september 2021 w/ Anush 🚀
september start of the year >>> january
For the new readers: Hi! My name is Anush and I’m a 15-y-old polymath from Toronto, interested in making the world an easier place to be in. Specializing in neurotech, I’m currently working on disrupting the current mental health system using neuroimaging. Join me in my journey to making people’s lives better one step at a time ⬇.
September was a super interesting month for me with a LOT of beginnings, from starting my second year at The Knowledge Society to my month at Divergence. Read through on how the unofficial start of the year went 📈
1st month at divergence neuro 👨💻
This month, I optimized for getting into the groove in my internship. At my first product roadmap meeting, I had no clue what was going on, but by the end of the month, I had a solid understanding of Divergence and my coworkers. I loved meeting everyone at the company, and people like Heather Hargraves, Farrokh Mansouri, and Laurie Geneen made my first-month experience so much more interesting!
Building crucial visualization components to Divergence’s main web application, I had a ton of fun devving with the Neurosity Notion 2 and using its SDK. It was super refreshing to see how easy it was to build from the get-go with the headset and made my life a whole lot easier.
exploring the world of nfb 🌊
For me, Neurofeedback (NFB) was always something intangible, something that I read research papers on but never felt its effects first-hand. Given that I was now working at a company specializing in NFB, it was obvious that I had to give it a try. I tried the NFB provided by Interaxon with the Muse 2, and I dind’t feel much of an effect. I took matters into my own hands and built my own NFB app:
Based on Heather Hargaves’s thesis work on altered states of consciousness using NFB, I built a 1-20hz inhibiting visual experiment. Built using the Brainsatplay toolkit, the blob in the picture above would resonate more if my 1-20hz decreased. I tried this out for a few days, and funnily enough, I felt a little more alert after a 10-15 minute session with the protocol. Of course, this is all from my subjective experience, but I'm excited to see where the NFB journey will take me next!
solving the problems with a mental health diagnosis 🧠
After taking a deep dive into the current state of mental health diagnosis, I realized how primitive it still is. The status quo is to use the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental disorders (DSM), which uses a threshold-based system based on subjective experiences and conditions of a patient, devoid of any real data.
We live in a world where we can get your electroencephalography (EEG), your brainwaves, test for $300, and with costs decreasing exponentially as consumer devices become more affordable. Unfortunately, the mental industry still hasn’t adapted to the new age of biometrics.
For the next 3 months, I want to change the trend with my newest project. Using paper recommendation <> summarization, and easier ERP analysis tools, I hope to make it 10x easier for therapists to use EEG a useful diagnostic tool that transcends the DSM.
insights from the month 📈
time is underrated when you’re young → a month is only 4 weeks with 7 days each, be intentional with every single day
seek validation for your idea as much as possible → your brain will always lock on to the best-case scenario even though it may be a fairy tale, talking to others helps you stay grounded
stick to your lane, don’t compare your path to others → mold your journey to fit your values and interests and not wow-factor and social perception
breathing techniques actually work → did Sudarshan Kriya for 2 weeks before I went to sleep and 6 hours of sleep felt like 8
peering into next month 🔭
Inspired by Zayn Patel’s journey, I’ve decided to take part in a 30-day build-in-public challenge alongside a bunch of others from the Activate crew at The Knowledge Society. The main intention is to increase my serendipity and document the process of building the mental health diagnosis platform every step of the way → creating a history of progress for myself to reflect on in the future. Be sure to look out for a ton of new content during October, with Twitter being my main hub for updates.
You can find me on Linkedin here, Github here, and Medium here.
Thanks for Reading,
Anush