Di: 0:00

The future of human performance is being written today, and let me tell you, I just had one of my favorite conversations yet. So I just sat down with Dr Konstantin Sonkin, a deep tech entrepreneur and neuroscientist who's at the forefront of this revolution. Konstantin, with his PhD in computational neuroscience and an MBA, has spent over a decade pioneering AI driven cognitive enhancement. As a CEO, as the CEO of iBrainTech, he's not just studying the brain, he's actively enhancing the brain. Join us as we explore the future of brain training and the incredible potential of the human mind. This one is a game changer. So let's dive in.

Di: 0:56

Welcome to Bodyholic with Di. No fads, just facts. I'm Di and I'm here to help you ditch the noise and build a life you love. Let's go. Oh, but wait. I'm not a doctor, so use your common sense. Now let's dive in. Konstantin Sonkin, I am so happy to have you here with me today. This is very, very, very exciting. We're going to dive into an amazing topic and so, just first of all, I know how busy you are, so thank you for taking the time and being with us.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 1:27

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to share what I've been thinking of in the last decade, so very excited.

Di: 1:36

Amazing, amazing. So, basically, how about we get into what you've been thinking about for the last decade and tell us maybe a little bit about the iBrain, the iBrain tech, your background in neuroscience and basically how you came up with this incredible idea? Just give us the background.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 2:06

Wow, it's us, the background, wow, it's all my life. So I will start with my childhood. So when I was a kid, I really wanted to be poet, to write poetry, but I found it that all the best pieces already written and I have nothing to contribute after reading amazing authors and I said, oh my God, what can I do for the world? And I found out that actually writing code, being a programmer, is for me as mathematical poetry. You can build beautiful code and algorithms. You can build beautiful codes and algorithms.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 2:45

This is why I decided to be a person who writes code, and then I became an AI expert and after that I realized what could be more mysterious than to write algorithms to understand better our mind the last actual mystery of the human body and it's so important to better understand what's going on. Once, ai was inspired by biological organization of our brains and since then, ai developed so much and our understanding of our mind is still very, very limited. So it's time to give back and to apply AI to better understand natural intelligence. This is my real credo in life and this is what is the most exciting for me.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 3:43

So I've been a neuroscientist, a PhD in computational neuroscience and postdoc from Tel Aviv University it's the largest university here in Israel and I've been leading research in the domain of how our brain controls our body, and this specific motor control, motor planning capability of the mind was always in the center of my research. And, in addition to being a scientist, I'm a global entrepreneur. I really love building companies that make impact across the borders. I hold an MBA in global entrepreneurship and, since I remember myself, I was always doing some business. So, finally, I was so fortunate to unite these two parts of my personality entrepreneurial spirit and scientific interest and to start iBrain, on a mission to make brain training as accessible as physical exercise.

Di: 4:52

Wow, okay. So what is brain training? Maybe you could give a little bit of science behind neurofeedback and how it enhances performance, but that's actually going beyond. So first, what's brain training?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 5:09

And this is a very good question because, to start with, many people truly believe that the way you think this is given and you can't change it. And this is really wrong, because you can and you are training your mind and your brain every day. Everything we learn is actually wiring our brain in a way, training it right, and we're so happy, we're so lucky to have that ability of our mind to be plastic, to learn. So, first of all, brain training is the result of your effort to wire your brain in a certain way to support specific functions that you want to excel at. For instance, some people, like scientists, learn how to read scientific papers, and when I was a young scientist, it took me two days to read the paper. Now, can you guess how long it takes me to read the paper? It?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 6:18

takes me less than five minutes. Less than five minutes Because I, first of all, I know what to read and, secondly, because I have that focused attention, laser focused attention that I trained to, to exert and to absorb all the knowledge from the paper in one shot. So cognitive skills can be trained the same way as we exercise physical body performance.

Di: 6:48

I love this, the thought of going from two days to five minutes. I love that because that's what I do. I'm immersed, usually, in scientific papers like all day. So I still haven't gotten to five minutes, but I am a good scanner. I'm a very good scanner, amazing. So that's brain training and what. What is the science behind neurofeedback actually? And um, and then let's also get into what basically performance is. So, uh, I feel like today, actually our conversation is more about um definitions, because it it might sound funny to you, or um, maybe, maybe I'm ignorant, but I think these are terms that not everybody fully understands and so, you know, I hope you come back to the podcast again and then we get deeper into it, but I think right now, these definitions are super, super crucial. So let's get into the science behind neurofeedback.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 8:07

Wow, thank you so much, and I think this is so important to really define terms properly, because there is so much noise around mind enhancement, brain hacking, etc. Enhancement, brain hacking, etc. And what I see is that most people don't speak the same language. They mean different things using the same words and that creates a lot of misunderstanding and even reputation of brain training as kind of marginal or non-scientific interventions. Though we need to start from the beginning, I'm definitely with you. So brain training as we refer to is their systematic wiring of our brain to support specific function based on brain plasticity.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 9:05

Then imagine you go to the gym and you exercise your body in complete darkness and you have no tools to measure the impact of your exercise. Maybe you're doing 20 pound exercise or 200 pound exercise. Maybe repetition is right. Maybe the muscle is the muscle you. Maybe you're doing 20-pound exercise or 200-pound exercise. Maybe repetition is right. Maybe the muscle is the muscle you want to train and maybe you're training something else. You have no feedback. No feedback, you don't feel it and you don't measure it.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 9:38

Would that exercise be successful or efficient in the terms of the brain training? Would you be sure that you actually modified your muscle structure to support a specific function? Not at all. You have no idea about that. You can be lucky that you also do something with this muscle, the intended muscle, but you're not sure. You can't track the progress. So smart people say if you don't measure, you don't manage.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 10:09

The same applies to the brain training. If you don't have any measurement of what's going on in the mind, then you can't really train it. At least you can't claim that you train anything in the directed and scientific manner. So neurofeedback is amazing and very simple concept that you can actually measure activity of the brain and create immediate feedback for yourself to see what is happening inside your brain. And if you can do that in close to real time, in less than 500 milliseconds, less than half a second, then our brain connects your effort and the result of that effort so it can be converted into the actual brain gym.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 11:11

For example, you can be tasked to be very focused now, be very focused so you can see immediately what changes in your mind and that the bar of your concentration raises, so you can understand to what degree you got concentrated according to the baseline. So next time you can try harder and harder and harder and actually build that muscle of the brain for concentration, and we will probably speak about that a bit more. At least, I would love to what functions of the brain can be actually trained according to the modern science and what functions we still don't know how to capture or how to measure properly for reliable brain training. Not all functions of the mind can be scientifically trained, but some can, and neurofeedback is the way to convert this concept of brain training in actual brain gene. Then you can exercise the mind and track the progress.

Di: 12:25

The parts of the brain that we cannot train. Is it because we don't yet understand them, or is it just that there are some parts that can be trained and some that cannot?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 12:40

It is a very important question and I think, with the mind, more like in physical domain as well, you usually would like to excel in a function rather than build this specific muscle structure. For bodybuilding, beauty of the muscle structure is important, but most of us train to be better runner, better footballer, better this or that. You understand. So it's functional training. So our mind is a very complex organ, so each area of that has individual function. But the beauty of our brain is in the network effect, in the synergy. Most of the functions are actually supported by multiple areas of the brain working together in a synergy. So even if you, let's say, develop greatly your motor cortex and it's going to grow, but you don't know how to use it in the functional settings, then you will just have a nice brain muscle without real outcome. Okay, so I would always encourage us to think about functional training of the brain versus the structural training. And our mind is very optimized or lazy, it depends what term do you want to do and it will not support large networks of the brain. If the function is not being used, even for a while, these structures are easily disintegrated. This concept can be described as use it or lose it. If you use it you have extensive networks in the brain, but if you don't use it, even in three weeks it already starts disintegrating.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 14:39

So if we speak about functions some functions we do know deeply how they are organized and we have access to measure them non-invasively. So just with sensors outside their wet brain so we can put on the head, measure them, the head measure them. Usually it's called EEG, electroencephalogram or a few other techniques available Also. Functional MRI is an amazing tool, but for that reason you need to be in this huge magnetic machine, and a few other techniques also available, but the EEG, out of all available techniques, are the most available and accessible, even at home settings and wellness. We have many different headsets and headbands in the market that can track some activity of the brain. So some functions can be measured, such as concentration, relaxation, meditation and recently even motor performance. Meditation and recently even motor performance.

Di: 15:53

Some companies and labs published papers about stress and anxiety levels, so that corpus of studies now hitting the market with their applied solutions um, so, speaking of these applied solutions, and so if I want to enhance my performance, I have to put on, but I can't actually be in the field. Okay, so let's say I'm a soccer player, I can't actually be in the field. I want to enhance my performance. The reason I can't be in the field is because I've been injured. Okay, I'm not really a soccer player, but I wish I was a little. So that would basically, I would put on the EED cap or the headband or whatever, and I could continue training and I get the neurofeedback.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 16:52

This is a very important point. Like now, we are speaking about a very specific function, which is called motor control, and this function is super important for athletes, right? This function is very important for those who want to perform better on the field, and this function is also very important for those who are injured to come back to performance, come back to movement after the surgery, after the injury. Wide population and recently, neurofeedback was paired with visualization. Visualization is ability of the mind to fully visualize or prepare movement plan without actually sending the instruction for muscle to be executed. In this way, your mind is doing exactly the same work as if you're actually moving, without need to to move. So you can exercise your mind in the very pure manner just visualization paired with neurofeedback. So paired with a system that tracks and decodes in real time activity of the brain related to the movement and giving you the feedback how well you visualize the actions so you can continue training even while injured. And why it is important?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 18:20

It is important because we the phenomenon we touched upon minute ago use it to lose it. If you're out of the pitch for a month or so, you lose your touch and feel of the ball, of your physical exercise. So you must continue training with their mentally right, with their non-movement techniques to ensure your return to performance, because we know that, out of all athletes injured with long-term injuries, less than 70% return to performance. Because of their fear of re-injury, because of so many barriers, they give up. They just need to build these networks almost from scratch and it is so difficult. So that is the power One of the use cases that you brought. I think it's a very powerful use case that you can exercise the mind to ensure physical performance.

Di: 19:33

That's amazing. I also found the statistic of 70% to be fascinating. I'm curious about how this actually works, Because you mentioned the physical feeling of the ball right.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 19:57

Is there a physical feeling of the ball or is it all really imaginative? That's a wonderful question. It is all visualization. But when you visualize an action in all details, your body sends the blood flow to your limb and your muscles get warm and even tickling, ready to execute, ready to fire. You're all as a rocket, ready to launch, because your body is getting fully ready for that, on the cortical level, on the planning and also on their physical level. But you never send this comment to be executed, you just anticipate, your body anticipates that. This is why you have that feeling of the ball without even touching any ball.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 20:47

This is ridiculous, and I would share with you a very famous book about a US soldier that got captured in Vietnam during the Vietnamese War half a century ago and he was captive for six years and he was an avid golf player and every day, not to go insane, the guy imagined, visualized, going over his favorite golf pitch every day and then he successfully got released, got back to the same 20 shots below his last best result before the war. Wow, this is the actual power of visualization manifested in physical performance. And this is not surprising at all, because when we speak about performance, we speak about usually muscle memory. We do repetitions again and again in basketball, in soccer, in golf, again and again. But why do we do that?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 21:59

We don't train physically, we train our muscle memory. But muscle doesn't have any memory. Memory lives in the brain. So we actually indirectly train in this muscle-mind-body connection. Right, we exercise this muscle memory indirectly through repetitions. But when you do visualization, you do almost the same repetitions without any movement. So they count, they do count. So when you do thousands of repetitions, this is how you get the mastery and then it manifests in physical performance. This is the beauty and power of visualization If you're either very talented, so you can be systematically visualizing every day, or you have a technology that helps you to do it in an efficient way this is.

Di: 23:00

This is really I. I'll be honest, I'm getting like all hyped up right now. I'm like I'm like scoring in the in the football field right now and I'm like you you have this way about explaining it that gets, gets a rise. Um, so I'm assuming also, just because I'm out and around and talking to a lot of people, I'm assuming that there's there are people who say that brain training is hype only and, um, or that it's just they don't have the patience or it's going to take forever to see results. Um, and I would be curious to know how you would respond to, uh, the skeptics.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 23:52

As a scientist, I'm a skeptic as well, so I do agree. I do agree. There is so much hype in this area so it is difficult to differentiate between scientific solutions, validated solutions and just toys. So in addition, in the training wellness domain, we always need to ask do we have proven transfer of the brain training to performance and we can actually check it? We can validate that. Do we have data and do we have a way to measure?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 24:35

For instance, if you're a soccer team, it's quite easy to measure. You can track your performance during games or during practice sessions. Then you can split your team in the intervention group and control group the same way. We do all studies right and half of the team is doing brain training and routine training on the pitch, another half of the team just routine training. Then in a given time, in four months, we check them again. We can do that before and after baseline test and we can also connect to the game performance game stats and see if this guy who is training his non-dominant foot mentally that's another section. I love it, but does this person use his non-dominant foot more often, with more precision right versus the control group? Do this guy who is training his set pieces is more accurate. Again, what is accuracy If this person can score three out of 10, so he knows the technique, how to score.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 25:48

Why three out of 10 and not five and not six? Where is this consistency missing? And that's probably the difference between Messi who is scoring 7 out of 10, and a good youth player who is scoring 4 out of 10. That's the only difference between them, the consistency. And consistency is muscle memory or mind-body connection, reliability. This is the thing, it's all. The differentiation is in the mind. The same is for the weak foot and strong foot. What's the difference? The same amount of physical conditioning, the same amount, the same strength. With one leg, we can put the ball whenever we want. With another leg, not even a simple pass. The only difference is the amount of brain support available, or, I would say, built with exercise for that specific thing. So in the end, of course, you have to be fit, of course, but the differentiation factor between athletes is their mental performance uh, the.

Di: 26:57

This resonates with me so much that you, um, I myself, use the term muscle memory, which, uh, every time I use it, I think it's a little bit funny because, like the, the muscle, every time I use it. I think it's a little bit funny because, like, the muscle doesn't have memory. And when you said, when you basically just translated it and said what is muscle memory? It's just the mind body connection, that that was such an aha moment for me. So, thank you for that. I'm not going to use muscle memory again. It's because it, like you, fixed something that just wasn't sitting right for me. Um, so, basically, we get it. It works for athletes, that's. That's really, uh, something very powerful that you've been conveying, um, conveying. How about me and the?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 28:00

rest of us and basically, who can actually really benefit from this kind of training. Wow, now I'm going to be more passionate than before. So this is exactly my question.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 28:08

I ask myself right Every day, coming to work and also in the middle of the night. Because, yes, we do have massive corpus of studies showing impact in athletic settings all around the world in different age groups, in female male populations, in youth and adults. And of course, sports is so exciting, but this is just one small area of our life, though it is so influential. It is so influential. So I imagine the future that, after validation in their top level of the competition, that after validation in their top level of the competition, everyone who wants to be fit to train like stars of their favorite sports would have access to that, because technology, technology mission is actually democratization of access. Before, only this unique doctor will treat these unique patients, but now, with technology, you can train as in Real Madrid or as in Juventus or as in Benfica of the world, because technology is granting access to everyone. And then who would want, in the end of the day? I imagine the future where we actually train our mind as regularly as we're training physically. I don't see any reason why not? Or how can we avoid doing that? I can't imagine the future where we as humans still continue not understanding, not measuring, not utilizing our potential, just because of ignorance. We don't have luxury anymore. Ai is changing the way the world is built. Ai is better in most of work already today. So what are we, as humans, gonna do in this world if not utilizing our full brain potential? In the end of the day, this is here. Our happiness, our fulfillment, our actual I live right. So we can't afford being in darkness anymore, and this is where I, as a neuroscientist, hope to have a voice, as also a technological leader that probably built the company that holds the largest database of brain signals of athletes in the world. We want to make our voice heard. We don't need to rush into implanted wires in our wet brain connecting to AI.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 31:29

If we don't understand how these things work, neither of these things work. How can we blend them together? It can go completely insane, but we must continue educating us and creating more and more use cases to develop our focus, to develop our concentration, to better understand our children. What are the limitation factors?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 31:56

And maybe this kid can't be focused more than two minutes, so how can we force him to sit for 40 minutes in the class? It's a waste of time. Let's split it in shorter blocks. Let's train him to be ready to sustain attention for 20 minutes and then put him in the classroom let's understand what's happening. And then I can't see why we can't treat Alzheimer's, parkinson's with early identification if we have continuous data points. The moment baseline changes, we have clear data-driven indication that we can look into their early onset of these diseases to at least manage them much better. So mental health recovery and education are the next immediate sectors that should be augmented with brain training and brain understanding. I don't like disruption, because there is nothing bad there to disrupt. It should be just elevated. We don't have a chance. We can't afford ourselves to sit still and see how we are becoming irrelevant as species.

Di: 33:19

Wow, thank you. Um, uh, I'm thinking now. So of course I, you know, I I only live in my prism, so I'm I'm curious if I wanted to now start training, which you totally sold it to me. I want to start training with eye brain. Um, physically, this means I put on a headband and what it. What does it actually mean?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 33:47

imagine you have a baseball cap and you put it on and you have several sensors made of conductive material that just small hairbrushes just touches skin of your head, go through the hair and touch the skin. So you put it on and you have few sensors there. You press the button, you connect to your laptop or tablet and you start training. Laptop or tablet and you start training. The system guides you through different gamified training scenarios where you need to use your visualization to do specific actions. If you're interested in the wellness, you do some gym exercises. If you would like to excel in your sports, then you work on your more sports-specific positions. Specific actions Basketball players can work on their three-pointers, foul shots, some team tactics, the same soccer players, long balls, key passes, weak foot performance so many different items are available.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 35:02

If someone is injured, for instance after knee replacement, post-surgery, people can't really do physical therapy for two months and actually you can start training the next day after the surgery. You can start visualizing actions to get prepared. When you are cleared for physical therapy, you're ready to go full in, not wasting any months and you can really accelerate your recovery dramatically. So many ideas can be utilized within our platform, but I also see the future, that more and more scientific use cases gonna hit the market and be available for ADHD treatment, for early depression detection, dementia treatment, stroke management. Right, but it is time to be more educated, to be equipped to differentiate between a toy which is just sold oh it's so cool, you put something like that but there is no actual brain sensing capability, so no use case, it is just for fun. You put it on, you play for two days and then you say what?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 36:23

I don't understand that and then you have the same reputation for the whole industry, which is very bad, and I think this toys without clarity uh, really hurting the industry. So we need to educate that and thank you very much for the opportunities to to explain maybe a little bit better. Uh, thank you very much for the opportunity to explain maybe a little bit better.

Di: 36:44

Thank you so much. I feel like you're super educating me, and if you had to sum up the future of brain training in one sentence, basically, what would it be?

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 37:00

Everyday routine. What would it be Everyday routine? I would also say, think about the screen time. Our children are on the screen most of the day and sporting goods companies really remind us that our children have to exercise outside. But now playing the actual ball, football, basketball is a luxury.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 37:32

Maybe one hour a day our children play, and then six hours a day they spend in front of the screen, and of course there is a good screen time, learning classes, etc. Right, this is the modern world, front of the screen, and of course there is a good screen time, learning classes, etc. Right, this is the modern world. But there is also social media, scrolling, casual gaming and we and just to say, okay, this is bad, stop doing that. For some reason, children don't listen to us, they don't right and you go, but the reality is that we have nothing to do with that. And what if we can make this game time useful? So this is what I imagine for brain training to be to have that niche of routine, gamified training that enhance our mind for better education, for better brain health and better performance.

Di: 38:38

Constantine, this has definitely been one of my favorite podcast episodes to record. You are fascinating, you are passionate and you are brilliant, and it all comes across very, very clearly. So thank you so much for taking the time.

Dr. Konstantin Sonkin: 39:05

Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much. It is a real honor and I'm so excited to make it together with you. Thank you for your work.

Di: 39:10

Thank you, hey, thanks so much for tuning in and if this hit home, please share it with your crew. Likes, comments, shares. Show your loved ones you care.