🎙️ Episode 8 - Neuroendocrinology, Gamma Waves, and the Race to End Cognitive Decline with Mai Nguyen, PhD, CEO of OptoCeutics

The brain is the least understood organ, yet its health determines our longevity and potential.

In this deep-dive episode, host Rudi Adigbli speaks with Dr. Mai Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of OptoCeutics, who holds a PhD in Neuroendocrinology. Dr. Nguyen shares her unique journey as a scientist and minority founder operating at the intersection of light technology, neuroscience, and NeuroTech.

We dissect the fundamental mechanism of brain aging and the revolutionary approach of using invisible light flicker to act as a "pacemaker for the brain," stabilizing neural rhythms to fight cognitive decline, ADHD, and inflammation.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The Black Sheep Advantage: How growing up as the youngest of eight children and being a "street smart" scientist prepared Dr. Nguyen to successfully lead a MedTech company.
  
• The 40 Hertz Breakthrough: The neuroscience behind Gamma Waves and how they impact memory, cognition, and depression.
  
• The Pacemaker for the Brain: How OptoSynthetics developed technology to mask flashing light and still stimulate the brain at 40 Hertz, safely and imperceptibly.
  
• The Scientific Dilemma: Why the company released a consumer product before finishing clinical trials - the smart strategy to accelerate data collection and market adoption.
  
• The Core Problem: Why ADHD, depression, and anxiety are all forms of brain inflammation and how neural stimulation targets the foundational issue.
  
• The Future Vision: The need for personalized preventive care using in-home biomarkers and machine learning to efficiently lower the socioeconomic cost of cognitive decline.

[00:00] Introduction & Dr. Mai Nguyen’s Unique Background

[07:31] Why Neuroscience? The Least Understood Organ

[09:25] The Scientist-CEO Conundrum (Science vs. Business Mindset)

[16:52] The Dual Path Strategy: Consumer Launch + Clinical Trials (Oracle Analogy)

[23:07] Founding OptoCeutics: The Story of 8 Co-Founders and an MIT Paper

[28:41] The 40 Hertz Technology: How Invisible Spectral Flicker Was Built

[36:06] Overcoming Imposter Syndrome & Eating "Shit Sandwiches"

[49:07] ADHD: Hyper-Firing Neurons and the Need for a Pacemaker Effect

[57:10] The 5-Year Vision: Personalized Preventive Care with Biomarkers

👉 Read the full episode summary on my Substack: [Substack]

👉 Join The ReeShaper Circle to connect with others shaping the neurotech industry: [ReeShaper Circle]

#Neuroendocrinology #GammaWaves #CognitiveDecline #Neurotech #BrainHealth #40Hertz #ADHD #Alzheimers #BrainPacemaker #DigitalHealth #Biomarkers #LightTherapy #OptoSynthetics #ReeThink

🎙️ Episode 7 - The Science of Learning: Productive Failure, AI, and Mastering the Holy Grail of Transfer with Prof. Dr. Manu Kapur

Why do we cram for an exam only to forget everything a week later? And why is applying knowledge in a new context - transfer - so incredibly difficult?

In this essential episode, host Rudi Adigbli speaks with Professor Manu Kapur (Learning Sciences & Higher Education at ETH Zurich), who shares two decades of research and his groundbreaking learning model: Productive Failure.

We break down the three major problems in learning (Retention, Understanding, and Transfer) and reveal why failure, when designed correctly, is the key to deep learning and creativity. Professor Kapur also details how his startup, LearnPF, is harnessing Generative AI to scale this robust pedagogical model and transform education.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Productive Failure: The two-phase learning model that is up to three times more effective than direct instruction.
  
• The Holy Grail: Why transfer is so hard and how flexible knowledge assembly (the Lego analogy) unlocks genius-level application.
  
• Cognitive Hacking: How frustration and negative emotion, in a safe dosage, actually drive deeper attention and retention.
  
• AI's New Role: How Gen.AI must be trained on robust learning models, not just be a generic tutor, to avoid unproductive success.

[00:00] Introduction & Prof. Kapur’s Five Careers

[03:27] The Three Major Problems in Learning (Retention, Understanding, Transfer)

[09:04] What is Productive Failure?

[14:48] Cognitive Activation: Why Struggle is Better Than Listening

[20:00] Contextual Learning: The Home Advantage Effect in Memory

[24:59] Encoding Strategies & The Working Memory Bottleneck

[27:49] Hacking Emotions: How Wonder, Awe, and Frustration Drive Attention

[34:43] LearnPF: Training Generative AI on a Robust Learning Model

[44:07] The Future of Education: Fighting Unproductive Success with AI

Join the Journey:
👉 Read the full episode summary on my Substack: [Substack]

👉 Join The ReeShaper Circle to connect with others shaping the neurotech industry: [ReeShaper Circle]

#ProductiveFailure #LearningScience #Education #AIinEducation #LearningTheory #CognitiveScience #TransferLearning #Retention #MemoryHacks #ETHZurich #LearnPF #GenerativeAI #Neuroscience #ReeThink

🎙️ Episode 6 — Trauma and Relationships and their connection to mental health with Chris McLaren

In this incredibly vulnerable and essential episode of the ReeThink Podcast, host Rudi Adigbli speaks with his friend and guest, Chris McLaren, about his personal journey to overcome Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) and find sustainable mental health. Chris, a PhD in mechanical engineering and neurofeedback trainer, tried everything from talk therapy and psychedelics to hyperbaric chambers and ancient traditions.

This episode delves into the scientific and personal truth that unresolved trauma is stored physiologically, not just mentally, and explores the most effective Embodied Healing Modalities available today.

We explore:

• The Survival Trap: How a child's survival strategy (sacrificing authenticity for connection) becomes the adult pattern of depression and lack of self-connection.
  
• The Power of Release: Why traditional talk therapy fails to change patterns, and why movement, breathwork, and emotional release are required to resolve trauma stored in the Central Nervous System (CNS).
  
• The Healing Levers: A candid ranking of modalities, including Psychedelics, Hyperbaric Oxygenation, and the life-changing impact of Radical Honesty in transforming relationships and emotions.
  
• The Vagus Nerve Connection: The role of the Vagus Nerve in stress regulation and its potential as the key lever for mastering your body and mind.
  

This is a vital guide for anyone seeking to move beyond cognitive awareness to genuine physiological and emotional healing.

[00:00] Introduction & Chris's Dual Background (Engineering to Shamanism)

[02:51] The First Clue: Why Relationships Failed & The Unaware Suffering

[07:32] Trauma as a Weight: General Discomfort and Physical Ailments

[11:14] Gabor Maté’s Theory: Sacrificing Authenticity for Parental Connection

[15:23] Depression as Suppression: Pushing Down Feelings

[21:37] Ranking the Modalities: High-Tech vs. Ancient Traditions

[28:50] Tantra: Exposure and Real-Time Pattern Awareness

[32:36] Radical Honesty: The Tool That Releases Stuck Energy

[40:20] Healing in Connection: The Crucial Role of Relationships

[42:10] The Man Circle: Support, Vulnerability, and Healing Among Men

[53:13] Final Ranking & Advice for Starting the Healing Journey

Join the Journey:

👉 Read the full episode summary on my Substack: [Substack]

👉 Join The ReeShaper Circle to connect with others shaping the neurotech industry: [ReeShaper Circle]

#TraumaHealing #VagusNerve #MentalHealth #Neuroscience #EmbodiedTherapy #RadicalHonesty #Hyperbaric #Psychedelics #DigitalWellness #ACEs #CNS #ReeThink

🎙️ Episode 5 — From Migraine to Millions: Vagus Nerve Stimulation, Wearables, and the Future of Recovery (with Vitalijus of Pulsetto)

What's the hidden key to success in our chronically stressed world? It's not stress avoidance, it's stress resilience.

In this high-energy episode of the ReeThink Podcast, I sit down with my guest, Vitalijus, the founder of Pulsetto, a wearable company that creates a non-invasive device for Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS). Vitalijus shares his compelling journey, rooted in a personal crisis, and reveals how they built a company scaling to $30M by solving the recovery gap.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

• The Universal Nerve: How the vagus nerve acts as the body's superhighway, connecting the brain and gut to regulate stress, inflammation, and heart rate.
  
• The Business of Resilience: Why the modern world is chronically stressed and how stress resilience is the ultimate muscle for health and performance.
  
• The Founder's Playbook: The secrets behind Pulsetto's rapid growth, including the founder’s "Rule of 11" mentality for relentless problem-solving.
  
• The Future Vision (Closing the Loop): Pulsetto's plan to integrate data from 10+ wearables (Oura, Apple Watch, etc.) to launch an AI-powered Neuro Resilience Index.
  
  [00:00] Introduction & The Pulsetto Overview

  [02:05] From Personal Migraine Crisis to Founding Pulsetto

  [17:10] Building the "Stress Muscle" for Faster Recovery

  [21:48] The Pro Athlete Example: Using VNS for Post-Game Recovery

  [26:17] The 100-Night Sleep Experiment & Key Takeaways (Light vs. Supplements)

  [36:21] The Rule of 11: Scaling Pulsetto to 70 Countries & The Power of Execution

  [51:19] HRV & Wearables: Building the AI Closed-Loop System

  [01:00:42] What Investors Still Underestimate About the Neurotech Market
  
  📚 Read the full episode summary on my Substack
  👉 Join The ReeShaper Circle to connect with others shaping the neurotech industry
  
  #VagusNerveStimulation #VNS #StressResilience #Neurotech #Wearables #Biohacking #Cortisol #DigitalHealth #Entrepreneurship #Pulsetto #OuraRing #AIinWellness #StartupScaling #ReeThink

🎙️ Episode 4 - The Digital Dilemma: VR and the Battle for Your Attention Span (with Virtuleap Leap's Amir Bozorgzadeh)

In this special episode, host Rudi Adigbli sits down with his first guest, Amir Bozorgzadeh, founder of Virtuleap, a company using VR at the intersection of neuroscience and technology. Amir shares his journey from market researcher to founder and dives deep into the high stakes of the digital world.

We confront the "perfect storm" facing human potential: social media algorithms designed to diminish our sustained attention (like those on TikTok) combined with the rise of cognitive offloading via tools like ChatGPT.

This combination is actively degrading our executive function, leading to increased anxiety, reduced resilience, and a decline in overall mental health.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

• The 'Gym for the Mind': Why Virtual Reality is uniquely suited to rebuild attention and focus. VR's ability to incorporate motor control and spatial awareness achieves a level of cognitive transfer unmatched by 2D screen applications.
• The Science of Transfer: How Virtual Leap's games, inspired by decades of neuropsychological assessment, strengthen the very skills weakened by digital life.
• The Problem of Progress: The structural conundrum where technological innovation (the speed of AI) accelerates problems faster than the scientific method (the speed of clinical research) can generate solutions.
• The Founder's Journey: Amir's candid experience about maintaining authenticity in the startup world and the crucial difference between working with speed in startups versus the slowness of academia and healthcare.
• The Vision for the Future: Why technology must become an extension of our natural human life, not a master or replacement for it.

  00:00 Introduction to Virtual Leap and Amir's Journey

  03:50 The Impact of Virtual Reality on Neuroscience

  06:47 Authenticity in Startup Culture

  12:34 The Science Behind Learning and Transfer in VR

  15:45 Understanding Neurodiversity Through Data

  18:39 Cognitive Decline and the Role of Technology

  39:18 The Subtle Dangers of Technology

  50:05 The Clash of Openness and Conscientiousness in Academia

  52:10 The Impact of Algorithms on Society

  55:11 Balancing Technology and Human Experience

  57:58 The Future of Neurotech and Mental Health
  
  👉 Read the full episode summary on my Substack: [Substack Link]
  
  👉 Join The ReeShaper Circle to connect with others shaping the neurotech industry: [ReeShaper Circle]
  

🎙️ Episode 3 — Pathways to Commercialization: How Neurotech Ventures Go from Lab to Market

From brain interfaces to meditation headbands, how does groundbreaking science in neurotech go from a research lab to a billion-dollar company?

In this essential episode of the ReeThink Podcast, we drill down into the strategies, markets, and funding pathways necessary to successfully commercialize a neurotechnology venture. We define the multi-trillion-dollar market opportunity and dissect the critical decision points faced by founders, investors, and scientists in this rapidly evolving field.

We’ll Cover:

• The Market Defined: We look at the holistic, almost $1 trillion market by 2032, composed of converging sectors like behavioral therapy, digital health, and workplace wellness, a market size comparable to the Generative AI sector.
  
• The ROI of Brain Health: Data shows that investing in employee mental and neurological health drives 35% productivity increases, 15% lower turnover, and significant cost reductions for major companies like Google and Apple.
  
• The Two Commercial Routes: We contrast the Medical (Regulated) Pathway (high risk, high reward, long R&D cycles, insurance reimbursement) with the Consumer Pathway (faster go-to-market, easier early funding, lower capital requirement).
  
• The Hybrid Model: Why many smart startups (like Trip and Pulsetto) start on the consumer side to gain traction, revenue, and data before transitioning to the medical (regulated) route—a way to monetize R&D.
  
• The Invasive vs Non-Invasive BCI Race: We explore the fierce competition in Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), discussing invasive (Neuralink, Paradromics) versus non-invasive technologies. Learn how AI and Machine Learning are enabling non-invasive devices (like advanced EEGs) to achieve signal reliability once thought impossible, as demonstrated by groundbreaking work at Meta.
  
• Enabling Tech & Mega-Trends: How strategic data (synthetic data, machine learning) and mega-trends like longevity and cognitive decline drive massive downstream market opportunities across hardware, digital services, and pharmaceuticals.
  

This episode is crucial for anyone looking to invest in, build, or understand the financial engine behind the neurotech industry.

📚 Read the full episode summary on my Substack

👉 Join The ReeShaper Circle to connect with others shaping the neurotech industry

Important Sources:
Cold Fusion Video - Meta Just Achieved Mind-Reading Using AI

NeuroTech Market Atlas

🎙️ Episode 2 — ReeThink: Dopamine and Flow: How They Connect

What if the same brain chemical that fuels your scrolling addiction could also unlock endless focus, accelerate mastery, and even help to heal trauma? In this episode of ReeThink, we dive deep into the fascinating connection between dopamine and flow, and why this matters for the future of human performance, mental health, and technology.

We’ll explore how dopamine, often misunderstood, is our brain’s central reward currency, and why the way we earn it is everything. We uncover the difference between "shallow dopamine" from quick hits like doom-scrolling and the "deep dopamine" earned from doing hard, meaningful things.

We also break down the science of flow, the optimal state of consciousness where productivity can be amplified by 500% and a skill can be mastered in half the time.

In this episode, we’ll cover:

• Phasic vs. Tonic Dopamine: Why instant gratification leads to a dopamine crash, while sustained effort builds a higher baseline.
  
• The Problem with Media: How our evolutionary bias for negativity and the modern media landscape create a constant state of low-level stress and a constant need for more stimuli.
  
• The Flow Cycle: A detailed breakdown of the 4 stages—Struggle, Release, Flow, and Recovery—and how to intentionally cultivate this state.
  
• The Power of Flow: The story of how one man used flow to overcome a severe illness, and insider insights showing flow may be a key to healing PTSD and depression.
  
• A Glimpse of the Future: How an upcoming AI-powered flow coach could help us access this powerful state on demand.
  

👉 Subscribe for more episodes.

👉 Join The ReeShaper Circle to connect with others shaping the neurotech industry.

👉 Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Dopamine can distract us, but flow helps us master ourselves. The future of human potential is here—let's rethink it together.

In this powerful debut of ReeThink, host Rudi Adigbli, has a tech and corporate finance background, not a PhD in neuroscience, reveals the story that ignited his mission: a shocking observation in the Swiss mountains. A digital detox trip with his son exposed how deeply our digital devices are rewiring the brains of our youth. The experience sparked a journey into the convergence of neuroscience and technology, uncovering a cascade of global decline in attention, mental health, cognitive function, and productivity, with statistics showing alarming increases in depression, anxiety, and self-harm among young people since the smartphone's mainstream adoption around 2010.

But there's hope. Rudi argues that the same brain plasticity that has been negatively impacted by our digital world can be harnessed for good. He introduces the concept of the "mental gym" as the necessary evolution of the physical gym, one has to train and optimize the brain for a modern, digital lifestyle. This isn't a niche idea; it's a trillion-dollar opportunity poised to reshape human potential.

The episode explores three tangible examples of this new industry:

1. Metacognition in Finance: Using EEG devices to train top traders to recognize emotional biases, leading to better, more rational decision-making and improved bottom lines.
   
2. AI-driven Cognitive Tools: A VR-based "brain game" that creates cognitive profiles, helping companies hire the perfect candidates and potentially predicting and alleviating future conditions like dementia.
   
3. Biofeedback for Accelerated Learning: Companies using technology to help people achieve the benefits of decades of meditation in just five days, rapidly changing the brain and improving mental well-being.
   

Rudi closes by inviting listeners to join the ReeShaper Circle, a community for entrepreneurs, investors, and scientists who want to build and shape this new frontier. He emphasizes that while AI is the buzzword, it's truly an enabler for this exciting and vital field.