaker 1: all feeling it on their skin and it's tremendously liberating
Speaker 1: for them. And you know, it opens up the world
Speaker 1: to them because now the world of sound, which was
Speaker 1: closed off to them becomes becomes open. And um. You
Speaker 1: know it was through developing that for the deaf can unity,
Speaker 1: which has been very succe. In fact, we're in we're
Speaker 1: on risks all over the world. Uh, for people with
Speaker 1: hearing loss. Um, it was through that that we realized, hey,
Speaker 1: this also works really well for Tinadi's because these are
Speaker 1: so closely related issues. Um. Also, we're about to put
Speaker 1: out a new product next quarter for age related hearing loss.
Speaker 1: So as you get older, you lose just the high frequencies.
Speaker 1: Your your brain is still doing fine at the low stuff,
Speaker 1: but you lose the high frequencies and then and then
Speaker 1: speech just becomes more effort to understand because you can't
Speaker 1: tell someone said feed or seed, or you just can't
Speaker 1: tell the difference between certain sounds in the alphabet. So
Speaker 1: what we've done now is we're using machine learning on
Speaker 1: the wrist band to listen for those particular sounds like
Speaker 1: f s and s S and th h s and
Speaker 1: d s and vs. And we buzz in different ways
Speaker 1: when the wristband hears those different sounds. So in this case,
Speaker 1: it's just listening for speech, and it tells you, oh,
Speaker 1: I heard this and this. So what this means for
Speaker 1: someone with age related hearing losses that their ear is
Speaker 1: doing most of the work at the low frequencies and
Speaker 1: the wristband is just clarifying what's happening at the high frequencies.
Speaker 1: And I know, talking to you offline, you have family
Speaker 1: from a military background, and yeah, is that how you
Speaker 1: get into this? Um? No, Actually I got in just
Speaker 1: from you know, just you know, as a neuroscientist looking
Speaker 1: at this issue of what's called sensory substitution. But let
Speaker 1: me say, yes, everyone in my family has been in
Speaker 1: the military, and it's something I'm very proud of. And
Speaker 1: I'm a big supporter of the military, and so so
Speaker 1: proud of you guys for what you do, and thank
Speaker 1: you guys all for your service. So, UM, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you how I got into it. I'm I'm a neuroscientist,
Speaker 1: and I started wondering about this issue of how can
Speaker 1: you get information into the brain via unusual channels. So
Speaker 1: we're used to getting informations through our eyes and our nose,
Speaker 1: in our mouth and our ears and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: our fingertips, but UM, I saw cash. Could you feed
Speaker 1: in let's say, sound information through the skin with that work?
Speaker 1: And there there was evidence there was reason to think
Speaker 1: that would work already in the literature. So I set
Speaker 1: out probably ten years ago now to um to see
Speaker 1: if we can do this. And we originally built this
Speaker 1: as a vest. Um It looks uh, it looks like
Speaker 1: a bulletproof vest, but it has these vibratory motors all
Speaker 1: over it, and it's capturing sound and transling that into
Speaker 1: patterns on your torso and people can come to understand
Speaker 1: the auditory world this way. And that worked really well.
Speaker 1: So I gave a talk at the TED conference about
Speaker 1: six years ago now, and uh, and then spun this
Speaker 1: company out of my lab um, which has been just
Speaker 1: a very it's been a very terrific. So what we
Speaker 1: did as a company as we you know, the first
Speaker 1: thing we did, we shrunk it down from a Vest
Speaker 1: tourist band and and as I said, now we're on
Speaker 1: wrists all over the world and it's really great to
Speaker 1: see the impact that has. Yeah, that was you're already
Speaker 1: answered my next question because I had that you had
Speaker 1: made it originally an invest and I was going to
Speaker 1: ask how large it was. I mean, when you're talking
Speaker 1: to Vest, you're you're assuming there's these great, big, you know,
Speaker 1: circles of receptacles or whatever you wanna call it on there,
Speaker 1: and how you shrunk it down into uh the risk.
Speaker 1: I was glad you're able to show that to our
Speaker 1: people who who will see it on YouTube, because it's
Speaker 1: really thin. It's it's as thin as for those who
Speaker 1: are just hearing the audio. The wristband is as thin
Speaker 1: as any kind of like, uh, one of those workout
Speaker 1: watches that people are it's so popular with today, and uh,
Speaker 1: that must have taken some doing. That took some doing.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And you know the truth is that
Speaker 1: the vest was sort of a proof of principle for
Speaker 1: us to demonstrate, Wow, this is possible, it's actually gonna work. Um.
Speaker 1: But then you know, once you start a company, which
Speaker 1: was by the way, very educational for me because I
Speaker 1: had just been an acade me and then I moved
Speaker 1: into the entrepreneurial world and yeah, I realized there's all
Speaker 1: these issues about making it so that people will actually
Speaker 1: use it and wear it. And I realized that nobody
Speaker 1: wants to wear a vest. Nobody's going to wear a
Speaker 1: vestaurant every day. Um. Yeah, So we shrunk it down.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got this terrific team. All the credit
Speaker 1: goes to the all the folks of all the hardware
Speaker 1: and the firmware and the algorithms and so on, and
Speaker 1: the manufacture of this and and now um yeah, so
Speaker 1: now it works as a small product and this is
Speaker 1: actually um, you know, this is our first version, which
Speaker 1: has been very successful. But um, you know, in future versions,
Speaker 1: we'll get it even smaller and smaller as battery density
Speaker 1: increases and the rest of the world moves forward. In tech,
Speaker 1: we can take advantage of those moves. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it was funny because uh uh you know, I I
Speaker 1: found out to you about you and your company through
Speaker 1: you know, one of your people, Andrea I Cardi, who
Speaker 1: was on with us before we started recording. And I
Speaker 1: he was like a tech guy, like a possible neuroscientists
Speaker 1: like yourself. But he's like in the music industry. And
Speaker 1: as we talked about how he came about you, was
Speaker 1: he had hearing loss and ringing in the years as well.
Speaker 1: I thought that was really interesting part of your company there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. In fact, um, yeah, my my
Speaker 1: former graduate student who I co founded the company with.
Speaker 1: He's also a musician, and you know, but like Andrea's
Speaker 1: father is a neuroscientist and he's you know, Andrea lives
Speaker 1: in the tech world, and so this was an intersection
Speaker 1: for him. Pretty much everybody who works at our company,
Speaker 1: there's some intersection there of interest in tech, interest in
Speaker 1: the brain, and uh, interest in the entrepreneurial world. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And um again, folks, you know, if you're like myself
Speaker 1: and thousands of other veterans neosensory dot Com, I mean
Speaker 1: and again, you guys are offering a a veteran's discount,
Speaker 1: I mean a thirty three percent reduction in that ringing
Speaker 1: in the years would be substantial, and we definitely want
Speaker 1: to encourage all of our listeners out there and our
Speaker 1: readers for software dot com to check this out. If
Speaker 1: you know somebody who's a veteran that's suffering, that's right.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, I want to say, I mean
Speaker 1: Tonight's is just it's a big it's a big issue
Speaker 1: with veterans UM but also hearing loss in general. And
Speaker 1: so there's lots of a lot of people picked us
Speaker 1: up for tonightus and then find that it's really useful
Speaker 1: for them just for being able to hear everything that's
Speaker 1: going on. And as I said, we're about to release
Speaker 1: this new thing next quarter which will be for you know,
Speaker 1: if you're just having trouble with high frequencies, so you know,
Speaker 1: if anyone's having high if everyone's having hearing lass in general,
Speaker 1: the thing is um as you probably know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people who should wear hearing aids don't wear here aids.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason is that it's socially embarrassing
Speaker 1: for people. Nobody wants to feel old. Nobody wants to
Speaker 1: feel like they've got something wrong, and so, um, one
Speaker 1: of the advantages this has had for us is that,
Speaker 1: as he said, it looks like a fitbit, and um,
Speaker 1: no one even notices you're wearing it. And uh, with
Speaker 1: our next product that's coming out for high frequency hearing loss,
Speaker 1: someone one of our study participants just wrote to us
Speaker 1: and said it's better than his six thousand dollar hearing
Speaker 1: aids in terms of allowing him to understand speech. And
Speaker 1: so I think this is I think this is just
Speaker 1: a sort of a funny side note about social whatever
Speaker 1: what allows people to to wear something, And it's just
Speaker 1: been very useful. So you know, I hope anyone out
Speaker 1: there who's suffering from hearing loss will we'll consider trying
Speaker 1: this out. Yeah, and you know, for somebody who wears
Speaker 1: hearing ages as well. Right now, I have my earbuds
Speaker 1: in for that, you know, for the podcast, but I
Speaker 1: wear them and it does help with the not only hearing,
Speaker 1: but it does muffle a little bit of that tonight
Speaker 1: is something. But you can't wear them to bed. But uh, this,
Speaker 1: you know, you're like you. I didn't want to say
Speaker 1: fitbit because I thought maybe that was a you know,
Speaker 1: uh one of those. It's almost like a common down
Speaker 1: now and but uh, you know, uh people would be
Speaker 1: more apt to wear that than they would hearing it,
Speaker 1: like you said, which is, uh, that's really cool. And
Speaker 1: you know, Doc, I really want to thank you. I
Speaker 1: know you have other appointments to do today, but this is,
Speaker 1: like I said, this is a near and dear issue
Speaker 1: to myself and other veterans. Hearing loss is no joke,
Speaker 1: and ringing in the ears, especially at night, like I said,
Speaker 1: when you're trying to sleep, is really really difficult, and
Speaker 1: this is something that could possibly work for a lot
Speaker 1: of our fellow veterans. And and again Neosensory dot Com,
Speaker 1: Dr Eagleman, before we let you go, is there anything
Speaker 1: you'd like to add? You know, I'll just I'll just
Speaker 1: add two things, which is, um, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things we've been doing on the website is we
Speaker 1: have these uh you know, people write in endorsements, but
Speaker 1: they're verified through a third part of company. So if
Speaker 1: anyone's curious, you can see the experience that other people
Speaker 1: have had with this. And so but you know, I'll
Speaker 1: just mention one other things, which is this is a
Speaker 1: method for pushing information into the brain via patterns of
Speaker 1: vibration on the skin. And so we actually have several
Speaker 1: other things going on um where we feed in not
Speaker 1: only hearing information, but other kinds of projects like you know,
Speaker 1: for example, as you're flying a drone, we can feed
Speaker 1: in the pitch y'all role, orientation and heading of the
Speaker 1: drone directly into the skin and into the brain that way,
Speaker 1: and people can come to sort of be one with
Speaker 1: their drone. We're doing all kinds of military applications that
Speaker 1: are very cool with this. You can see infrared. For example,
Speaker 1: we can hook up an infrared camera and you feel
Speaker 1: the infrared information on your wrist. Things like this have
Speaker 1: been very cool for us. But what what we're you know,
Speaker 1: what we're constrating on now, just from the point of
Speaker 1: view of the company and how it runs, is is
Speaker 1: this issue of hearing. But I think, especially for those
Speaker 1: in the military, you'll be seeing more and more of
Speaker 1: us as we're doing these other projects. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask if there's a lot more applications that you
Speaker 1: could use that that Risks band for it, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like yeah, yeah, we actually have seventy seven zero
Speaker 1: applications under development right now. And so actually, if anyone's
Speaker 1: curiously when you go to the website, you can click
Speaker 1: on the developers link and see all kinds, or you
Speaker 1: can click on the blog link and see all the
Speaker 1: different things that we're doing. Yeah, but our main thing
Speaker 1: in this context, you know, hearing and and the ringing
Speaker 1: of the ears that so many people have. Well, that's great,
Speaker 1: And again to all our listeners out there, we we
Speaker 1: definitely recommend you guys checked the sout Neil Sensory dot com.
Speaker 1: Dr David Eagleman, Doc, thank you very very much for
Speaker 1: joining us today. We appreciate your time, uh and all
Speaker 1: the work you're doing to help our fellow veterans. And again,
Speaker 1: if you check out the website, they're they're offering a
Speaker 1: veterans discount and if this can help with hearing loss
Speaker 1: or your tonightus, all the more power to all of
Speaker 1: us because we could all use a little bit of
Speaker 1: a help, you know, wherever we can get it. But
Speaker 1: before we go, and uh, we want to thank our
Speaker 1: guest today. But if you want to get softwarep on
Speaker 1: your phone, download our free mobile app and get easy
Speaker 1: access to our articles, podcasts, and gear reviews all perfectly
Speaker 1: format it to your device. Please subscribe to software dot
Speaker 1: com to get access to our library of e books
Speaker 1: and our exclusive team room forms and content available on
Speaker 1: all your Apple and Android devices. We want to thank
Speaker 1: our guests today, Dr David Eagleman, Doc, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time,
Speaker 1: and you know I'm gonna check out your website as
Speaker 1: soon as we're done here. I would like to get
Speaker 1: a little relief as well. Terrific. All right, well, thank
Speaker 1: you Stephen. To everyone listening, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your service, and we'll look forward to take care and
Speaker 1: from all of us here at software dot com. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with another podcast real soon. From all of
Speaker 1: us here at soft up dot com and soft up Radio,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. We'll be back. You have been listening
Speaker 1: to Self Rep Radio M