The Next Frontier in Personal Health: Brain Health

We take care of our bodies, so why not our brains? By taking the time to pay attention to our brain health we can improve productivity, mood, and longevity. At Oculo, we provide you with the tools to do this efficiently and consistently. Here's how.

What is Brain Health and Why Should I Care?

As our knowledge about the human brain grows, brain health has become an increasingly important and observable concept that encompasses both our day-to-day cognition and our long-term resilience. 

Research continues to show that when we treat our brains well, we are able to increase our productivity, cognitive abilities, and emotional wellbeing, as well as decrease our likelihood to develop neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. 

It's time we focus on not only taking care of our bodies, but on taking care of our brains. Our goal at Oculo is to give you actionable insights on how to do so.

Brain Burn

What is Brain Burn?

At Oculo, we have defined a new metric for the status of your day-to-day brain health: Brain Burn. Brain Burn is a direct measure of the stress your brain has undergone throughout the day.

Eye Tracking - How We Calculate Brain Burn

Century-old science tells us that our eyes are a window into our minds, and now with the advent of computer vision, we are able to use eye tracking to learn much about our brains. Using four years of eye tracking research, Oculo has developed deep learning algorithms that processes your eye movements to deliver three cognitive metrics: accuracy, alertness, and fatigue. These come together to create Burn.

To calculate your burn, you simply have to take a 30 second eye tracking test that involves a few exercises, such as following the movement of a dot. At any time of the day, this will show you how much stress your brain has been through since you woke up.

How Can I Use Oculo to Make the Most of My Brain?

At Oculo, we use your Burn to provide you with two central tools you can use to be more productive and take better care of your brain: Capacity and Long-Term trends.

Capacity

Today, in both the workplace and our day-to-day lives, productivity is largely hindered by our disregard for the natural rhythms of the human body. One of these rhythms is called the basic rest-activity cycle (BRAC). Discovered by the father of modern sleep research, Nathaniel Kleitman, this rhythm cycles about every 90 minutes throughout the day and dictates when our brains are primed to do work. If we pay attention to this cycle and work when our bodies are telling us to, we are not only more productive but we put less strain on our brains.

Using your sleep data and burn from the night before, we calculate this rhythm for you so you know when exactly to work hard and when to take a break. As we collect more data about your burn over time, we can fine-tune this projection and turn you into a super-powered worker.

Long-Term Trends

Your brain health is dependent on six main factors, or the six pillars of brain health: physical exercise, nutrition, medical health, sleep, mental fitness, and social interaction. With Oculo, you can see how changing these factors in your day -- for example, drinking coffee or working out -- affects your Burn. But the really powerful benefit happens when you record Burn over longer periods of time -- think weeks to months to even years. This data will allow you to pinpoint exactly what helps decrease the load on your brain and keep it healthy.