221 Amir Bozorgzadeh - Solving the Cognition Crisis

In this episode, Jason and Amir discuss:

• The role of virtual reality in the detection and potential delay of cognitive illnesses, exemplified by Virtuleap
• The cultivation of gratefulness and the significance of being present in everyday life
• Amir's personal and professional journey leading to the creation of Virtuleap and the fusion of VR with neuroscience
• Addressing the cognition crisis with VR tools designed for cognitive enhancement and emotional well-being
• The contrast between the negative effects of addictive social media and the constructive use of VR technology for cognitive development

Key Takeaways:

• Virtual reality holds significant promise in the early detection and treatment of cognitive health issues. Its immersive and interactive nature can aid in early diagnosis and support treatment processes.
• Gratefulness and mindfulness in daily life are crucial in maintaining meaningful relationships and personal well-being.
• Entrepreneurial ventures can emerge from diverse cultural experiences, contributing to innovative solutions in technology.
• Gamified cognitive training within virtual reality can offer a multifaceted approach to improving mental health and focus.
• Mindful technology such as Virtuleap's VR programs can counterbalance the negative impacts of social media on attention and cognition.

“If you notice a cognitive deficit, like an inability to concentrate, and work to compensate for it, it can help with emotional regulation. These aspects are deeply interconnected, and we're currently experiencing a cognition crisis. Our tool increases awareness of cognitive performance as an indicator of mental health. With this awareness, you can take action, because without it, there's no opportunity for improvement. ”

 - Amir Bozorgzadeh

Connect with Amir Bozorgzadeh:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Email
  
  

Connect with Steve and Jason:

• LinkedIn: Jason or Steve

• Website: Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking

• Email: grow@rewireinc.com
  
  

Listen to the podcast here:

Hello, and welcome, everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. I've got a guest from another part of the world right now, both in terms of geography, and then also of subject matter that you typically will hear. My guest today is Amir Bozorgzadeh. Amir is co-founder and CEO of Virtuleap, which is a VR startup that unlocks neuroscience in order to detect and delay early onset of cognitive illness, like Alzheimer's. If you are aware of anybody or know anybody that has issues with ADHD, Alzheimer's, or just want to know what happens when you watch and scroll social apps like TikTok, or Instagram, this is something that Amir has a lot to say about and is actually putting his money where his mouth is and his efforts where his mouth is, and helping with those types of things. So, Amir, welcome to the show, my friend.

Thank you for having me, Jason.

Amir, my first question outside of the box is, and we're gonna get to neuroscience, we're gonna get to some of your background and the exciting things that you're doing right now, but before we get to any of that, the first question that we ask every guest to get ourselves facing in the right direction is, as you and I interact with one another, across the Internet and across geography, I'd love to be aware of and make our audience aware of what or who is it that you're grateful for today?

It's a really good one. And I think when you ask a question like that, the natural response is to pause, because if it's a ready-made answer, I don't really trust it.

Mm hmm.

The part of us that, you know, has a ready-made answer, it's kind of like a package of something on aisle nine, ready to go.

Take your time. I already like where you're going.

And, you know, there's a lot of things that if we do take them for granted, we don't notice them, we're not aware of them, you know, by default. And if that's the case, then it kind of ensures that tomorrow is going to be exactly a Groundhog Day repetition of today. So, I think it's almost like the same question of kind of like lessons learned and so on, you know? You might take something for granted yesterday, but you might have a realization today of it, and that can have a profound impact, at least for the next 10 minutes. You might completely go back to slumber sleep on that potential thing, you know, quite shortly. And so I think it'd be, you know, what am I grateful for this morning, you know, is a conversation and the smile of my wife, you know? And it's something I don't want to take for granted for moment by moment. I have a friend of mine whose father is in a very severe degree of Alzheimer's, and by all measures, he is no longer present to his life. You know, it's really a profound situation for a son with his with his parent. And so, knowing that moment, would you be able to go, would you if you had the chance to go backwards in time and speak to all the versions of yourself that were younger and had those moments of lucidity with your father, with your parent, would you take that moment for granted? So that's the kind of it's the relationships, I suppose that I have today.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that answer. There are some people that, you know, we've done this, I don't know, 220, 230 times a year and there's some people that boom right away there's an answer and there's some people who kind of ponder, but yeah, I appreciate that answer. Thank you. Every single moment counts, especially when you put it in the context that you put it in. Amir, you are on the other part of the world right now. You're in Barcelona, I'm in Maryland, in the US, and here we are talking to one another. Tell us a little bit of one, your background, and then two, what exactly is it that you all are doing at Virtuleap?

I grew up in Vancouver, Canada, since the age of four. My parents are immigrants from Iran. I became an expat since 2008, eight years in Dubai, a stint of time in Amsterdam, then four and a half years in Lisbon, Portugal, and since the last two and a half years here in Barcelona, Spain with my wife, who is herself Spanish. Professionally, aside from the gypsy-ness traveling in my background, it's really not something that I can narrate why it happened the way it is. It's kind of like for me, my perspective on it is like a rat in a maze is being flooded and you're just trying to go from one door to the other. That sounds pretty dramatic and negative, but it's like which doors will open and the doors that open, open, and I went through them. You know, in a way then they’re blessings and you can explain your path in such a way that you kind of made decisions the whole way through, and I cannot pretend that was the case. Professionally, I was a market researcher. Then I was a games publisher. And when I became, after that a writer for blogs like TechCrunch and VentureBeat, I decided during the three or four years to just cover the virtual reality in emerging technology space, because I wanted to enter it. I wanted to do cool things in that space, but I didn't know how. I had no real business there. I have no technical background. I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm not a Doogie Howser. I get to use that reference with you, whereas I can not use that reference in Spain. Nobody will do what the hell I'm talking about.

No, I get it. So do most of my listeners.

So, I am not a Doogie Howser of anything technical, so what can I do in that space? Because I had an experience in VR, with my fear of heights, my vertigo, I had used a virtual reality experience where I was flying on top of, you know, up at the top of New York City, in fact, and when the experience turned on, I wasn't able to breathe. It was that profound. And I was, after about five minutes of playing that experience to exposure therapy techniques, able to reduce significantly. In fact, even after one session, my fear of heights, it made me want to get into that sector. I spent about a few years writing about it. I became more or less a specialist in all sorts of use cases and became extremely certain that virtual reality has a critical application in education and workforce training, lifelong learning, in fact, and as of course, health care and wellness and fitness. That was the inspiration to venture off in 2018 and launched my company Virtuleap, which really is a startup that's at the intersection of the neurosciences and virtual reality, to address a whole range of cognitive disorders, learning challenges. And that's where I think the magic of this technology is.

I've been on Virtuleap’s website, I've looked at some of your YouTube material, which I want to get into your TEDx talk, by the way, but for now, if you were to encapsulate me, and I was enthralled. If you were to encapsulate exactly the best use of your technology, what would you say? How would you answer that?

Most people, I don't think we realize it, but we're caricatures in terms of development, or let's say skills of a certain character and under development of some other areas. So, for example, Tiger Woods, spatial orientation, this guy has a specific talent that if we were to chart it out, I would bet that he has over developed like hyper over developed spatial orientation, spatial intelligence, and something is underdeveloped. We're caricatures. Funny enough, if you were to look at my scores, my spatial orientation is the inverse of that. I get lost all the time and my wife thinks I'm doing it on purpose. She's like, how do you not know where you're going?

You and I are similar like that, by the way. My wife says the same thing.

So this technology, what we've created, enhance VR, our main product, it's essentially a library of exercises that tests and trains about 20 plus cognitive categories and gives you an understanding of where you're strong, where you're weak and how that relates to who you are and why you do the things you do. Perhaps, you know, some people don't, at least I know for sure my experience is we talk like we are into self-improvement, but typically what we do is we go towards over developing our current strengths and we try to tuck under the rug, any sight of our under development. Like the people who go to the gym a lot. Like, the chicken legs everywhere, you know? A lot of guys are developing their chest and their backs even, but they're not developing those legs. It’s boring. So, in the cognitive domain of muscles, we tried to give awareness of your chicken legs and tried to give you the tools to proactively develop on those weaknesses.
                                                                                                     
"So, if you have a deficit, a cognitive deficit somewhere, if you're low performing somewhere, let's make you aware of it and let's give you the tools to hopefully balance it up and make you more whole."

In these days where it seems like everywhere you look from adults to kids, this ADHD phenomenon that seems like is, I don't want to say it's new, but it feels like it's new. Like, I don't know if when I was growing up in the 70s, as many kids had ADHD as they do now, or was just undiagnosed. I don't know. But that's everywhere. We've talked about Alzheimer's a little bit, and, boy, as I look around, and I get older, and I see a lot of older people, that is prevalent. It's everywhere, and it seems like what you're doing at Virtuleap helps with those types of things. What does that look like?

I think we're in the midst, in fact, it's already well underway, a cognition crisis.

Okay.

I think we're sleeping behind the wheel. And when I say cognition crisis, I mean our ability to interact with the world, our ability to perceive things, react proactively, intelligently, be conscious of everything, really, and our ability to actually come up with solutions. It's so intertwined in the negative way. I know it sounds like doom and gloom, but from my point of view, the doom and gloom are only when we're not aware of it, and we refuse to address it. But these technological wonders, the advent of AI coming up, our addiction to social media mechanisms that are designed, like literally inherently designed to undermine your ability to focus and concentrate, it is designed to increase your distractibility. When you do that, it has a correlation to deteriorating mental health in general. Depression and ADHD are very linked in the scientific literature. the clinical research. We're doing a study right now in Spain, in fact, looking to demonstrate that if you improve your cognitive prowess, if you see a cognitive deficit, your inability to concentrate, you compensate for that and work on it. It actually helps you with emotional regulation. These things are so interconnected, and I think we're in the midst of again, a cognition crisis. Our tool is about becoming aware of your cognitive performance as an indicator, even mental health in general. And then with that consciousness, with that awareness, be in a position to actually act on it. Because if we're ignorant, if we're not aware, there's no opportunity.

That's right. That's right. Okay, great. I'm nodding my head so far. How does your technology or how does, walk me through that as if I were a kindergartener. Like, how exactly does that work?

Yeah, I didn't even explain it. You know, the tool itself is 15 exercises that are about two to three minutes long. Each one is basically a gamified, we call it a cognitive game. But it's easier to call it that, a game, than a gamified neuropsychological assessment tool. There's just too many syllables there.

I agree.

But a neuroscientist on our team collaborated with a game designer to make something that neurologists have been using for decades to assess cognitive health and basically gamified in a way that it's pleasing to the eyes, it’s pleasing to the senses, and it's fun to experience, to regularly do in the same way that you brush your teeth, but put a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. The idea is to come in and it's the gym for the mind. You play three or so games every time you come in, and you work out your intellectual biceps and triceps and hamstrings.

Yeah.

It really is that as a metaphor, literally.

Okay, so that that makes it sound easy to use; simple. Who is the ideal person that would use your technology?

So much of our applications are either they basically fork in the road into the health care, which means hospitals and clinics front, a 15-year-old who has attention deficit and it's really impacting their world and their life in a negative way, and they're using it as a way to work out and increase their attention skills, and therefore make them flourish in their life, because there's a cognitive deficit there. And there's something that is keeping them from living out their optimum. That is a clinical more healthcare oriented application on the wellness side, whereas if we look at education, if we look at the workforce, if we look about that kind of sector, much more HR, much more b2b then it's about individuals basically regularly working on their cognitive strengths and weaknesses with our exercises, and working particularly on developing on their weaknesses, seeing how maybe on their career trajectory, they want to be good at certain job skills and in their career show track trajectory to be more of a likelihood, because they're working on the parts that maybe are negatively impacting their career, because maybe they're not doing as well in certain ways. This is a way to get a map of your cognitive strengths and weaknesses, a landscape, your cognitive fingerprint, and then be able to understand what things in the world I can be able to do to also get those scores up. It’s really psychometrics, but 3D.

So you're literally with your technology, I'm assuming from everything that you're saying, you're putting on some VR glasses, some VR goggles, and you're going through your systems.

You could log into enhance VR, and then you have this headset on just to be able to log in, because it's like a smartphone, you know? People will go what are these VR headsets, but it's like, when I turn on my smartphone I have applications and if I want to download some new application like WhatsApp or a fun casual game, and I go to the App Store, when you put on a VR headset, you go into exactly the same thing, except your full body is in the experience. And then you go, hey, where's my app library of, you know, activities I have available on my VR headset? Oh, there's enhanced VR. I open it up, I log in and then here's my workout environment of exercises, I have one game called Magic Deck, that's testing my episodic memory. Another game called React, which is much more motor control and flexibility oriented. I play another game that's called orbital and it is problem solving. I’M basically going through these virtual reality experiences that are physically oriented as well, exercises that are testing me across all these cognitive domains, not just the ones that I typically think that are cognitive. Like, you know, we usually think memory is just cognitive or concentration oriented, but always like, you know, thinking, mathematics, these things. No. There's such a thing, and many people are very much oriented to spatial orientation, spatial audio awareness, for motor control skills, these are all so cognitive, and you're experiencing all of them in combination in each of these exercises.

Perfect, perfect. So now we know what the technology does, kind of how it works. Thank you for taking me by the hand there and leading me down the road of understanding it. I want to go back to a term that you used a few moments ago, cognitive crisis, and before we hit record, you gave an example of kind of what the effect that Tik Tok and similar social media apps have. Would you mind just taking us through a continuum, Amir, of somebody who has not been exposed to those technologies, the social media, then they're exposed to it, what happens? And then maybe what your technology can do? There maybe was no issue, then social media came along, and somebody started having some attention deficit issues, or whatever it is, however you describe it, and then your technology comes along beside them, and what happens? Would you mind just taking us through that continuum?

I was injured maybe some months ago, and I was needing to rest, and I broke my routines. And I was a little bit kind of down and, you know, borderline depressed, because you know, whenever you break your routines and the things you like to do, and go outside, really, that can have a negative effect. So, a perfect situation for me to be susceptible to the kind of experience that I'm about to describe. When you open up your phone, and you have this application, and this application is called, let's say, I will just use the example of TikTok, this TikTok experience is filled with short form videos. Very, very short, where people have created a lot of creative episodes in their life, or just fictional fun moments with their dogs. Very short little bites. Sometimes 30 seconds long only. And the way that the experience is designed is that as you're watching a video that hopefully is giving you a laugh, or a smile, that's what they're all designed to do, they engage you and make you focus on them with all = your neurons or your neurons. The moment you stop being dazzled, you could just flip your thumb a little bit and move to the next video. And then, you just keep on flipping and flipping through all these series of different experiences. And some are making you engage more than others. And behind those experiences in that TikTok application, there's an algorithm that is watching you and is trying to understand what makes you stay and focus longer, what categories are really attracting you, which ones are boring you. It is learning with every swipe of the thumb. It's learning more and more of how to honestly manipulate you. And this is the key to what this technology is. This algorithm, this smart algorithm that knows what triggers in that person biochemically, a dopamine reaction. Dopamine is the core of what addicts people in so many things. You have serotonin, you have all that, you have certain chemicals, and dopamine is the key one in this experience. It knows you better than you know yourself in many ways, or if it doesn't yet, it will soon.
                                                                                                       
"AI is getting so good at knowing how to keep us hooked, and the key problem of all this is not necessarily this, because I'm sure this kind of algorithm could be very good for us in all sorts of ways too. It's always a double-edged sword."



Sure, sure.

But marketers and the big powers that be and then investors, they don't usually use it in the best way for society. They want the quick bucks, and the quick bucks are usually short-term roads that have negative consequences. And when you have an algorithm like this doing what it does, it becomes an expert in swaying you in rapid turns, left and right, without you necessarily being aware or prepared, is the better word. If you're not prepared for them to trigger your dopamine in such a way that you cannot help but bite at the bait.

So that's what the cognitive crisis may look like. So now, I've been a social media user for years, I'm addicted, my dopamine is only hitting when I get the quick hits and that's all that does it, and now I've got an issue. And then a technology like what you described yours is, you come along, we now put our mind into a gym, so to speak, with the different games and the different activities that you have, and do I also need to get off of social media, TikTok, or can I still do that? And like, talk through that a little bit.

See the reason I call it cognition crisis is that people are not able to, like, let's say Netflix. Netflix recently started giving us these shorter form episodes, TV shows, rather than, you know, four hours of Lawrence of Arabia.

Yeah.

There are some exceptions, like masterpiece movies, they're really long, but in general, they're 30-minute episodes. And okay, that's done. Hopefully, I'm not going to keep on flipping, like TV culture used to be, but when I watch people watching Netflix now, especially kids, within 30 seconds, up to three minutes, that's when they're done. They need to check – their FOMO alert comes in. What's on – something. No, it doesn't even matter. It's just oh, my dopamine has hit a bottom somehow. It’s like there's something that can't stay engaged for, I mean, 10 minutes? No, we can't do that. But there's something that you don't even realize it. You probably just even listen to me, someone who's really into this, they can hear my words, and they’re like what it is this? He is really being extreme here. No, this is a dramatic change in our society, that our concentration is really plummeting. It's deteriorating, it's declining, and we need constant new distractors. Something to just flip on. You can't focus on you. When people start to, you know, when this starts to impact our relationships, which I believe it's also doing, it just has to have an impact on many things, but I went into that example, because really, it's a question of, now we only have minutes, if not seconds, for our concentration to be depleted.

Yeah.

I'm not a big fan of technology in general. Even though, funny enough, I'm running a tech company. You know, I want to use VR, for specifically, how can I transcend a barrier in my physical real life? What is stopping me from walking outside right now and enjoying the fresh air? Going for a lovely walk? Going on a hike? Going to the outside opportunities is where I'm interested. There's a lot of things that are stopping us to live our best life. And I think without acknowledging it, VR allows us to experience things in a short, intense, surgical way, and when given to the right types of people with multidisciplinary teams, medical people, clinical people, technologists that have aims like this to help you liberate yourself to the real world being the main goal, then we have the opportunity to use this technology in a very special way in the sense of, you know, our solution Enhance VR. It's about becoming aware of your cognitive muscles, being aware of what your concentration is, and not allowing yourself to be distracted so easily. You’re basically giving people, you know, a sword and shield to fight back when you're using these other technologies that are introduced to you. They're so novel, but they're way too clever, and you're not aware of it. There is no disclaimer about this stuff.

Yet, I sometimes think that there will be, you know? In the future, the way that we use the internet now, may be like the way that we use cigarettes 30 years ago, where there may be something different, and you know, who knows? Before we end our time today, I want to ask you about your TEDx talk that you did, Rethinking Time. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I saw bits of it, and boy am I intrigued. Tell our listeners about that talk.

You know, it was about twelve years ago that I did this talk, and it was my first social impact startup. It was called Time Durham. It's based on a US founded concept called Timebanking. You know, it's based on this cause in the US and the UK, in some places in the world, it certainly did not do well where I launched it in the Middle East in Dubai, because it's such a transient place. You need a place where community wants to be fostered. The concept itself of Timebanking is that we create a way for people to share their skills and talents with one another, and whenever they give an hour, let's say of teaching some of your kid guitar lessons, they earn an hour, basically a time dollar. And then they use that time to dollar to get some, let's say, another person come in and help fix their, sink you know? It's a community fostering platform that's based on a currency of time and exchanging time. It really is bartering time, but changing your perspective of what time is and what a currency could be, that is based on community and social cohesion, rather than, you know, just abstracting everything into its lowest denominator of thing.

Sure. Well, you just set it right there at the end. Community, right? Our entire talk right now, if you if you take the phone from the screen facing you to putting it down and look up and see each other in the eye and help one another, be interested in one another, act for one another, serve one another, there's community and, boy oh boy, would that help a lot of things these days and 12 years ago, when you did the talk, and for all of humanity, you know, human time, right? I feel like there's a common thread that is weaved through your life and your career that led you to doing what you're doing right now.

Yeah, I think I think when we are able to make those connections and deep connections, genuine connections, I think that that's what makes us alive in the most wholesome way. It's not just a cheap thrill of swiping the thumb on the screen, you know? And superficial is my most hated quality, I think.

Well, I think that's a good way to bookend our conversation, Amir. I mean, you opened talking about your wife’s smile and the gratitude that you had around that, to now just being authentic and in community and genuine with one another, and that's what it's all about. And you're impacting the world in a way that shows that, hey, that's something that you believe in and you're doing something about it. You’re putting your time, money and energy around it. So I tell you what, from our Rewire community, we wish you the best in your efforts. I have a feeling some in our audience are going to want to find out more about you maybe even connect with you. What's the best way to find you and connect with you, Amir?

Yeah, thank you so much for the really kind words, they mean a lot to me and it's very unique experience to be on your show. It's not every not every occasion that I get to be in such a environment. I'm a huge LinkedIn user, so if you find me and search me on LinkedIn, I will accept your request very, very quickly. Just mentioned the show, especially. And my email even is Amir@ Virtuleap.com. Please feel free to also contact me that way. I'd really love to hear from anyone where this resonates, and our technology is maybe something of curiosity and interest to you.

Yeah, I think it will be. Thank you for doing what you're doing in the world. Like I said a moment ago, there are certain things that you're passionate about, and you're actually putting that into play from a professional standpoint. So, thank you for doing that. I wish you and Virtuleap all the success and yeah, Amir, thanks so much for being on the show.

Thank you for the opportunity, Jason. This has been a wonderful slice of time.

Until next time. Boy, oh boy, there were so many insights that I got from a mirror there. I was reminded yet again, what scrolling through social media does, and most of it's not good. From an ADD standpoint and just an attention deficit standpoint, in that little hit of dopamine, I know personally I found myself reaching for my phone when I don't even need anything from my phone just because I think my body and my brain is just looking for that dopamine hit. And that thing finally ends up leading to cognitive crisis that he talked about, which is this inability to interact. And the way that he bookended community I thought was good from what he said he was grateful for in the beginning with his wife’s smile, and just that connection to this need that we all have as human beings of being connected and being in community with one another. But those were my insights, dear listener, but it doesn't much matter what me, as the host, what my insights were, but what really matters is what insights did you have?

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