Excerpts from the Innovation Economy blog.
What if you could put on a pair of headphones that would help increase your focus and performance? And not just by playing Parliament Funkadelic really loud.
A Cambridge start-up called Axio is working on just such a device, leveraging an auditory phenomenon called binaural beats. Essentially, the theory is that playing two tones of different frequencies in each ear can have a beneficial effect on the listener’s brain waves.
Founder Arye Barnehama isn’t saying much about the product. But, he said, “focus is a huge problem, for athletes, programmers, students, and business executives.
“Our goal is to be a consumer health product. We’re looking at a couple different form factors, but one is a headset that would integrate with a smartphone and a PC.’’
The headset would include an EEG sensor to monitor brain activity. Similar to the Zeo sleep monitor, Axio would be able to chart the ups and downs of your concentration level over a day or a week.
The company has raised a seed round from local angel investors, including Bill Warner, and has won admission into Haxlr8r, a new accelerator program for start-ups working on hardware. The program runs for 15 weeks in Shenzhen, China, where it focuses on designing and testing a prototype, and then wraps up with investor presentations in Silicon Valley.
“Everyone knows those days when they felt amazing, whether it was on the golf course or in the library studying,’’ Barnehama says. “You don’t have them every day. But we believe we can use technology to make that possible.’’
Who wouldn’t love that? I’m eager to try it out, especially since it took me much longer than it should have to write this post.
Light vs. bacteria
My dental-care regimen goes something like this: 30 seconds with the antiplaque rinse, brushing with my Sonicare electric toothbrush, and flossing.
The founders of the Lexington start-up PhotOral suggest adding one more step, in the morning and at night: 60 seconds chomping on a white mouth guard embedded with blue LEDs. The company is raising $1 million to get the device ready for production.
Founders Nikos Soukos and Stamatis Astra invited me to their offices recently to see their just-finished working prototype.
Soukos, who directs the Applied Photomolecular Research Laboratory at the Forsyth Institute in Cambridge, explained that nothing I do in my daily routine deals with the bacteria that live underneath my gums.
“There are 800 different bacteria in your dental plaque,’’ Soukos said. “It’s a jungle in there. Some microbes are heavily involved in the development of periodontal disease.’’ Others may cause halitosis.