November 20, 2021 • 30 mins
In this week's podcast episode, SOFREP senior editor and SOFREP Radio host Steve Balestrieri talks with Dr. David Eagleman a neuroscientist and serial entrepreneur who tries to help people suffering from tinnitus.
It is estimated that one billion people around the world suffer from tinnitus. The condition is especially widespread in the military and veteran community. As Steve says, be it from a gunshot or an artillery barrage tinnitus is a reality in the military. The condition can be excruciating for some and even lead to suicide.
Dr. Eagleman wants to combat this, so he created Neosensory with technology that he spun out of his lab.
Neosensory addresses tinnitus and hearing loss with the help of a bracelet. The bracelet stimulates your sound and touch in order to retrain your brain to listen to the damaged and lost sound frequencies. You wear the bracelet for a period of two months. The results it provides are long-lasting and it reduces tinnitus by 30 percent.
Dr. Eagleman says that what made him undertake his research was the question of whether information can be fed into our brains via unusual channels, i.e. sensory substitution. After all, as Dr. Eagleman explains tinnitus is ultimately a condition of the brain, not the ear.
You can find more about the technology at Neosensory.com.
Neosensory has kindly provided a one-week-long discount for veterans on its Neosensory Duo for Tinnitus. You can claim it just by applying the coupon code "HONOR."
Join us for another SOFREP Radio episode in which we discuss a very important issue for the military community.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M beautiful. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
(00:21):
You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations, military news and
straight talk with the guys in the community. Hello, everyone,
(00:44):
Welcome back to Software Radio, Software Bradio on Time on Target.
We have a very special guest with us today, Dr
David Eagleman is going to talk to us about an
issue that's near and tad to a lot of veterans.
It's uh, tonight's are ringing in the years, I guess
you could say. And I was just telling the doctor online.
I know audiologist called it by a different name, and
(01:07):
we'll talk about that. I felt kind of dumb when
I found out that. But uh, it's it isn't a
laughing matter. I mean, a lot of us suffer with this,
myself included. I've been suffering with this ringing in the
years for over twenty five years. Uh. And so we're
gonna welcome Dr Eagleman to the podcast. Doc, thank you
(01:27):
for taking the time with us today, because this is
uh an issue that probably affects more than a billion
people were wide, I would imagine, Yeah, that's about right. Yeah,
it's fifteen percent of the population has this ringing in
their ears. And obviously this is more common in the
military because of the damage to the inner ear to
(01:49):
what are called the hair cells. They just happen to
be called that in the inner ear um, which you
can get damaged with really loud sounds like explosions and
gunshots nearby things like that. And so a lot of
people suffer from this um. For anyone who doesn't have
tindis or tonitis that can be pronounced either way. For
anyone who doesn't have this um, you know, this is
(02:12):
something that drives people often to the point of to
the brink of suicide. I mean, it is a really
big deal to have a constantly screaming sound going on.
It can be ringing or buzzing, or cicadas or static
e noise, but it's it's a sound that never goes away,
and it can be really distressing to people. Right And
(02:33):
before we get any further, and I do want to
talk about this at length. Uh, you know, Dr Eagelman's
an author, he's a neuroscientist, he's a technologist, he's an entrepreneur.
And can you fill us our listeners in a little
bit about your own background, Yeah, very briefly. So I'm
(02:54):
a neuroscientist at Stanford and I UM and I love
to write books as well. So I've written eight books
now about the brain. Different books. They've been I'm very
happy that they've been UM international bestsellers. And I've been
able to teach a lot of thirty two languages, that's right, yeah,
(03:16):
And so I've been able to bring the stuff that
you know gets me out of bed in the morning
to to a wider audience. And then I made a
documentary on PBS called The Brain with David Eagleman, and
that is also around the world, so that's really nice.
And that what I did is about six years ago,
I spun off a couple of companies from my laboratory
UM and I'm now spending about ninety percent of my
(03:38):
time running these companies UM instead of just running a lab.
So that's an entrepreneur part, you know, when you talked
about tonight, it's so I'll just keep calling it the
way I learned UM. The most frustrating thing for somebody
who suffers from that is that you know it only
(04:01):
you can hear it. And like when I've been to
the v A, they told me, oh, you don't have that,
and I was like, how can you tell me what
I'm hearing? And and as you mentioned a few moments ago,
it's it's extremely frustrating, especially when the room gets very
quiet and you're trying to go to sleep at night
and that that buzzing gets really loud. It gets seems
(04:23):
to get louder. And you know, my wife was one
that had to have the room completely silent and completely dark,
and because of my issue with my ears, we sleep
now with the television on just for the background noise
and it kind of drowns it out and softens it
a little bit so I can sleep. Is that common? Yeah,
(04:47):
so so again, it's about fifteen percent of the world
that has this. It's more common in the military, and um, yeah,
it's it's just unbelievably frustrating. And I'm actually really surprised.
I don't know why the v A told you don't
have it, because tip really it's just a matter of
subjective report, as in, this is what I'm experiencing. It's
typically caused by damage. So when when you're losing part
(05:09):
of your hearing, essentially your brain is running a defensive
activation and it says, oh wait, I was expecting this
frequency to be coming in, but now I'm not really
getting that anymore. So your brain starts generating that frequency.
So actually, like all of hearing, it's really not that
much to do with your ears, it's everything to do
(05:30):
with your brain, and your brain starts screaming off some
particular tone. Yeah, and if the frustrating part is that
there's no there's no available, there's no cure for it.
There's nothing easy that can be done. People are working
on genetic techniques, for example, to say, hey, can we
actually genetically engineer the birth of new hair cells in
(05:53):
the ear? You know, things like this, which are very
admirable pursuits, but it's gonna be a long time before
something that actually exists. So in my company we ended
up um developing a very simple approach. It's not a
cure it but it drives people's tentatives down by about
(06:13):
by about thirty which is quite significant for people's lives. UM,
should I tell you about that? Ivan Shay? Yeah, absolutely good.
I wanted to jump into that and explain how this
works because I saw you on the podcast talking about it,
and I read an article about it, but it kind
(06:35):
of went and went right over my head. So yeah, yeah,
it's really yeah, it's really straightforward. It's just what we're
doing is we're so so we've developed this wrist band
that has vibratory motors on it. So it's got these
different motors on it and so different frequencies of sound,
(06:55):
yet you feel them on your wrist in different places.
So high tone you feel, let's left side, low tone
on the right side, and everyone in between. Okay, what
we do then is we play tones boo boo, boo,
boo boop, and as that's going, you're feeling this on
your wrist. So every time you're hearing a sound, you're
feeling it as as a vibration on your skin. And
(07:16):
you do that just for ten minutes a day, and
it turns out that what this teaches the brain essentially
is what is the difference between an external sound which
gets verification on your skin versus an internal sound like
you're tonitus, which is only heard in your head and
your wrist is not feeling that, And that teaches your brain, oh,
(07:38):
this is actually just an internal sound, and so it
starts paying less attention to it, and it becomes less,
less loud and less aversive. And so this is something. Technically,
this is called bimodal stimulation, which just means it's in
two modes. We're playing a sound and you're feeling something
on your skin. We didn't come up with this. It
was actually UM at the University of Minnesota, and then
(07:59):
a group in Ireland did this where they were shocking
people on the tongue at the same time they were
playing notes and that worked super well, and those results
they published UM a couple of years ago now, and
when I saw this, I thought, wow, I wonder if
this would work. Not shocking on the tongue, which is
by the way, very expensive and you have to go
(08:19):
into the audiologist office every day to do this UM,
but instead, you know, with this wristband that we already
had developed for other purposes, and so we started testing
with this almost a year ago and it works exactly
as well. So we have UM. We've been making this
into a two month rental program so that people rent
(08:39):
this and get shipped to their house. They download the
free app, they listened to Boo boo, boo boo. They
listen to these sounds every day and they feel in
tendens a day, and then after two months they just
stick it in the box and send it back. And
it's worked so well for thousands of people. So it's, uh,
it's been it's been a really lovely thing to to
see this, you know, take a hold in the market. Now,
(09:00):
Like the two month program? How did you guys come
up with that? Is? Is like, after two months, is
your brain trained enough that you you really don't require
that anymore? Is that how you come up with that?
That's exactly right. So when we look at the studies,
what we find is that after two months you have
about as big a result as you're going to get.
(09:22):
In other words, over the first you know, six seven weeks,
things are really steeply changing. By about week eight it's
pretty stabilized. And then it lasts a long time. And
so in this study from Ireland where they did this
bimodal stimulation UM, they tested people a year later and
found that the results held the amount of improvement they
(09:43):
had stayed stayed the same after a year of not
using it any longer. Really, and you know UM company
Now it said you said, people just rent it UM,
so they what is your your company name is what
neo sensor? Is that the name of it? It's Neosensory
dot com. Yeah, neo like New Senses, Yeah, Neosensory dot
(10:06):
Com and uh and this program is called the Neosensory Duo,
this thing with the wrist band plus the plus the sound.
And one of the things that we offer that a
lot of people really liked is we pair this with
um two audiologist visits, So just for a little bit extra,
people can get these telepresent visits the audiologist at the
very beginning and then at the end of it so
(10:27):
they can check in and if their questions answered, that
sort of thing. That's been really that's been really useful
as well. And yeah, so this is available to anyone.
Anyone can contact your company and well within the United States. Yeah,
we're only we're only shipping within the US right now.
Eventually we will keep expanding to the rest of the world.
But right now, do you have audiologists that like, say,
(10:50):
for instance, I live in this state of Florida, do
you have somebody nearby that you would pair up with?
Is just what we're doing now. In this of course
is inspired by you know, coronavirus is everything is virtual,
so we're doing telepresence visits, yeah, which is super useful.
It actually makes the whole world easier. And and you know,
(11:11):
coronavirus has really been awful in so many ways. But
one of the one of the tiny silver linings is
that it's really increased telemedicine. Uh you know, ten years,
it's sort of punched it up like that everyone everyone's
expected tell medicine to be a thing, and now it
finally is a thing that's cool. And um, what what
is the cost of this? It's two d per month um,
(11:35):
and then it's an extra ninety nine dollars to see
the to see the audiologist, so be about three fifty
dollars for for like the the entire program for per
month for two months. And then it should you know, uh,
decreet your you're ringing by about a third, which is
(11:56):
that's pretty substantial. I would substantial in my year exactly.
And not only does it drive it down, but what
what almost everyone reports to us is that they just
find it less aversive. They just find it sort of
less anxiety provoking. Um. Now, by the way, it works
(12:17):
for eight seven percent of people in in our studies
and in the other studies in Ireland, and um, you
know about people find success with this, don't we don't
yet know why we're still um exploring who those percent are. UM.
But you know we have a thirty day money back guarantee.
So anybody who after you know, during the first thirty
(12:38):
days feels like this is not doing any because because
during the first thirty days you can clearly tell that
it's working, and if it's not working, you just return
it and get your money back. Also, wait, I should
just mention because on this podcast that we have a
discount for veterans UM. So that's running for the next
for the next week, it's UM yeah discount code Honor
(12:59):
and uh and you a discount for that. That's awesome.
And now you know the wrist band itself. I know
you said there's a sound, is there like an electric
impulse or some kind of a pressure thing as well?
It's vibration, So so think about it like you know,
the the buzz of your cell phone. Your cell phone
(13:21):
vibrates and you feel that buzzing. So imagine multiple of
those motors along your wrist and so it feels just
like a little pattern of vibration on your wrist in
different locations. Yeah. Yeah, and now UM and I can
show you for those for those who are not uh
listening to the audio only about watching this on YouTube.
(13:42):
You can see the wristband has these bumps on the
inside and these are each these actuators, these vibratory motors there. Yeah,
those are along the inside on the wrist. And I
know that I was reading somewhere. You know, for most veterans,
the causes uh, you know, exposure to weapons, explosions, artillery,
(14:08):
take your pick. But I was reading somewhere that a
lot of the population, the causes are quite different, aren't they. Um. Yeah,
Actually it's it's essentially anything that's causing these cells in
your inner ear to die. And there are million reasons
for that. And even for non veterans, you know, they
go to a loud concerts, they whatever, They work in
(14:31):
a kitchen where there's lots of banging of pots and
pant whatever, So there's a lot of reason that can happen. Actually,
there there are two hundred and twenty different genes that
have been found that correlate with with people losing hearing um.
And the reason I mentioned that number is just to
illustrate this just the enormous number of ways that you
can lose the integrity of your inner ear and all
(14:52):
of those can cause tendinus exactly right. Yeah. I remember
after I get out of the military, I was already
suffering with I had the uh good fortune of being
on stage because a friend of mine was traveling with
the band Metallica, and I was on stage at a
Metallica conscient in my uh my whole head was ringing
(15:14):
for about four days after that. Oh no, yeah, it's
it's so because of the world. Well, that's interesting because
sometimes in retrospect people would trade these things. Yeah, it's
tough because kids really want to go to concert, you know,
young people want to do things that are a loud
(15:34):
you know, I have two kids and I'm always I'm
probably overly protective trying to get them to not do
loud things because I don't want them to suffer when
they're older. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, is there is
there any hope on the horizon for someday being a
cure for this or are we looking way away in
the future. Unfortunately, think we're looking way in the future.
(15:57):
And as I said, I think the best hope is
going to be figuring out how to use genetics or
stem cells to regrow damage cells in the inner ear, uh,
to make them healthy again. But but these cells, just
like all the cells in your brain, actually don't divide anymore.
I mean they're they're already they're set, and when they die,
(16:18):
they die. That's it. You don't get new ones. Um.
And so that's the problem generally with hearing loss, and
tenetus just goes hand in hand with hearing loss. Yeah,
because I was curious, I mean, you know, reading about it,
I was curious, do you consider it more of a
brain issue or ear issue or is it a little
(16:38):
bit of both. Well, it's mostly a brain issue. It
starts in the ear because so the brain is expecting
a certain amount of input coming in through the ears,
and then eventually, let's say, post Metallica concert, you're not
getting any you know, this particular frequency anymore coming in.
Then your brain says, what is going on, I'm gonna
I should generate that frequency. Um. So you know, after
(17:02):
the ear gets damaged, it's all about the brain from
then on. And you know, by the way, we we
originally developed this risk band for hearing loss in general,
not for tennis in particular. It was just for um
when people have let's say, severe or profound hearing loss.
What what this wristband does. There's a microphone built into it.
It's listening to all the sounds and it's representing those sounds.
(17:26):
It's breaking them up into frequencies from low to high
and putting them on your skin and you can hear
the world that way. So for people who are deaf,
they say, oh, you know, someone's knocking on my door,
there's a dog barking, there's a car passing, there's a
baby crying, my doorbells ringing, these sorts of things. They're
all feeling it on their skin and it's tremendously liberating
(17:46):
for them. And you know, it opens up the world
to them because now the world of sound, which was
closed off to them becomes becomes open. And um. You
know it was through developing that for the deaf can unity,
which has been very succe. In fact, we're in we're
on risks all over the world. Uh, for people with
hearing loss. Um, it was through that that we realized, hey,
(18:08):
this also works really well for Tinadi's because these are
so closely related issues. Um. Also, we're about to put
out a new product next quarter for age related hearing loss.
So as you get older, you lose just the high frequencies.
Your your brain is still doing fine at the low stuff,
but you lose the high frequencies and then and then
(18:28):
speech just becomes more effort to understand because you can't
tell someone said feed or seed, or you just can't
tell the difference between certain sounds in the alphabet. So
what we've done now is we're using machine learning on
the wrist band to listen for those particular sounds like
f s and s S and th h s and
d s and vs. And we buzz in different ways
(18:51):
when the wristband hears those different sounds. So in this case,
it's just listening for speech, and it tells you, oh,
I heard this and this. So what this means for
someone with age related hearing losses that their ear is
doing most of the work at the low frequencies and
the wristband is just clarifying what's happening at the high frequencies.
And I know, talking to you offline, you have family
(19:15):
from a military background, and yeah, is that how you
get into this? Um? No, Actually I got in just
from you know, just you know, as a neuroscientist looking
at this issue of what's called sensory substitution. But let
me say, yes, everyone in my family has been in
the military, and it's something I'm very proud of. And
I'm a big supporter of the military, and so so
(19:38):
proud of you guys for what you do, and thank
you guys all for your service. So, UM, I'll tell
you how I got into it. I'm I'm a neuroscientist,
and I started wondering about this issue of how can
you get information into the brain via unusual channels. So
we're used to getting informations through our eyes and our nose,
in our mouth and our ears and stuff like that,
our fingertips, but UM, I saw cash. Could you feed
(20:00):
in let's say, sound information through the skin with that work?
And there there was evidence there was reason to think
that would work already in the literature. So I set
out probably ten years ago now to um to see
if we can do this. And we originally built this
as a vest. Um It looks uh, it looks like
a bulletproof vest, but it has these vibratory motors all
(20:21):
over it, and it's capturing sound and transling that into
patterns on your torso and people can come to understand
the auditory world this way. And that worked really well.
So I gave a talk at the TED conference about
six years ago now, and uh, and then spun this
company out of my lab um, which has been just
(20:42):
a very it's been a very terrific. So what we
did as a company as we you know, the first
thing we did, we shrunk it down from a Vest
tourist band and and as I said, now we're on
wrists all over the world and it's really great to
see the impact that has. Yeah, that was you're already
answered my next question because I had that you had
made it originally an invest and I was going to
(21:03):
ask how large it was. I mean, when you're talking
to Vest, you're you're assuming there's these great, big, you know,
circles of receptacles or whatever you wanna call it on there,
and how you shrunk it down into uh the risk.
I was glad you're able to show that to our
people who who will see it on YouTube, because it's
(21:24):
really thin. It's it's as thin as for those who
are just hearing the audio. The wristband is as thin
as any kind of like, uh, one of those workout
watches that people are it's so popular with today, and uh,
that must have taken some doing. That took some doing.
That's exactly right. And you know the truth is that
(21:46):
the vest was sort of a proof of principle for
us to demonstrate, Wow, this is possible, it's actually gonna work. Um.
But then you know, once you start a company, which
was by the way, very educational for me because I
had just been an acade me and then I moved
into the entrepreneurial world and yeah, I realized there's all
these issues about making it so that people will actually
use it and wear it. And I realized that nobody
(22:09):
wants to wear a vest. Nobody's going to wear a
vestaurant every day. Um. Yeah, So we shrunk it down.
I mean, I've got this terrific team. All the credit
goes to the all the folks of all the hardware
and the firmware and the algorithms and so on, and
the manufacture of this and and now um yeah, so
now it works as a small product and this is
actually um, you know, this is our first version, which
(22:29):
has been very successful. But um, you know, in future versions,
we'll get it even smaller and smaller as battery density
increases and the rest of the world moves forward. In tech,
we can take advantage of those moves. Yeah, you know,
it was funny because uh uh you know, I I
found out to you about you and your company through
(22:50):
you know, one of your people, Andrea I Cardi, who
was on with us before we started recording. And I
he was like a tech guy, like a possible neuroscientists
like yourself. But he's like in the music industry. And
as we talked about how he came about you, was
(23:13):
he had hearing loss and ringing in the years as well.
I thought that was really interesting part of your company there. Yeah,
that's right, that's right. In fact, um, yeah, my my
former graduate student who I co founded the company with.
He's also a musician, and you know, but like Andrea's
father is a neuroscientist and he's you know, Andrea lives
(23:33):
in the tech world, and so this was an intersection
for him. Pretty much everybody who works at our company,
there's some intersection there of interest in tech, interest in
the brain, and uh, interest in the entrepreneurial world. That's awesome.
And um again, folks, you know, if you're like myself
and thousands of other veterans neosensory dot Com, I mean
(23:58):
and again, you guys are offering a a veteran's discount,
I mean a thirty three percent reduction in that ringing
in the years would be substantial, and we definitely want
to encourage all of our listeners out there and our
readers for software dot com to check this out. If
(24:20):
you know somebody who's a veteran that's suffering, that's right.
And also, you know, I want to say, I mean
Tonight's is just it's a big it's a big issue
with veterans UM but also hearing loss in general. And
so there's lots of a lot of people picked us
up for tonightus and then find that it's really useful
for them just for being able to hear everything that's
going on. And as I said, we're about to release
(24:42):
this new thing next quarter which will be for you know,
if you're just having trouble with high frequencies, so you know,
if anyone's having high if everyone's having hearing lass in general,
the thing is um as you probably know, a lot
of people who should wear hearing aids don't wear here aids.
And part of the reason is that it's socially embarrassing
(25:02):
for people. Nobody wants to feel old. Nobody wants to
feel like they've got something wrong, and so, um, one
of the advantages this has had for us is that,
as he said, it looks like a fitbit, and um,
no one even notices you're wearing it. And uh, with
our next product that's coming out for high frequency hearing loss,
someone one of our study participants just wrote to us
(25:23):
and said it's better than his six thousand dollar hearing
aids in terms of allowing him to understand speech. And
so I think this is I think this is just
a sort of a funny side note about social whatever
what allows people to to wear something, And it's just
been very useful. So you know, I hope anyone out
there who's suffering from hearing loss will we'll consider trying
(25:47):
this out. Yeah, and you know, for somebody who wears
hearing ages as well. Right now, I have my earbuds
in for that, you know, for the podcast, but I
wear them and it does help with the not only hearing,
but it does muffle a little bit of that tonight
is something. But you can't wear them to bed. But uh, this,
(26:09):
you know, you're like you. I didn't want to say
fitbit because I thought maybe that was a you know,
uh one of those. It's almost like a common down
now and but uh, you know, uh people would be
more apt to wear that than they would hearing it,
like you said, which is, uh, that's really cool. And
(26:31):
you know, Doc, I really want to thank you. I
know you have other appointments to do today, but this is,
like I said, this is a near and dear issue
to myself and other veterans. Hearing loss is no joke,
and ringing in the ears, especially at night, like I said,
when you're trying to sleep, is really really difficult, and
this is something that could possibly work for a lot
(26:55):
of our fellow veterans. And and again Neosensory dot Com,
Dr Eagleman, before we let you go, is there anything
you'd like to add? You know, I'll just I'll just
add two things, which is, um, you know, one of
the things we've been doing on the website is we
have these uh you know, people write in endorsements, but
they're verified through a third part of company. So if
anyone's curious, you can see the experience that other people
(27:19):
have had with this. And so but you know, I'll
just mention one other things, which is this is a
method for pushing information into the brain via patterns of
vibration on the skin. And so we actually have several
other things going on um where we feed in not
only hearing information, but other kinds of projects like you know,
for example, as you're flying a drone, we can feed
(27:41):
in the pitch y'all role, orientation and heading of the
drone directly into the skin and into the brain that way,
and people can come to sort of be one with
their drone. We're doing all kinds of military applications that
are very cool with this. You can see infrared. For example,
we can hook up an infrared camera and you feel
the infrared information on your wrist. Things like this have
(28:04):
been very cool for us. But what what we're you know,
what we're constrating on now, just from the point of
view of the company and how it runs, is is
this issue of hearing. But I think, especially for those
in the military, you'll be seeing more and more of
us as we're doing these other projects. Yeah, I was
gonna ask if there's a lot more applications that you
(28:25):
could use that that Risks band for it, and it
sounds like yeah, yeah, we actually have seventy seven zero
applications under development right now. And so actually, if anyone's
curiously when you go to the website, you can click
on the developers link and see all kinds, or you
can click on the blog link and see all the
different things that we're doing. Yeah, but our main thing
(28:48):
in this context, you know, hearing and and the ringing
of the ears that so many people have. Well, that's great,
And again to all our listeners out there, we we
definitely recommend you guys checked the sout Neil Sensory dot com.
Dr David Eagleman, Doc, thank you very very much for
joining us today. We appreciate your time, uh and all
(29:09):
the work you're doing to help our fellow veterans. And again,
if you check out the website, they're they're offering a
veterans discount and if this can help with hearing loss
or your tonightus, all the more power to all of
us because we could all use a little bit of
a help, you know, wherever we can get it. But
before we go, and uh, we want to thank our
(29:32):
guest today. But if you want to get softwarep on
your phone, download our free mobile app and get easy
access to our articles, podcasts, and gear reviews all perfectly
format it to your device. Please subscribe to software dot
com to get access to our library of e books
and our exclusive team room forms and content available on
all your Apple and Android devices. We want to thank
(29:54):
our guests today, Dr David Eagleman, Doc, thank you very
much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time,
and you know I'm gonna check out your website as
soon as we're done here. I would like to get
a little relief as well. Terrific. All right, well, thank
you Stephen. To everyone listening, thank you so much for
(30:14):
your service, and we'll look forward to take care and
from all of us here at software dot com. We'll
be back with another podcast real soon. From all of
us here at soft up dot com and soft up Radio,
thanks for listening. We'll be back. You have been listening
(30:45):
to Self Rep Radio M
M beautiful. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
(00:21):
You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations, military news and
straight talk with the guys in the community. Hello, everyone,
(00:44):
Welcome back to Software Radio, Software Bradio on Time on Target.
We have a very special guest with us today, Dr
David Eagleman is going to talk to us about an
issue that's near and tad to a lot of veterans.
It's uh, tonight's are ringing in the years, I guess
you could say. And I was just telling the doctor online.
I know audiologist called it by a different name, and
(01:07):
we'll talk about that. I felt kind of dumb when
I found out that. But uh, it's it isn't a
laughing matter. I mean, a lot of us suffer with this,
myself included. I've been suffering with this ringing in the
years for over twenty five years. Uh. And so we're
gonna welcome Dr Eagleman to the podcast. Doc, thank you
(01:27):
for taking the time with us today, because this is
uh an issue that probably affects more than a billion
people were wide, I would imagine, Yeah, that's about right. Yeah,
it's fifteen percent of the population has this ringing in
their ears. And obviously this is more common in the
military because of the damage to the inner ear to
(01:49):
what are called the hair cells. They just happen to
be called that in the inner ear um, which you
can get damaged with really loud sounds like explosions and
gunshots nearby things like that. And so a lot of
people suffer from this um. For anyone who doesn't have
tindis or tonitis that can be pronounced either way. For
anyone who doesn't have this um, you know, this is
(02:12):
something that drives people often to the point of to
the brink of suicide. I mean, it is a really
big deal to have a constantly screaming sound going on.
It can be ringing or buzzing, or cicadas or static
e noise, but it's it's a sound that never goes away,
and it can be really distressing to people. Right And
(02:33):
before we get any further, and I do want to
talk about this at length. Uh, you know, Dr Eagelman's
an author, he's a neuroscientist, he's a technologist, he's an entrepreneur.
And can you fill us our listeners in a little
bit about your own background, Yeah, very briefly. So I'm
(02:54):
a neuroscientist at Stanford and I UM and I love
to write books as well. So I've written eight books
now about the brain. Different books. They've been I'm very
happy that they've been UM international bestsellers. And I've been
able to teach a lot of thirty two languages, that's right, yeah,
(03:16):
And so I've been able to bring the stuff that
you know gets me out of bed in the morning
to to a wider audience. And then I made a
documentary on PBS called The Brain with David Eagleman, and
that is also around the world, so that's really nice.
And that what I did is about six years ago,
I spun off a couple of companies from my laboratory
UM and I'm now spending about ninety percent of my
(03:38):
time running these companies UM instead of just running a lab.
So that's an entrepreneur part, you know, when you talked
about tonight, it's so I'll just keep calling it the
way I learned UM. The most frustrating thing for somebody
who suffers from that is that you know it only
(04:01):
you can hear it. And like when I've been to
the v A, they told me, oh, you don't have that,
and I was like, how can you tell me what
I'm hearing? And and as you mentioned a few moments ago,
it's it's extremely frustrating, especially when the room gets very
quiet and you're trying to go to sleep at night
and that that buzzing gets really loud. It gets seems
(04:23):
to get louder. And you know, my wife was one
that had to have the room completely silent and completely dark,
and because of my issue with my ears, we sleep
now with the television on just for the background noise
and it kind of drowns it out and softens it
a little bit so I can sleep. Is that common? Yeah,
(04:47):
so so again, it's about fifteen percent of the world
that has this. It's more common in the military, and um, yeah,
it's it's just unbelievably frustrating. And I'm actually really surprised.
I don't know why the v A told you don't
have it, because tip really it's just a matter of
subjective report, as in, this is what I'm experiencing. It's
typically caused by damage. So when when you're losing part
(05:09):
of your hearing, essentially your brain is running a defensive
activation and it says, oh wait, I was expecting this
frequency to be coming in, but now I'm not really
getting that anymore. So your brain starts generating that frequency.
So actually, like all of hearing, it's really not that
much to do with your ears, it's everything to do
(05:30):
with your brain, and your brain starts screaming off some
particular tone. Yeah, and if the frustrating part is that
there's no there's no available, there's no cure for it.
There's nothing easy that can be done. People are working
on genetic techniques, for example, to say, hey, can we
actually genetically engineer the birth of new hair cells in
(05:53):
the ear? You know, things like this, which are very
admirable pursuits, but it's gonna be a long time before
something that actually exists. So in my company we ended
up um developing a very simple approach. It's not a
cure it but it drives people's tentatives down by about
(06:13):
by about thirty which is quite significant for people's lives. UM,
should I tell you about that? Ivan Shay? Yeah, absolutely good.
I wanted to jump into that and explain how this
works because I saw you on the podcast talking about it,
and I read an article about it, but it kind
(06:35):
of went and went right over my head. So yeah, yeah,
it's really yeah, it's really straightforward. It's just what we're
doing is we're so so we've developed this wrist band
that has vibratory motors on it. So it's got these
different motors on it and so different frequencies of sound,
(06:55):
yet you feel them on your wrist in different places.
So high tone you feel, let's left side, low tone
on the right side, and everyone in between. Okay, what
we do then is we play tones boo boo, boo,
boo boop, and as that's going, you're feeling this on
your wrist. So every time you're hearing a sound, you're
feeling it as as a vibration on your skin. And
(07:16):
you do that just for ten minutes a day, and
it turns out that what this teaches the brain essentially
is what is the difference between an external sound which
gets verification on your skin versus an internal sound like
you're tonitus, which is only heard in your head and
your wrist is not feeling that, And that teaches your brain, oh,
(07:38):
this is actually just an internal sound, and so it
starts paying less attention to it, and it becomes less,
less loud and less aversive. And so this is something. Technically,
this is called bimodal stimulation, which just means it's in
two modes. We're playing a sound and you're feeling something
on your skin. We didn't come up with this. It
was actually UM at the University of Minnesota, and then
(07:59):
a group in Ireland did this where they were shocking
people on the tongue at the same time they were
playing notes and that worked super well, and those results
they published UM a couple of years ago now, and
when I saw this, I thought, wow, I wonder if
this would work. Not shocking on the tongue, which is
by the way, very expensive and you have to go
(08:19):
into the audiologist office every day to do this UM,
but instead, you know, with this wristband that we already
had developed for other purposes, and so we started testing
with this almost a year ago and it works exactly
as well. So we have UM. We've been making this
into a two month rental program so that people rent
(08:39):
this and get shipped to their house. They download the
free app, they listened to Boo boo, boo boo. They
listen to these sounds every day and they feel in
tendens a day, and then after two months they just
stick it in the box and send it back. And
it's worked so well for thousands of people. So it's, uh,
it's been it's been a really lovely thing to to
see this, you know, take a hold in the market. Now,
(09:00):
Like the two month program? How did you guys come
up with that? Is? Is like, after two months, is
your brain trained enough that you you really don't require
that anymore? Is that how you come up with that?
That's exactly right. So when we look at the studies,
what we find is that after two months you have
about as big a result as you're going to get.
(09:22):
In other words, over the first you know, six seven weeks,
things are really steeply changing. By about week eight it's
pretty stabilized. And then it lasts a long time. And
so in this study from Ireland where they did this
bimodal stimulation UM, they tested people a year later and
found that the results held the amount of improvement they
(09:43):
had stayed stayed the same after a year of not
using it any longer. Really, and you know UM company
Now it said you said, people just rent it UM,
so they what is your your company name is what
neo sensor? Is that the name of it? It's Neosensory
dot com. Yeah, neo like New Senses, Yeah, Neosensory dot
(10:06):
Com and uh and this program is called the Neosensory Duo,
this thing with the wrist band plus the plus the sound.
And one of the things that we offer that a
lot of people really liked is we pair this with
um two audiologist visits, So just for a little bit extra,
people can get these telepresent visits the audiologist at the
very beginning and then at the end of it so
(10:27):
they can check in and if their questions answered, that
sort of thing. That's been really that's been really useful
as well. And yeah, so this is available to anyone.
Anyone can contact your company and well within the United States. Yeah,
we're only we're only shipping within the US right now.
Eventually we will keep expanding to the rest of the world.
But right now, do you have audiologists that like, say,
(10:50):
for instance, I live in this state of Florida, do
you have somebody nearby that you would pair up with?
Is just what we're doing now. In this of course
is inspired by you know, coronavirus is everything is virtual,
so we're doing telepresence visits, yeah, which is super useful.
It actually makes the whole world easier. And and you know,
(11:11):
coronavirus has really been awful in so many ways. But
one of the one of the tiny silver linings is
that it's really increased telemedicine. Uh you know, ten years,
it's sort of punched it up like that everyone everyone's
expected tell medicine to be a thing, and now it
finally is a thing that's cool. And um, what what
is the cost of this? It's two d per month um,
(11:35):
and then it's an extra ninety nine dollars to see
the to see the audiologist, so be about three fifty
dollars for for like the the entire program for per
month for two months. And then it should you know, uh,
decreet your you're ringing by about a third, which is
(11:56):
that's pretty substantial. I would substantial in my year exactly.
And not only does it drive it down, but what
what almost everyone reports to us is that they just
find it less aversive. They just find it sort of
less anxiety provoking. Um. Now, by the way, it works
(12:17):
for eight seven percent of people in in our studies
and in the other studies in Ireland, and um, you
know about people find success with this, don't we don't
yet know why we're still um exploring who those percent are. UM.
But you know we have a thirty day money back guarantee.
So anybody who after you know, during the first thirty
(12:38):
days feels like this is not doing any because because
during the first thirty days you can clearly tell that
it's working, and if it's not working, you just return
it and get your money back. Also, wait, I should
just mention because on this podcast that we have a
discount for veterans UM. So that's running for the next
for the next week, it's UM yeah discount code Honor
(12:59):
and uh and you a discount for that. That's awesome.
And now you know the wrist band itself. I know
you said there's a sound, is there like an electric
impulse or some kind of a pressure thing as well?
It's vibration, So so think about it like you know,
the the buzz of your cell phone. Your cell phone
(13:21):
vibrates and you feel that buzzing. So imagine multiple of
those motors along your wrist and so it feels just
like a little pattern of vibration on your wrist in
different locations. Yeah. Yeah, and now UM and I can
show you for those for those who are not uh
listening to the audio only about watching this on YouTube.
(13:42):
You can see the wristband has these bumps on the
inside and these are each these actuators, these vibratory motors there. Yeah,
those are along the inside on the wrist. And I
know that I was reading somewhere. You know, for most veterans,
the causes uh, you know, exposure to weapons, explosions, artillery,
(14:08):
take your pick. But I was reading somewhere that a
lot of the population, the causes are quite different, aren't they. Um. Yeah,
Actually it's it's essentially anything that's causing these cells in
your inner ear to die. And there are million reasons
for that. And even for non veterans, you know, they
go to a loud concerts, they whatever, They work in
(14:31):
a kitchen where there's lots of banging of pots and
pant whatever, So there's a lot of reason that can happen. Actually,
there there are two hundred and twenty different genes that
have been found that correlate with with people losing hearing um.
And the reason I mentioned that number is just to
illustrate this just the enormous number of ways that you
can lose the integrity of your inner ear and all
(14:52):
of those can cause tendinus exactly right. Yeah. I remember
after I get out of the military, I was already
suffering with I had the uh good fortune of being
on stage because a friend of mine was traveling with
the band Metallica, and I was on stage at a
Metallica conscient in my uh my whole head was ringing
(15:14):
for about four days after that. Oh no, yeah, it's
it's so because of the world. Well, that's interesting because
sometimes in retrospect people would trade these things. Yeah, it's
tough because kids really want to go to concert, you know,
young people want to do things that are a loud
(15:34):
you know, I have two kids and I'm always I'm
probably overly protective trying to get them to not do
loud things because I don't want them to suffer when
they're older. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, is there is
there any hope on the horizon for someday being a
cure for this or are we looking way away in
the future. Unfortunately, think we're looking way in the future.
(15:57):
And as I said, I think the best hope is
going to be figuring out how to use genetics or
stem cells to regrow damage cells in the inner ear, uh,
to make them healthy again. But but these cells, just
like all the cells in your brain, actually don't divide anymore.
I mean they're they're already they're set, and when they die,
(16:18):
they die. That's it. You don't get new ones. Um.
And so that's the problem generally with hearing loss, and
tenetus just goes hand in hand with hearing loss. Yeah,
because I was curious, I mean, you know, reading about it,
I was curious, do you consider it more of a
brain issue or ear issue or is it a little
(16:38):
bit of both. Well, it's mostly a brain issue. It
starts in the ear because so the brain is expecting
a certain amount of input coming in through the ears,
and then eventually, let's say, post Metallica concert, you're not
getting any you know, this particular frequency anymore coming in.
Then your brain says, what is going on, I'm gonna
I should generate that frequency. Um. So you know, after
(17:02):
the ear gets damaged, it's all about the brain from
then on. And you know, by the way, we we
originally developed this risk band for hearing loss in general,
not for tennis in particular. It was just for um
when people have let's say, severe or profound hearing loss.
What what this wristband does. There's a microphone built into it.
It's listening to all the sounds and it's representing those sounds.
(17:26):
It's breaking them up into frequencies from low to high
and putting them on your skin and you can hear
the world that way. So for people who are deaf,
they say, oh, you know, someone's knocking on my door,
there's a dog barking, there's a car passing, there's a
baby crying, my doorbells ringing, these sorts of things. They're
all feeling it on their skin and it's tremendously liberating
(17:46):
for them. And you know, it opens up the world
to them because now the world of sound, which was
closed off to them becomes becomes open. And um. You
know it was through developing that for the deaf can unity,
which has been very succe. In fact, we're in we're
on risks all over the world. Uh, for people with
hearing loss. Um, it was through that that we realized, hey,
(18:08):
this also works really well for Tinadi's because these are
so closely related issues. Um. Also, we're about to put
out a new product next quarter for age related hearing loss.
So as you get older, you lose just the high frequencies.
Your your brain is still doing fine at the low stuff,
but you lose the high frequencies and then and then
(18:28):
speech just becomes more effort to understand because you can't
tell someone said feed or seed, or you just can't
tell the difference between certain sounds in the alphabet. So
what we've done now is we're using machine learning on
the wrist band to listen for those particular sounds like
f s and s S and th h s and
d s and vs. And we buzz in different ways
(18:51):
when the wristband hears those different sounds. So in this case,
it's just listening for speech, and it tells you, oh,
I heard this and this. So what this means for
someone with age related hearing losses that their ear is
doing most of the work at the low frequencies and
the wristband is just clarifying what's happening at the high frequencies.
And I know, talking to you offline, you have family
(19:15):
from a military background, and yeah, is that how you
get into this? Um? No, Actually I got in just
from you know, just you know, as a neuroscientist looking
at this issue of what's called sensory substitution. But let
me say, yes, everyone in my family has been in
the military, and it's something I'm very proud of. And
I'm a big supporter of the military, and so so
(19:38):
proud of you guys for what you do, and thank
you guys all for your service. So, UM, I'll tell
you how I got into it. I'm I'm a neuroscientist,
and I started wondering about this issue of how can
you get information into the brain via unusual channels. So
we're used to getting informations through our eyes and our nose,
in our mouth and our ears and stuff like that,
our fingertips, but UM, I saw cash. Could you feed
(20:00):
in let's say, sound information through the skin with that work?
And there there was evidence there was reason to think
that would work already in the literature. So I set
out probably ten years ago now to um to see
if we can do this. And we originally built this
as a vest. Um It looks uh, it looks like
a bulletproof vest, but it has these vibratory motors all
(20:21):
over it, and it's capturing sound and transling that into
patterns on your torso and people can come to understand
the auditory world this way. And that worked really well.
So I gave a talk at the TED conference about
six years ago now, and uh, and then spun this
company out of my lab um, which has been just
(20:42):
a very it's been a very terrific. So what we
did as a company as we you know, the first
thing we did, we shrunk it down from a Vest
tourist band and and as I said, now we're on
wrists all over the world and it's really great to
see the impact that has. Yeah, that was you're already
answered my next question because I had that you had
made it originally an invest and I was going to
(21:03):
ask how large it was. I mean, when you're talking
to Vest, you're you're assuming there's these great, big, you know,
circles of receptacles or whatever you wanna call it on there,
and how you shrunk it down into uh the risk.
I was glad you're able to show that to our
people who who will see it on YouTube, because it's
(21:24):
really thin. It's it's as thin as for those who
are just hearing the audio. The wristband is as thin
as any kind of like, uh, one of those workout
watches that people are it's so popular with today, and uh,
that must have taken some doing. That took some doing.
That's exactly right. And you know the truth is that
(21:46):
the vest was sort of a proof of principle for
us to demonstrate, Wow, this is possible, it's actually gonna work. Um.
But then you know, once you start a company, which
was by the way, very educational for me because I
had just been an acade me and then I moved
into the entrepreneurial world and yeah, I realized there's all
these issues about making it so that people will actually
use it and wear it. And I realized that nobody
(22:09):
wants to wear a vest. Nobody's going to wear a
vestaurant every day. Um. Yeah, So we shrunk it down.
I mean, I've got this terrific team. All the credit
goes to the all the folks of all the hardware
and the firmware and the algorithms and so on, and
the manufacture of this and and now um yeah, so
now it works as a small product and this is
actually um, you know, this is our first version, which
(22:29):
has been very successful. But um, you know, in future versions,
we'll get it even smaller and smaller as battery density
increases and the rest of the world moves forward. In tech,
we can take advantage of those moves. Yeah, you know,
it was funny because uh uh you know, I I
found out to you about you and your company through
(22:50):
you know, one of your people, Andrea I Cardi, who
was on with us before we started recording. And I
he was like a tech guy, like a possible neuroscientists
like yourself. But he's like in the music industry. And
as we talked about how he came about you, was
(23:13):
he had hearing loss and ringing in the years as well.
I thought that was really interesting part of your company there. Yeah,
that's right, that's right. In fact, um, yeah, my my
former graduate student who I co founded the company with.
He's also a musician, and you know, but like Andrea's
father is a neuroscientist and he's you know, Andrea lives
(23:33):
in the tech world, and so this was an intersection
for him. Pretty much everybody who works at our company,
there's some intersection there of interest in tech, interest in
the brain, and uh, interest in the entrepreneurial world. That's awesome.
And um again, folks, you know, if you're like myself
and thousands of other veterans neosensory dot Com, I mean
(23:58):
and again, you guys are offering a a veteran's discount,
I mean a thirty three percent reduction in that ringing
in the years would be substantial, and we definitely want
to encourage all of our listeners out there and our
readers for software dot com to check this out. If
(24:20):
you know somebody who's a veteran that's suffering, that's right.
And also, you know, I want to say, I mean
Tonight's is just it's a big it's a big issue
with veterans UM but also hearing loss in general. And
so there's lots of a lot of people picked us
up for tonightus and then find that it's really useful
for them just for being able to hear everything that's
going on. And as I said, we're about to release
(24:42):
this new thing next quarter which will be for you know,
if you're just having trouble with high frequencies, so you know,
if anyone's having high if everyone's having hearing lass in general,
the thing is um as you probably know, a lot
of people who should wear hearing aids don't wear here aids.
And part of the reason is that it's socially embarrassing
(25:02):
for people. Nobody wants to feel old. Nobody wants to
feel like they've got something wrong, and so, um, one
of the advantages this has had for us is that,
as he said, it looks like a fitbit, and um,
no one even notices you're wearing it. And uh, with
our next product that's coming out for high frequency hearing loss,
someone one of our study participants just wrote to us
(25:23):
and said it's better than his six thousand dollar hearing
aids in terms of allowing him to understand speech. And
so I think this is I think this is just
a sort of a funny side note about social whatever
what allows people to to wear something, And it's just
been very useful. So you know, I hope anyone out
there who's suffering from hearing loss will we'll consider trying
(25:47):
this out. Yeah, and you know, for somebody who wears
hearing ages as well. Right now, I have my earbuds
in for that, you know, for the podcast, but I
wear them and it does help with the not only hearing,
but it does muffle a little bit of that tonight
is something. But you can't wear them to bed. But uh, this,
(26:09):
you know, you're like you. I didn't want to say
fitbit because I thought maybe that was a you know,
uh one of those. It's almost like a common down
now and but uh, you know, uh people would be
more apt to wear that than they would hearing it,
like you said, which is, uh, that's really cool. And
(26:31):
you know, Doc, I really want to thank you. I
know you have other appointments to do today, but this is,
like I said, this is a near and dear issue
to myself and other veterans. Hearing loss is no joke,
and ringing in the ears, especially at night, like I said,
when you're trying to sleep, is really really difficult, and
this is something that could possibly work for a lot
(26:55):
of our fellow veterans. And and again Neosensory dot Com,
Dr Eagleman, before we let you go, is there anything
you'd like to add? You know, I'll just I'll just
add two things, which is, um, you know, one of
the things we've been doing on the website is we
have these uh you know, people write in endorsements, but
they're verified through a third part of company. So if
anyone's curious, you can see the experience that other people
(27:19):
have had with this. And so but you know, I'll
just mention one other things, which is this is a
method for pushing information into the brain via patterns of
vibration on the skin. And so we actually have several
other things going on um where we feed in not
only hearing information, but other kinds of projects like you know,
for example, as you're flying a drone, we can feed
(27:41):
in the pitch y'all role, orientation and heading of the
drone directly into the skin and into the brain that way,
and people can come to sort of be one with
their drone. We're doing all kinds of military applications that
are very cool with this. You can see infrared. For example,
we can hook up an infrared camera and you feel
the infrared information on your wrist. Things like this have
(28:04):
been very cool for us. But what what we're you know,
what we're constrating on now, just from the point of
view of the company and how it runs, is is
this issue of hearing. But I think, especially for those
in the military, you'll be seeing more and more of
us as we're doing these other projects. Yeah, I was
gonna ask if there's a lot more applications that you
(28:25):
could use that that Risks band for it, and it
sounds like yeah, yeah, we actually have seventy seven zero
applications under development right now. And so actually, if anyone's
curiously when you go to the website, you can click
on the developers link and see all kinds, or you
can click on the blog link and see all the
different things that we're doing. Yeah, but our main thing
(28:48):
in this context, you know, hearing and and the ringing
of the ears that so many people have. Well, that's great,
And again to all our listeners out there, we we
definitely recommend you guys checked the sout Neil Sensory dot com.
Dr David Eagleman, Doc, thank you very very much for
joining us today. We appreciate your time, uh and all
(29:09):
the work you're doing to help our fellow veterans. And again,
if you check out the website, they're they're offering a
veterans discount and if this can help with hearing loss
or your tonightus, all the more power to all of
us because we could all use a little bit of
a help, you know, wherever we can get it. But
before we go, and uh, we want to thank our
(29:32):
guest today. But if you want to get softwarep on
your phone, download our free mobile app and get easy
access to our articles, podcasts, and gear reviews all perfectly
format it to your device. Please subscribe to software dot
com to get access to our library of e books
and our exclusive team room forms and content available on
all your Apple and Android devices. We want to thank
(29:54):
our guests today, Dr David Eagleman, Doc, thank you very
much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time,
and you know I'm gonna check out your website as
soon as we're done here. I would like to get
a little relief as well. Terrific. All right, well, thank
you Stephen. To everyone listening, thank you so much for
(30:14):
your service, and we'll look forward to take care and
from all of us here at software dot com. We'll
be back with another podcast real soon. From all of
us here at soft up dot com and soft up Radio,
thanks for listening. We'll be back. You have been listening
(30:45):
to Self Rep Radio M
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