9 ms·

I just wanted to share my thoughts, which are simply: "Thank God!" I've been working on a startup: http://synaptitude.me/ http://synaptitude.me/ (demo is old)

I just wanted to share my thoughts, which are simply: "Thank God!" I've been working on a startup: http://synaptitude.me/ http://synaptitude.me/ (demo is old) Essentially, we can do some of what Luminosity claims (and have independent studies to prove it). Every time someone goes: "Oh it's just like Lumosity" I have to go through and explain the difference. My wife has a degree in neuroscience and I minored in BioE, and we both just HATE Lumosity. Their misleading ads seriously damaged the public perception, and there is no way they can assess anything they claim (if it is even possible). That's pretty much why my startup is working on our applications. We feel there is a market and can definitely help people, but just "brain games" (without feedback/guidance) don't do anything.

mgrpowers 11y ago
So many bouncing buttons. Can't concentrate.
n0us 11y ago
I would like to see how this sort of thing could benefit people with traumatic brain injuries as it would be a great service to people suffering from this sort of malady but also probably easier to measure the effects on this group compared to a bunch of average individuals.
- neurotech1 11y ago
  Cheaper EEG sensor interfacing for (neuro)feedback would be a major step forward. Using the EEG sensor with various game interfaces is possible, and has been beneficial for patients with Traumatic Brain Injury. With TBI, the issue is often connectivity between parts of the brain, and that can be measured as EEG Coherence. I agree with lettergram and others, that without feedback these type braingames don't really do anything.
  - BillinghamJ 11y ago
    This is what SenseLabs (https://senselabs.com https://senselabs.com) are doing with a product called Versus (https://getversus.com https://getversus.com). It's an EEG sensor connected to an iPad where you play games. Disclosure: I used to work for them.
- lettergram 11y ago
  That is one area we really want to study, to see if there is any way we can benefit. We are sure it can monitor concussions, but to what extent is still to be determined. However, we don't have funding at this point (partially because we want to avoid Luminosity's fate of being tied to growth), so we are just focusing on getting a fully developed product that some psychologists we are working with would use.
  - geoelectric 11y ago
    Are you investigating efficacy for ADHD at all? I know "cognitive training" has been used in therapy for it, and the symptoms overlap with TBIs.
amackera 11y ago
Sounds great, there's obviously a huge market for this. Just don't be seduced by the dark side. Be honest with how accurate your tools are. The results will speak for themselves.
threatofrain 11y ago
It's one thing to say that there are independent studies that demonstrate the validity of your interventions, but it's another to say that there is a current ecology of research and researchers that support your intervention. Can you make that stronger claim? Is there a review article that we can Google?
- lettergram 11y ago
  There is not at this time. However, as mentioned in another product we only have a prototype at this point. We are working with therapists and psychologists to bring the product further (essentislly using them for feedback). The goal being, at some point in the near future we get there. The challenege is doing that without a large financial backing. It just takes longer.
  - threatofrain 11y ago
    Thank you for your disclosure.
arbitrage 11y ago
What do you do that's different?
- EC1 11y ago
  A different claim, same bullshit "science". " According to the CDC one in five Americans have ADHD, anxiety, or depression. Impacting productivity, focus, and mood. We can help, with ThinkSuite!" Chemicals can't even help me, how would ThinkSuite? If I could cure this crap with a site, I would, but we can't.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    > Chemicals can't even help me, how would ThinkSuite? That doesn't follow. Drugs aren't automatically better or more effective than non-drug therapies.
    - cbd1984 11y ago
      But known, proven therapies are better than apps with no peer review.
      - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        That's not a factual claim. Known, proven therapies are known and proven, period. They aren't automatically better than an untested therapy, that would mean no new therapy could ever be an improvement. Your statement is illogical. FWIW I'm making no claim here as to the efficacy of either proven or unreviewed therapies just calling out unsound reasoning.
  - lettergram 11y ago
    Actually, we respectfully disagree. The Lumonosity doesn't have any feedback to their systems, and are therefore WAY different than ours. We cannot claim it will solve your issues, but it could (stress the could) help. We accomplish this by providing neurofeedback[1]. [1] http://synaptitude.me/blog/neurofeedback-in-200-words/ http://synaptitude.me/blog/neurofeedback-in-200-words/ Essentially, we can help cope with the issues by helping you identify bad practices. That's it. Turns out many of us don't realize when we start losing attention, or feeling sad. We just suddenly realize we do feel bad. The idea is to make you more aware of what makes you feel bad/lose attention, when you start feeling that way so you can better control it. Here are some links to some studies (more are coming out soon): [2] (2009) http://eeg.sagepub.com/content/40/3/180.short http://eeg.sagepub.com/content/40/3/180.short [3] (2009) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.02033.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.... [4] (1995) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8801245 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8801245 The end goal of our system is to use it in combination with other therapies, drugs, and medical professionals to determine the effectiveness of a therapy/drug on an individual and improve it. Coupled with that we can provide better coping skills, and our own therapy called neurofeedback (as mentioned).
jacquesm 11y ago
The worst that can happen to a good small company is that some overhyped and overfunded 'start-up' enters the field and spoils the trust built slowly and over a long time between the consumers and the suppliers of goods and services. This is unfortunately not rare at all and the 'hotter' a market seems the more of these BS artists will enter. In the end you have the same product and the same relationship with your customers but you're going to end up spending a lot of time differentiating yourself from the snake oil peddlers and the damage they can do is very real. Good companies have gone under in the wake of the scandals triggered by the fakers. Playing a long game while your field is being torn up by people playing a short game is extremely frustrating.
- frik 11y ago
  > The worst that can happen to a good small company is that some overhyped and overfunded 'start-up' enters the field and spoils the trust Like FB destroyed the trust of social networks, and ruined it for themself and their competitors? The same with chat with WhatsApp and other pseudo secure chat apps.
  - nemothekid 11y ago
    This implies that the general public ever really cared about the fact that their messaging is secure.
    - sanoli 11y ago
      Spot on. None, and I mean NONE of my non-tech friends give a damn about their email/messaging not being really private.
- xux 11y ago
  This is actually a form of corporate sabotage some companies use. You'll find it interesting to read about Coca Cola's Tab Clear[1]. Basically, Pepsi introduced a soda called Crystal Clear that was gaining momentum in the "clear soda" market. Coke wanted to sabotage the public perception, so they introduced "Tab Clear" and made it taste so terrible, that both products failed within 6 months. After that, no one wanted to touch clear soda for a while. (That is, until Coke reintroduced another drink called Sprite). [1]http://thedailyjournalist.com/pen-and-pad/corporate-sabotage-part-1/ http://thedailyjournalist.com/pen-and-pad/corporate-sabotage...
pj_mukh 11y ago
Woah. I like this. Signed up. This is the specific reason I wanted a system like this. Please don't spam me with updates :P. Just awaiting access to Beta.
- lettergram 11y ago
  I think Ive sent an update every few months (so you know we arent giving up). Thanks for signing up!
Snowdax 11y ago
I wouldn't quite be going "Thank God!" if I was you on this news. It could end up that now when people go "Oh it's just like Lumosity" it could potentially be with the added tinge now of "Are you trying to mislead me too?"
- nostromo 11y ago
  Not only that, but the site tells me that it can help treat "ADHD, anxiety, or depression" and improve my "productivity, focus, and mood." If I were in this space, I'd start putting "not FDA evaluated" disclaimers on my site and marketing, and temper my promises right away.
- metamet 11y ago
  Yup. This is bad news for public perception. Now you have to fight against the new negativity plus being a competitor. Even if you're more effective, you not have to prove you're not a fraud.
basseq 11y ago
This is awesome. My wife is a PhD in Applied Cognition with a dissertation on working memory and attention (including improvement in games and activities). She similarly hates Lumosity. (If you ever want an independent review or consultation of your science, I'll put you in touch.)
- lettergram 11y ago
  Thanks! I may reach out in the future, we could always use feedback :)
- geoelectric 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, aside from the normal advice re: sleep, diet, exercise, etc., is there an everyday/attainable activity she doesn't hate for working memory and attention?
  - basseq 11y ago
    It comes down to five things (in general; not specific to WM & attention, but inclusive of): 1. Diet - Eat reasonably well. 2. Physical Exercise - Can be as simple as walking around the neighborhood; just stay active. 3. Stress Relief - Stress wears you down; get zen when you can. 4. Socialization - Just being around other people helps you stay sharp. 5. Brain Exercise - Different and varied challenges. Crosswords, puzzles, board games, etc. all help. Something that's complex and engages your long-term planning engine is great: she likes strategy games (like Starcraft or Age of Empires). Basically, find ways to put your brain to work. And like physical exercise, variance is key. The problem with Lumosity and #5 is that any "improvement" you see isn't improvement in mental acuity, but efficiencies in repetition.
    - geoelectric 11y ago
      That's great feedback, thanks. You articulate my concern well in the last sentence. I actually do a ton of word puzzles, board games, and video games, but sometimes I wonder if I'm doing much more than building vocabulary and a little hand/eye, along with whatever specifics apply to that puzzle/game. I should probably try to develop more patience with strategy games, since the "planning" part is probably key there. Thanks again!
FireBeyond 11y ago
Wait... you offer a subscription as a "treatment plan" for "ADHD, anxiety and depression"?? You might seriously want to reconsider the wording thereof. Even metaphorically, that sounds dangerously close to something the FDA might object to.
- corin_ 11y ago
  What I'm about to write is about the extent of my knowledge on the subject, so don't assume I know more that justifies my thinking: CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) has has been shown it can be effective even if done with computer software, and in the UK is something the NHS either offers or pushes people towards (I think, if I remember correctly, using a private company who provides the service online but an NHS referall gives you a code to access it for free). Based on this, I would assume it's perfectly possible to offer a "treatment plan" for "ADHD, anxiety and depression", but I have no idea what regulatory hoops, if any, would need to be cleared. (I also don't know if your parent comment's company does offer CBT, or if not whether what they offer does work.)
  - DanBC 11y ago
    The different computer guided CBT programmes are tested for efficacy before they get recommended for use. Here's some (quite old now) guidance: http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta97 http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta97 I use that url to give some idea what process is used to assess and recommend computer based CBT.
DenisM 11y ago
So your "app" helps with "ADHD, anxiety and depression" U-hu. Help me understand something. So you link to papers where some kind of biofeedback is used to help with Anxiety, and then you claim that you do some kind of biofeedback as well, and therefore .... you are helping with Anxiety. Is that about right? Are those your "independent studies"?
samstave 11y ago
I'm on mobile so my question shall be short: I have three small kids, my youngest, before she could even speak, was able to pic up an iPhone, unlock it and browse to various apps including camera, gallery and netflix and take pics, view them or select a movie to watch. Yet she couldn't yet formulate a word. So given this, I assume that there is a great deal that an iPhone like device could be leveraged upon to accomplish greater learning... How would you propose this be done with the ubiquity of such devices at this time? I have some theories but I'd like to hear your position first.
nairboon 11y ago
I'm not still not sure whether this is either a) a joke b) a cultural difference in what's 'acceptable' quackery or c) you're just very uninformed. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and opt for c). Sorry to pop your bubble, but your startup is not going to work out in the current form. All I see from your website, is a company founded by three students who read some papers about EEG and want to sell me a treatment for ADHD and depression using home made beta software and a consumer grade! EEG headset. At least in my book, this is flat out quackery and one of the reason that Neurofeedback is still seen in many places as 'alternative medicine' and does not have a stellar reputation although it has been shown as effective in a couple clinical trials. First of all don't even try to conduct a survey on treatment efficacies to make up for missing data on your own website. Please leave this to clinical trials. Second, you compare your pricing model with allegedly professional Neurofeedback providers, by actually not offering any in-person session and non-medical EEG devices? Is this really not a joke? Let's just ignore for now the fact that consumer grade EEG headsets don't even offer the precision you need for proper Neurofeedback training. e.g. Emotiv epoc offers 14 channels@128Hz, where real EEG hardware usually has at least twice the sampling rate, a greater bandwidth, and 19-21 channels (up to 256 in research). Most importantly, how do you even think your treatment works? You can't just look for any occurrences of "slow-wave power" and then tell your patient that he should pay more attention now. That's not how any of this works. You need to identify signal signatures in response to standardized stimuli. In patients and "healthy" controls. You need to account for the whole spectrum of any mental disorder. Even though they are usually defined as in the DSM as "one disorder" with couple of symptoms, on the individual level there is not much commonality left among all the people with the "same disorder". So you need to "reassemble" the disorder bottom-up, by clustering different sub-types based on biological markers (EEG profiles). Then you got to match them to their clinical diagnosis. If you have any meaningful data left by then, you might be able to identify a small set of markers that exhibit a high predictability, that a given patient belongs to a presumed subtype. Existing commercial databases are of the order of 1K-4K healthy controls and hundreds of patients. Then you can start a training using those markers. Now comes the fun part of assessing the clinical efficacy of your new marker set. You'll get a whole bunch of sub-types like high frontal delta/low dorsal alpha/low beta, high alpha/low beta, or low theta/high dorsal alpha/"higher" frontal beta, etc. ... each of which has to be trained accordingly. I really don't see how you want to recreate all of this on consumer EEG hardware. And if you opt for the current medical hard&software/databases: then what's your value proposition? How do you want to beat current model, of a licensed practitioner guided by a supervisory psychologist? Because this setup gives you the efficacy of the literature and it costs a hell lot of money. Please don't sell any "treatment" that you can't provide. I can understand that it is a very tempting and huge market: "According to the CDC one in five Americans have ADHD, anxiety, or depression.", if you really want to make money there, go to big pharma, if you actually want to "cure it", go to research. But I really don't think, that selling this quackery is going to benefit anyone. disclaimer: this is neither my field, nor do I have any stakes in that particular game, just happen to know some people doing actual research on this matter.
stevepotter 11y ago
I just browsed your site and don't understand exactly what the product is. In the first part of the video I see someone browsing the web with some kind of mood widget. Then I see an e-reader. Are those your product? How does it work? Thanks
cbd1984 11y ago
Are those studies about your product in specific?
bashinator 11y ago
Yeah you're no different.
- imbellish 11y ago
  grep "I've been working on a startup"
  - bashinator 11y ago
    back to the actual topic, I suppose8 it could be done today. (If you're gonna say, 'just wait til our benevolent omnipotent robot overlords show up' then I encourage you to sukkit.) But if you're going to replace human teaches, then you need your computer-aided learning program to know that I (for example) \ find graphics challenging, but narrative is easy to keep track of. \* remember events and experiences well, not so much facts and figures. \* get unproductively competitive over desirable assignments. And so forth x1,000,000. This is all the stuff that gets glossed over by strong AI proponents, and I think pushes it way out into the 2-300 year timespan the way we're going now. I think that strong AI most likely to be a materials science breakthrough.
imbellish 11y ago
You need a better landing page.
Tiksi 11y ago
Wanted to you let know that the pricing table on the comparison page cuts off: http://paste.click/AJrEyb http://paste.click/AJrEyb And unfortunately it's your price that gets cut off. Seems pretty interesting though, signed up for Early Access.
yongelee 11y ago
Saving this comment for later

mgrpowers 11y ago

So many bouncing buttons. Can't concentrate.

n0us 11y ago

I would like to see how this sort of thing could benefit people with traumatic brain injuries as it would be a great service to people suffering from this sort of malady but also probably easier to measure the effects on this group compared to a bunch of average individuals.

neurotech1 11y ago
Cheaper EEG sensor interfacing for (neuro)feedback would be a major step forward. Using the EEG sensor with various game interfaces is possible, and has been beneficial for patients with Traumatic Brain Injury. With TBI, the issue is often connectivity between parts of the brain, and that can be measured as EEG Coherence. I agree with lettergram and others, that without feedback these type braingames don't really do anything.
- BillinghamJ 11y ago
  This is what SenseLabs (https://senselabs.com https://senselabs.com) are doing with a product called Versus (https://getversus.com https://getversus.com). It's an EEG sensor connected to an iPad where you play games. Disclosure: I used to work for them.
lettergram 11y ago
That is one area we really want to study, to see if there is any way we can benefit. We are sure it can monitor concussions, but to what extent is still to be determined. However, we don't have funding at this point (partially because we want to avoid Luminosity's fate of being tied to growth), so we are just focusing on getting a fully developed product that some psychologists we are working with would use.
- geoelectric 11y ago
  Are you investigating efficacy for ADHD at all? I know "cognitive training" has been used in therapy for it, and the symptoms overlap with TBIs.

amackera 11y ago

Sounds great, there's obviously a huge market for this. Just don't be seduced by the dark side. Be honest with how accurate your tools are. The results will speak for themselves.

threatofrain 11y ago

It's one thing to say that there are independent studies that demonstrate the validity of your interventions, but it's another to say that there is a current ecology of research and researchers that support your intervention. Can you make that stronger claim? Is there a review article that we can Google?

lettergram 11y ago
There is not at this time. However, as mentioned in another product we only have a prototype at this point. We are working with therapists and psychologists to bring the product further (essentislly using them for feedback). The goal being, at some point in the near future we get there. The challenege is doing that without a large financial backing. It just takes longer.
- threatofrain 11y ago
  Thank you for your disclosure.

arbitrage 11y ago

What do you do that's different?

EC1 11y ago
A different claim, same bullshit "science". " According to the CDC one in five Americans have ADHD, anxiety, or depression. Impacting productivity, focus, and mood. We can help, with ThinkSuite!" Chemicals can't even help me, how would ThinkSuite? If I could cure this crap with a site, I would, but we can't.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  > Chemicals can't even help me, how would ThinkSuite? That doesn't follow. Drugs aren't automatically better or more effective than non-drug therapies.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    But known, proven therapies are better than apps with no peer review.
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      That's not a factual claim. Known, proven therapies are known and proven, period. They aren't automatically better than an untested therapy, that would mean no new therapy could ever be an improvement. Your statement is illogical. FWIW I'm making no claim here as to the efficacy of either proven or unreviewed therapies just calling out unsound reasoning.
- lettergram 11y ago
  Actually, we respectfully disagree. The Lumonosity doesn't have any feedback to their systems, and are therefore WAY different than ours. We cannot claim it will solve your issues, but it could (stress the could) help. We accomplish this by providing neurofeedback[1]. [1] http://synaptitude.me/blog/neurofeedback-in-200-words/ http://synaptitude.me/blog/neurofeedback-in-200-words/ Essentially, we can help cope with the issues by helping you identify bad practices. That's it. Turns out many of us don't realize when we start losing attention, or feeling sad. We just suddenly realize we do feel bad. The idea is to make you more aware of what makes you feel bad/lose attention, when you start feeling that way so you can better control it. Here are some links to some studies (more are coming out soon): [2] (2009) http://eeg.sagepub.com/content/40/3/180.short http://eeg.sagepub.com/content/40/3/180.short [3] (2009) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.02033.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.... [4] (1995) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8801245 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8801245 The end goal of our system is to use it in combination with other therapies, drugs, and medical professionals to determine the effectiveness of a therapy/drug on an individual and improve it. Coupled with that we can provide better coping skills, and our own therapy called neurofeedback (as mentioned).

jacquesm 11y ago

The worst that can happen to a good small company is that some overhyped and overfunded 'start-up' enters the field and spoils the trust built slowly and over a long time between the consumers and the suppliers of goods and services. This is unfortunately not rare at all and the 'hotter' a market seems the more of these BS artists will enter. In the end you have the same product and the same relationship with your customers but you're going to end up spending a lot of time differentiating yourself from the snake oil peddlers and the damage they can do is very real. Good companies have gone under in the wake of the scandals triggered by the fakers. Playing a long game while your field is being torn up by people playing a short game is extremely frustrating.

frik 11y ago
> The worst that can happen to a good small company is that some overhyped and overfunded 'start-up' enters the field and spoils the trust Like FB destroyed the trust of social networks, and ruined it for themself and their competitors? The same with chat with WhatsApp and other pseudo secure chat apps.
- nemothekid 11y ago
  This implies that the general public ever really cared about the fact that their messaging is secure.
  - sanoli 11y ago
    Spot on. None, and I mean NONE of my non-tech friends give a damn about their email/messaging not being really private.
xux 11y ago
This is actually a form of corporate sabotage some companies use. You'll find it interesting to read about Coca Cola's Tab Clear[1]. Basically, Pepsi introduced a soda called Crystal Clear that was gaining momentum in the "clear soda" market. Coke wanted to sabotage the public perception, so they introduced "Tab Clear" and made it taste so terrible, that both products failed within 6 months. After that, no one wanted to touch clear soda for a while. (That is, until Coke reintroduced another drink called Sprite). [1]http://thedailyjournalist.com/pen-and-pad/corporate-sabotage-part-1/ http://thedailyjournalist.com/pen-and-pad/corporate-sabotage...

pj_mukh 11y ago

Woah. I like this. Signed up. This is the specific reason I wanted a system like this. Please don't spam me with updates :P. Just awaiting access to Beta.

lettergram 11y ago
I think Ive sent an update every few months (so you know we arent giving up). Thanks for signing up!

Snowdax 11y ago

I wouldn't quite be going "Thank God!" if I was you on this news. It could end up that now when people go "Oh it's just like Lumosity" it could potentially be with the added tinge now of "Are you trying to mislead me too?"

nostromo 11y ago
Not only that, but the site tells me that it can help treat "ADHD, anxiety, or depression" and improve my "productivity, focus, and mood." If I were in this space, I'd start putting "not FDA evaluated" disclaimers on my site and marketing, and temper my promises right away.
metamet 11y ago
Yup. This is bad news for public perception. Now you have to fight against the new negativity plus being a competitor. Even if you're more effective, you not have to prove you're not a fraud.

basseq 11y ago

This is awesome. My wife is a PhD in Applied Cognition with a dissertation on working memory and attention (including improvement in games and activities). She similarly hates Lumosity. (If you ever want an independent review or consultation of your science, I'll put you in touch.)

lettergram 11y ago
Thanks! I may reach out in the future, we could always use feedback :)
geoelectric 11y ago
Out of curiosity, aside from the normal advice re: sleep, diet, exercise, etc., is there an everyday/attainable activity she doesn't hate for working memory and attention?
- basseq 11y ago
  It comes down to five things (in general; not specific to WM & attention, but inclusive of): 1. Diet - Eat reasonably well. 2. Physical Exercise - Can be as simple as walking around the neighborhood; just stay active. 3. Stress Relief - Stress wears you down; get zen when you can. 4. Socialization - Just being around other people helps you stay sharp. 5. Brain Exercise - Different and varied challenges. Crosswords, puzzles, board games, etc. all help. Something that's complex and engages your long-term planning engine is great: she likes strategy games (like Starcraft or Age of Empires). Basically, find ways to put your brain to work. And like physical exercise, variance is key. The problem with Lumosity and #5 is that any "improvement" you see isn't improvement in mental acuity, but efficiencies in repetition.
  - geoelectric 11y ago
    That's great feedback, thanks. You articulate my concern well in the last sentence. I actually do a ton of word puzzles, board games, and video games, but sometimes I wonder if I'm doing much more than building vocabulary and a little hand/eye, along with whatever specifics apply to that puzzle/game. I should probably try to develop more patience with strategy games, since the "planning" part is probably key there. Thanks again!

FireBeyond 11y ago

Wait... you offer a subscription as a "treatment plan" for "ADHD, anxiety and depression"?? You might seriously want to reconsider the wording thereof. Even metaphorically, that sounds dangerously close to something the FDA might object to.

corin_ 11y ago
What I'm about to write is about the extent of my knowledge on the subject, so don't assume I know more that justifies my thinking: CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) has has been shown it can be effective even if done with computer software, and in the UK is something the NHS either offers or pushes people towards (I think, if I remember correctly, using a private company who provides the service online but an NHS referall gives you a code to access it for free). Based on this, I would assume it's perfectly possible to offer a "treatment plan" for "ADHD, anxiety and depression", but I have no idea what regulatory hoops, if any, would need to be cleared. (I also don't know if your parent comment's company does offer CBT, or if not whether what they offer does work.)
- DanBC 11y ago
  The different computer guided CBT programmes are tested for efficacy before they get recommended for use. Here's some (quite old now) guidance: http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta97 http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta97 I use that url to give some idea what process is used to assess and recommend computer based CBT.

DenisM 11y ago

So your "app" helps with "ADHD, anxiety and depression" U-hu. Help me understand something. So you link to papers where some kind of biofeedback is used to help with Anxiety, and then you claim that you do some kind of biofeedback as well, and therefore .... you are helping with Anxiety. Is that about right? Are those your "independent studies"?

samstave 11y ago

I'm on mobile so my question shall be short: I have three small kids, my youngest, before she could even speak, was able to pic up an iPhone, unlock it and browse to various apps including camera, gallery and netflix and take pics, view them or select a movie to watch. Yet she couldn't yet formulate a word. So given this, I assume that there is a great deal that an iPhone like device could be leveraged upon to accomplish greater learning... How would you propose this be done with the ubiquity of such devices at this time? I have some theories but I'd like to hear your position first.

nairboon 11y ago

I'm not still not sure whether this is either a) a joke b) a cultural difference in what's 'acceptable' quackery or c) you're just very uninformed. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and opt for c). Sorry to pop your bubble, but your startup is not going to work out in the current form. All I see from your website, is a company founded by three students who read some papers about EEG and want to sell me a treatment for ADHD and depression using home made beta software and a consumer grade! EEG headset. At least in my book, this is flat out quackery and one of the reason that Neurofeedback is still seen in many places as 'alternative medicine' and does not have a stellar reputation although it has been shown as effective in a couple clinical trials. First of all don't even try to conduct a survey on treatment efficacies to make up for missing data on your own website. Please leave this to clinical trials. Second, you compare your pricing model with allegedly professional Neurofeedback providers, by actually not offering any in-person session and non-medical EEG devices? Is this really not a joke? Let's just ignore for now the fact that consumer grade EEG headsets don't even offer the precision you need for proper Neurofeedback training. e.g. Emotiv epoc offers 14 channels@128Hz, where real EEG hardware usually has at least twice the sampling rate, a greater bandwidth, and 19-21 channels (up to 256 in research). Most importantly, how do you even think your treatment works? You can't just look for any occurrences of "slow-wave power" and then tell your patient that he should pay more attention now. That's not how any of this works. You need to identify signal signatures in response to standardized stimuli. In patients and "healthy" controls. You need to account for the whole spectrum of any mental disorder. Even though they are usually defined as in the DSM as "one disorder" with couple of symptoms, on the individual level there is not much commonality left among all the people with the "same disorder". So you need to "reassemble" the disorder bottom-up, by clustering different sub-types based on biological markers (EEG profiles). Then you got to match them to their clinical diagnosis. If you have any meaningful data left by then, you might be able to identify a small set of markers that exhibit a high predictability, that a given patient belongs to a presumed subtype. Existing commercial databases are of the order of 1K-4K healthy controls and hundreds of patients. Then you can start a training using those markers. Now comes the fun part of assessing the clinical efficacy of your new marker set. You'll get a whole bunch of sub-types like high frontal delta/low dorsal alpha/low beta, high alpha/low beta, or low theta/high dorsal alpha/"higher" frontal beta, etc. ... each of which has to be trained accordingly. I really don't see how you want to recreate all of this on consumer EEG hardware. And if you opt for the current medical hard&software/databases: then what's your value proposition? How do you want to beat current model, of a licensed practitioner guided by a supervisory psychologist? Because this setup gives you the efficacy of the literature and it costs a hell lot of money. Please don't sell any "treatment" that you can't provide. I can understand that it is a very tempting and huge market: "According to the CDC one in five Americans have ADHD, anxiety, or depression.", if you really want to make money there, go to big pharma, if you actually want to "cure it", go to research. But I really don't think, that selling this quackery is going to benefit anyone. disclaimer: this is neither my field, nor do I have any stakes in that particular game, just happen to know some people doing actual research on this matter.

stevepotter 11y ago

I just browsed your site and don't understand exactly what the product is. In the first part of the video I see someone browsing the web with some kind of mood widget. Then I see an e-reader. Are those your product? How does it work? Thanks

cbd1984 11y ago

Are those studies about your product in specific?

bashinator 11y ago

Yeah you're no different.

imbellish 11y ago
grep "I've been working on a startup"
- bashinator 11y ago
  back to the actual topic, I suppose8 it could be done today. (If you're gonna say, 'just wait til our benevolent omnipotent robot overlords show up' then I encourage you to sukkit.) But if you're going to replace human teaches, then you need your computer-aided learning program to know that I (for example) \ find graphics challenging, but narrative is easy to keep track of. \* remember events and experiences well, not so much facts and figures. \* get unproductively competitive over desirable assignments. And so forth x1,000,000. This is all the stuff that gets glossed over by strong AI proponents, and I think pushes it way out into the 2-300 year timespan the way we're going now. I think that strong AI most likely to be a materials science breakthrough.

imbellish 11y ago

You need a better landing page.

Tiksi 11y ago

Wanted to you let know that the pricing table on the comparison page cuts off: http://paste.click/AJrEyb http://paste.click/AJrEyb And unfortunately it's your price that gets cut off. Seems pretty interesting though, signed up for Early Access.

yongelee 11y ago

Saving this comment for later