Dr. Giancarlo Licata is the Founder and Director of Vital Brain Health, a Los Angeles–based center specializing in evidence-based neurofeedback and applied neuroscience. Having supported thousands of clients with chronic pain, migraines, and post‒concussion challenges, he specializes in EEG, qEEG, and functional neurology. Dr. Licata also speaks about anxiety, autism, sleep, and ADHD on national health and wellness podcasts.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:52] How ADHD and anxiety manifest in high-performing CEOs
• [6:53] What drives professionals to seek brain-focused help for performance and focus issues?
• [11:43] Why optimizing the brain is just as important as adopting new systems
• [16:53] How Dr. Giancarlo Licata discovered hidden brain injuries and how neurofeedback transformed his focus and stamina
• [23:33] The three main sources of brain dysfunction
• [29:26] A step-by-step walkthrough of a quantitative EEG (qEEG) brain mapping session and analysis process
• [33:17] How customized neurofeedback training rewires specific brain regions for lasting improvements in focus and control
• [44:46] The psychological and neurological differences between risk-taking and disciplined entrepreneurs
• [53:50] How restoring agency over the brain empowers individuals and benefits children struggling with anxiety or developmental issues
• [57:39] Dr. Licata’s insights on AI use, cognitive atrophy, and maintaining brain health through critical thinking and training
• [1:06:17] Dr. Licata talks about his background and path to neuroscience

In this episode…

Many business leaders work hard to improve performance through enhanced tools, systems, and habits, yet still face burnout, poor focus, and mental fatigue. Despite their efforts, their ability to make clear decisions or stay consistent often declines as pressure increases. How does brain function impact decision-making and performance?

According to neurofeedback and brain mapping expert Dr. Giancarlo Licata, professionals can improve mental performance by targeting brain activity. He recommends starting with a brain map to identify which regions are overworked or underperforming, then using neurofeedback to retrain those areas through short, focused sessions. Dr. Licata also emphasizes daily practices that protect and strengthen brain function — such as consistent sleep, focused breathing, limiting overstimulation from technology, and recognizing when anxiety is reducing focus. By addressing brain performance, leaders can make clearer decisions, sustain attention longer, and reduce stress without relying solely on external systems or tools.

In this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris talks with Dr. Giancarlo Licata, Founder and Director of Vital Brain Health, about how brain mapping and neurofeedback improve performance. Dr. Licata explains how brain scans uncover hidden issues behind focus problems, how personalized training rewires neural pathways for lasting results, and how modern habits and AI tools can strengthen or weaken brain function.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• William Harris on LinkedIn
• Elumynt
• Dr. Giancarlo Licata on LinkedIn
• Vital Brain Health: Website | Instagram
• Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health by Caroline Leaf
• “HR as a Growth Lever: Building People Ops That Actually Drive Profit With Panagiota Hatzis” on the Up Arrow Podcast
• HexClad
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Quotable Moments

• “There doesn’t need to be anything wrong with me to want to be able to improve.”
• “Our hardware is one of our biggest constraints, and most people never do anything about it.”
• “You don’t lose your superpower; you gain control over when and how to use it.”
• “Neurons that fire together, wire together — but if you don’t use it, you lose it.”
• “We want to help give you more agency over more rooms of your own brain.”

Action Steps

1. Get a brain map before making major performance changes: A quantitative EEG (qEEG) can identify overactive or underactive brain regions impacting focus and decision-making. Knowing your neurological baseline helps ensure you’re solving the right problem, not just managing symptoms.
2. Incorporate neurofeedback into your routine: Regular short sessions retrain your brain’s activity patterns, improving focus, calm, and resilience. This structured approach builds long-term cognitive capacity rather than relying on quick fixes like caffeine or willpower.
3. Practice daily breath awareness: Conscious breathing regulates the nervous system and reduces anxiety, improving clarity and stress response. It’s a free, accessible method to balance body and mind in high-pressure environments.
4. Set boundaries with technology and AI tools: Overreliance on automation can weaken critical thinking and problem-solving circuits. Maintaining deliberate engagement keeps your brain sharp and prevents cognitive atrophy.
5. Prioritize consistent sleep and recovery: Rest supports neuroplasticity, helping the brain consolidate new learning and repair itself. Leaders who protect their recovery perform more effectively and sustain focus longer.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:00  

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders who share strategies and resources to help you reach the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris  0:13  

Hey everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce and beyond to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million as you upgrade your business and your personal life, if you've been trying to scale by installing more software, new books, new frameworks, new retreats, while your hardware, your actual brain, is overheating, today's guest is your upgrade path. Dr. Giancarlo Licata is the founder and director of Vital Brain Health, where he uses brain mapping and targeted Neurofeedback to help high performers turn stress, ADHD anxiety, lousy sleep, guilty of that one and decision fatigue into stable focus, calm and stamina. His own story reads like so many founders, two boards, a packed practice, kids, endless responsibilities, working harder, stopped working while helping post concussion patients. He mapped his own brain and found old injury signatures from Skubana and basketball that were quietly driving the very symptoms he was trying to out grind today, we're going to demystify the hardware versus software problem, what a brain map actually shows and why three people who all have ADHD may need completely different protocols. The difference between quick state hacks, breath work, cold plunges, caffeine and durable trait change that raises your baseline and how to widen your personal performance zone so bigger fires don't burn you out. This conversation might be the most ROI positive 75 minutes you invest in all year. Dr. Giancarlo, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:44  

Oh, man, thank you. This is gonna be exciting. I'm looking forward to it.

William Harris  1:47  

Yeah, I do want to give a shout out to Panagiota Hatzis. She's the VP of HR over at HexCloud. She's a previous guest and a friend, and she's the one who put us in touch. She was like, Hey, are you interested in doing something, maybe a little outside of e-commerce? And I was like, yes, absolutely. What do you have in mind? And she's like, you gotta interview Dr. Giancarlo. So thank you, Panagiota.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  2:06  

Oh, that's so great, yeah. And she's just a master networker and connector and super bright and a genuinely great human being. So this is great. I'm glad we're doing this.

William Harris  2:16  

Yeah, good. Let's jump in. That's Yes. One more interruption, then we'll get into the good stuff. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that IPO. You can learn more on our website, at Elumynt.com, which is spelled elumynt.com okay, I put ADHD in parentheses, not because it's not real, but because everybody might have different variations in what this looks like. And so everybody's saying, I've got ADHD. A lot of people might not even have ADHD. They have something else. But I'll tell a little story about this here before I get into the question here, which is, I was in college, and I can remember we were actually learning about ADHD that day. I didn't know that at the time, but I was, I was a nurse, so I was in nursing school, and I was learning about ADHD. And I can remember the teacher said, you know, they list all of these different criteria, and all of the students look at me. Everybody else is like, you know, yeah, you this is you. And then she goes, sometimes these kids are so hyperactive, they're on top of the desks running around. And I'm like, How did she know as a college student, I had actually been on top of the desks that day, running around, and it's like I had ADHD. My mom jokingly says that she beat it out of me. I don't know if it was a joke. I think it's a joke. I'm hoping it was a joke. But the reality here is that you work with everyone from executives to kids. When you think about CEOs, let's just say, How does ADHD, or even anxiety, or how does it show up differently than the textbook definition that we imagine as a teenager, like how it was for me when I was in college,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  3:52  

right? Right, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, if you think of any typical COO or, like, you know, a high driven professional, like they're driven, right? So, like, you keep trying, you keep trying, you keep pushing, or keep pushing. But like, with ADHD, we call, we call different things ADHD, so that person who's just driven to get, you know, to the next breakthrough, the next deal. Like, what does it look like? Well, it can look like you don't follow through on stuff that you said you're going to do. It means you don't close loops, right? It doesn't have you don't have to be hyperactive. So like you were, right, William, like you were, you were walking on top classic, right? But someone else may actually just be kind of daydreaming, right? They're just always kind of in their thoughts, and so it's hard to kind of get their quote, unquote, big picture vision. And actually, like, just, you know, shift gears and just go knock it out, right? Just go do it. A lot of other people have also, what we call executive function issues, which is like now, but we still call that ADHD, if you know, you go to your MD or somebody, and so that's like, you know, I got to do 20 things today. Let me think about this for two seconds and say, Okay, I'm gonna do a, and I'm gonna do B and I'm gonna do C, rather than just, like, all of a sudden, okay, I'm gonna start on one okay, I'm not gonna finish it. I'm gonna go start another thing. I don't know why went on another thing. It just felt like it was interesting, you know? And so, like, those things can also get thrown in the bucket of ADHD, but they're totally different, right? Okay, one last amount that will probably move. But like, we can also be anxious, right? Like, and the thing is, is that when I'm like, really anxious about a thing, like, I can't focus on something at hand. In fact, like, research has shown that like, it diverts blood away from my like focus areas in the prefrontal area of my brain, and then like shifts them to other locations, like, basically send our limbic system, our amygdala and so on. And so, like, when I'm feeling anxious, by definition, I can't focus, right? And so a lot of people say, Gosh, I don't know. I mean, maybe I have anxiety, or maybe I have ADHD, well, maybe you have, like, a bunch of things together, but they're kind of like, both coming from the same source, right? So, okay, so, yeah. So, you know, it's a really, what we would call heterogeneous, you know, category that kind of just includes everything in it, and yeah, a lot of things, at least

William Harris  6:12  

well, in the TikTok videos don't help lately, because they'll convince everybody that they have ADHD. It's like, if you do this, and it's like, okay, well, maybe, maybe that's not ADC, maybe it's something else, right? But so when I think about this, okay, let's say that you're a CEO, you kind of hinted at how this manifests a little bit in some of them, CEO, CEO and like, they may be stopped, right, or they're unable to complete some of these different things. What would you say are like, those moments that are like, that pivotal, where they go, Okay, this isn't just like, Will, being will. This is a time where I need to make this to go see somebody and, like, figure out what's going on. What like, what do you see be those moments?

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  6:53  

Yeah, I mean, I think it's gonna be different for different people, and it depends on, like, let's think about in two ways, right? Like, what, like, what's the downside of the fact that I can't focus well, right? And then what's the Lost upside, right? So, so we'll talk with the downside Right? Like, look, you know, shit, I just blew another, another deal, right? Or, like, you know, you know I've, you know my partner, you know my partners are just how, you know, they're like, fed up with me because we all went in thinking that we were all going to do our respective parts. I said I was going to get these things done, and they're like, Ah, here's, I'm not going to, you know, you're not this. But like, here's will again, saying he was going to do it, and he didn't do it right. Or it's now going to be next week, or now it's going to be and so, like, and so, like, we lose a lot, right? And so sometimes it's because it's like, Look, I'm not, I can't, not only am I not getting to the next level, like, I'm not able to hold on to this level. Like, that's a red flag. Like, that's when it's like, okay, do something different, right? Like, like, you know, again, definition of insanity, which is not really the definition of insanity, but same thing over and over again, and getting a different and expecting a different result, right? Like, do something different. Do different. So the first that's, that's the first one, like, you're like, you can't even hold on to where you're at, right? But then the second thing is the loss gains, right? And so this is where it's like, okay, I want to go from 10 million to 100 million, which means that I need to now do things very differently than the way I did it. Right? What got me here is not what's going to get me there, right? And so maybe there's, maybe there's nothing wrong with will, but what got will to where at to 10 million is not going to be what gets in his brain. It's not going to be what gets will to 100 million, right? And so really, that's, it's huge, right? And so, and that's that was a big part of my life, which was, like, I have, I want to be able to make a bigger impact. I'm extremely purpose driven, and so I wanted to be able to really dive into a lot of the applied neuroscience and bring in a lot of different experts and and really put together, you know, a world class, you know, organization here, and so, but I knew that I just couldn't do it the way that I was doing things in the past, right? So and so, you know, my own story that we can talk about in, you know, in a little bit. But like, that's what I needed. Like, it was my equivalent of that 10, you know, of that, you know, that 10x Jump, right? So, I do want

William Harris  9:17  

to talk about your story. I want to talk about my story then as well. I think, like, this might be the most, this might be the most I've shared about me on any podcast, because I can relate to this one so much. You know, for me, it definitely was ADHD as a kid. I'd say, like, my mom, everybody who knew me would say, like, yeah, of course, you were, like, we knew this kind of thing, but never actually saw anybody about it, never treated, never even diagnosed, necessarily. But it was just kind of like everybody who knew me said, Yeah, sure, you were. But I think the thing that switched for me is to your point, what got me to where I was wasn't what was going to get me to the next point. And let's just say, some of the symptoms of will that was fine as an entrepreneur, but not will that was fine as a CEO in box zero. There's a lot of benefits. To inbox zero. But for me, it was like, That email came over. It didn't matter that was 2am boom, I gotta reply to this right now, right like, instant. I gotta do this. And a lot of those things worked until all of a sudden, we're scaling. I'm working non stop. I end up being to the point where I want to say I'm going to bed at like, you know, 3am I'm up at 7am and this is going on for, you know, not just like, a week, but this is for months at a time. And everybody who knows me, the other thing that they would say is that it's like, Will is pretty much always just a happy person, right? Like, I'm a genuinely just, I like things, I'm in good mood. And I I yelled at my mother in law. I don't remember what it was about, but like, she was leaving the house, and I just yelled. I just snapped. And my wife was like, That's not you. You're stressed out. You need to go see somebody, right? And I remember thinking, it's like, I don't know what's going on with MiliMatch. I don't know if I'm depressed. I don't feel sad, which I learned depression isn't sadness necessarily, either. But so I'm going there, and the doctor says, No, you are like, he gives me, you know, these different tests. He's like, You are ADHD. And so the reality is, you just finally met a point for you where you've been good about being able to find ways to control your impulses, or a lot of these other impulses that you have, and some of these have been worked out very well for you, beneficial to you because you're the first respond. Because you're the first respond to this email, the client says, Great, I want to work with you like I love your you know your activity, but you've reached a point where you don't have any systems in place for how to deal with this next level of stress or responsibility or time management that you need. And so it's like, Oh, interesting. That's okay. That was my story, and I think that being able to at least find that helped me to get to course correct a little bit. Now I've only been doing software, right? And this is where things that you start changing this, but,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  11:43  

yeah, no, I think that's huge, right? So, exactly that. So we're going to call it software and hardware, right? Like, yeah, you need a new systems, right? Okay, yeah, absolutely. You need a new systems. You know, sometimes you're going to have a coach, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of CEOs and so on. Have coaches, right? Which is, again, new ways to think about yourself, new ways to do things, new processes, new systems. It's all going to fall within the category of what I call, right, more software and and so again, I use the example of, you know, my iPhone, right? Like, there's, there's the software and hardware. And so I it's like, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get the latest app, right? If I just get that app, that, that new app, the chat GPT app, the grok app, right, the Claude app, if I get that, like, now, all of a sudden, I'm just going to 10x my productivity. And that's fine, and it's necessary, absolutely, like, you have to do it. And if you still have, like, an iPhone six, right? Like, wow, like, you can't process all of those apps, like the like, you keep feeding more apps onto, you know, onto your iPhone, it's not going to work. So that becomes, at that point, the constraint, right? And so and so. For some people, maybe they just need more software. Maybe that's the constraint for their next level. But for most of us, because very few of us are actually doing anything about it. Our hardware is one of our biggest constraints, right? And so and so that's huge, right? And so that's where, all of a sudden, now, you know, it's, it introduces a whole nother world, which is, oh, I can actually map out the different areas of my brain, and I can kind of see the same way I would if I was to, like, join an Equinox gym, and they like, have me do a whole physical assessment to tell me where I'm at. They tell me, like, where are my strengths, but then where are some of my improveables? Right? Like, you can now do that with your brain, right? And so with your iPhone, right? Quote, unquote, you can now see, gosh, can I? Can I, you know, how can I better process all of that, those new systems and processes that I've been wanting to I've been taking in and paying, you know, coaches and so on, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars to incorporate, right?

William Harris  13:49  

So I like that huge the iPhone, because my mind immediately when I think of, like, installing software for somebody, I go back to, like, Windows 95 so that's, I'm gonna lose a whole lot of the audience when I go to Windows 95 but like, you know, you even I go back to this because it's like, the iPhone still just kind of works. I haven't gotten to the point where I have an iPhone six to understand how it works, but I can remember installing software onto a computer that, let's say, is corrupt, right? You downloaded too many things on Napster or Limewire. You know, you got these, these issues that are going on is, it didn't matter what else you installed on the computer, like, the software was great, but it like, the it's, it's junk, right? And so you've, it's been corrupted, and it needs some things to kind of be fixed a little bit. And I'm probably still mixing up some of the metaphors, but, but that idea where it's like, you almost kind of need this, this, this reset a little bit, figure out where is that thing in the machine that needs fixed? Yeah?

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  14:44  

Yeah, it could be. And again, I'm gonna kind of, like, just slightly tweak it in the sense. Because what I don't want to do is leave us with certain labels or identities. Like, we, you know, we've got improvables, yeah, right. We've just, we just have improvables. And so, like, we. Don't even sometimes it's like something's wrong with me. I need to totally reboot my whole being. And sometimes that's the case, sure. But again, I think what's what's wild is that, like, there doesn't need to be anything wrong with me to want to be able to, you know, gain 10 pounds of muscle, right? So my desire to gain 10 pounds of muscle is not necessarily that there's something inherently wrong with me, but it's just like, you know, what? Like, if I want to be able to compete at the next level of whatever I'm doing, like, I need to be able to, like, you know, show up with more mass and more strength and then more speed and so on and so, so, so for, like, the CEOs and you know, and you know, sales professionals and revenue, you know, generators, like, sometimes maybe, maybe there's like, Look, I've been struggling quietly with, like, focus issues forever or anxiety issues forever, and I really do need something because I can't sustain this great like, then, yeah, get a brain map, and we'll talk about what that looks like. But then there's also the other person that's like, Look, I've been killing it, but, like, now I'm, like, moving up a notch. I'm in a different league now, right? Or I want to be in a different league, and I just understand that I just don't, like, I can't grit myself any further. Yeah, right. And so it's the my the my grit is necessary, but not sufficient to get me to the next league. And so I also need to figure out how to, quote, unquote, upgrade some of my hardware as well as my software. So maybe I need a coach and maybe a brain map and some other, like, neurofeedback, neuro stimulation that we'll probably talk about, right?

William Harris  16:36  

So yeah, and I want to talk about, like, the actual brain mapping. I want to, I want to give just a little bit before we get into, like, the technical, tactical stuff your story then too, because I want to know, like, what was going on with you where you said, Okay, there's got to be something more than just software.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  16:53  

Yeah, totally, you know, so, like, so for over, like, 15 years, I've been taking care of individuals with chronic pain, chronic post concussion syndrome, which means that, like, nothing helped, and now they're living with, you know, chronic migraines and brain fog, or they're like, really angry and reactive, or, again, they have all of a sudden ADHD after, you know, enough hits to the head and so and so that was kind of, Those are the people that I was serving. And so we, we brought on somebody to start doing some of this imaging. We call it a quantitative EEG, where we can see in 3d where the where the areas of the brain are firing, how they're firing, what they're doing. And we're not just looking at like, you know, is there a tumor in the brain, or is there a bleed? Which is what the MRIs and CT scans are looking for. They were, we were looking at now, like, how are these areas running? How are they connecting with each other? How are they firing? And so and so, when we did that like it was, it was all of a sudden, it gave us insight, finally, for the first time, into, like, all of these concussion, you know, clients brains. And it was like, Oh my gosh, like, we finally can see the thing, the source of this person's anxiety, or we can see the source of why this person has such attention issues. And so then, of course, I'm, like, curious and, and I decided, well, you know, look, I like to see my own brain. I like to see what's going on because, because, you know, I mean, I've got three degrees, I'm relatively, you know, intelligent, but like, you know, you couldn't sit me down for a meeting. Like, you know, I would have to, like, we would, we would start in the office, and then we would say, Let's go on a walk, and then after that, let's go to a cafe, and like, and we had to, like, continue that. And I constantly had to have, I constantly had to have that stimulation. But I couldn't just sit down and just like, let's just talk about these four things and get it done in the next 15 minutes like that was just so, almost impossible. So, but at the time I was married, had three kids, I was on two boards, like boards of two organizations. You know, I'm taking care of all of these people. You know, I've got staff. I've got people working under me. And I'm telling you, like, I felt like I could not physically work any harder, a little bit like, what you were describing, William, like, like, I like, I know grit. I know how to push but like, like, I've, I'm almost, you know, I'm at the edge of how much grit I'm using day to day and like, this is not going to be enough to get me to where I wanted to go, right and so and where I wanted to go was to be able to now start to, like, switch over and bring this into, you know, not only our concussion clients, but, you know, now with other groups and other families and their kids and and what that meant was a completely new business model. And what it meant was, you know, a scale that was way beyond what I thought I was able to do, and new expertise in neuroscience that I didn't think I, you know, I had enough of. And so, so, like, so I needed a change, right? And so, in short, I basically took this map I saw that I had signs of old concussions around the front that I never. Blacked out from, I never threw up from, but they were there. They started putting a sensor over those areas, and for about three months, I just started training my brain. And we'll go into what that is. And what was wild was that it was like my brain started cooperating again, right? What, what it, what it. One of the biggest things I remember feeling was that I realized how much grit I was using to just do normal tasks. Yeah, right, right. So, like, just going through my email, or just, you know, or, God forbid, something like taxes, right? Like, just to sit down and do that was, like, right? Like, I'm using all of my my willpower just to get that done. And then all of a sudden, when it's time for me to get that done after three months, I just sit down and do it. And now I've got all this extra, if we stay with this metaphor, all this extra RAM, like, I didn't have to use all that RAM to just get this thing done. Now, all of a sudden, okay, and now I can start to do way more, because I'm not using all of this energy to do just even, like, basic tasks. And that, for me, was a huge, huge relief, you know, because it's like, wait a second, I'm now getting more done, but it feels like with less effort. Like, how is that possible? And again, it is when you understand how much you're, like, leaning on your willpower just to get the most basic things done, when you have focus issues, right, or anxiety issues, right? So I was like, That's it. Like, I'm hooked. Like, I'm like, I need to do this for other people, because I know this works.

William Harris  21:38  

Yeah. So, okay, what was the most surprising thing that you saw in your own were you just like, because you'd been working with other people, when you saw this, where you're like, Were you expecting to see something? You saw it, you go, what? I didn't actually think that I had anything there. And like, the fact that it's here and not here, that actually makes a lot of sense now.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  21:58  

Yeah, no, I wouldn't have thought that there was anything related to old injuries. Because, again, I never passed out, I never, I never threw up, right? And so, like the idea of me having a concussion and something that I, you know, that that was like, you know, 2030, years ago was wild to me, right? And so, so, how is it that maybe, you know, all those skateboarding falls, or snowboarding falls, or, you know, football, basketball, like, how is it that just all that, you know, those things that I thought was just normal, in my case, they started affecting how some of the rooms in my brain were firing and again, they weren't off. They weren't broken. It's not like a light switch, but like, like a volume knob, they were now work, not working as well. They couldn't, they couldn't, they couldn't hold back the impulses as well. They couldn't sustain focus as well. But again, those clicks start, you know, you start dropping enough things in your in your executive function and attention. All of a sudden, you just find yourself becoming more and more, you know, like, if you're not fighting it, I was, like, I was always just kind of impulsively trying to do 50 things, but not really getting two or three done, right? So anyways, it was surprising.

William Harris  23:14  

Yeah, those do those injuries to the brain? Do they all happen from physical things, or some of the injuries that you find a result of, you know, non physical things. An example could be like, you know, the death of a pet, where it's like, what was a non physical thing to you, but it actually caused actual physical brain damage,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  23:33  

yeah. So in my case, it was physical, though, I think there was some, also some trauma, and that's non physical, right? So there was, there was emotional trauma that happened when I was just younger, and just, you know, that I didn't even know until I started incorporating some of the work from other experts that do Neurofeedback and trauma, and started, you know, unpacking that stuff. And so I would say, in general, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, there's at least three categories, right? There's the physical stuff that happens to us that we can see. There's the, let's just say, emotional, right, relational stuff that we can also see. And then there's also the things we were just born with. We call these these phenotypes, or we call them biomarkers. And so these are things that we actually inherit from mom, dad, or both, right? Like, like, we can, we can inherit a tendency to be a little bit more obsessive, right? We can. We can inherit a tendency to actually be anxious in that kind of, like, fast kind of body anxiety that's always kind of revving and never feels like we can ever relax. Like, there's quite a few things that have been published, and all these have been published, all of them have been replicated in neuroscience journals. Like, there's a lot that we now know, but those are the three categories that I would say, in general, things that we were born with, or excuse me, then there's things we're born but like things we inherited, physical things, and then the emotional things, right? They leave a trace. They change us.

William Harris  24:55  

And I feel like what's wild is our brains, our whole bodies, but our brains is. Actually, too, are just really good at adapting to things. I'm sure you remember, you may even remember the name, but it's like, I can remember reading about, you know, somebody that had half a brain, right? Like, they, like, literally had to take out half of their brain, and it's like they're still functioning. They're still able to do things like, like, almost seem normal to you and I. And so it's like our body is really good, our brain is really good at adapting. And so, to your point, like we can have these traumas and they're small enough to where we don't notice them, like you said, it's like skateboarding accidents or these emotional traumas or whatever, and we adjust and correct and we just don't use those parts of the brain. But like outwardly, nobody notices that anything else is different. We don't even notice it about ourselves, until we do this map. And for those listening, right? Like, EEG, that's the electrical impulses, right? So it's like seeing where this stuff is going through, and you're basically seeing, like, oh, there's a roadblock, there's a construction block. Or, like, what else are you seeing? Is it where it's like, hey, the the electric impulse just isn't making it through. Or it's like, or, no, it's like scattering when it gets here. Or, like, what are some of the things that you're seeing? Yeah.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  26:03  

So probably the best way to describe it is like, we take the the like, squiggly lines from an EEG, and we run it through machine learning. Now we use sophisticated software we can now, we can now see a 3d model of your brain, right? And so and so, I say in a very oversimplified way, is, you know, think of your brain like, like a 19 room mansion, okay, many rooms, many hallways. So just the same way, like a kitchen has a job. You know what you're going to do when you walk into the kitchen, a bathroom has another obviously, and so, and the idea is that, you know, we've got these kind of modular areas of our brain that are responsible for certain things. Now, again, it gets more complex, but, you know, I won't get into that now, because they have to. They have to work as groups and networks and so on. But for now, like there's these individual rooms, we could see what those rooms are doing, and we know based on, you know, 20 plus years of research, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of papers and studies that you know that when you're at rest and you close your eyes, these rooms back here should be doing this thing, and when you open your eyes, you know these rooms over here should be doing a thing. And when you're kind of sitting there, not thinking about anything in particular, like these rooms should be firing together at the same time, at the same place, right? And that, like, and that. And so, like, the idea is that we can actually see what the different rooms are doing, and are they maybe firing too much or too little? Are the rooms firing together too much? Are they too connected, or maybe, are they not connected enough? That's what we get to see. And we get to see it again as a 3d you know, image, in fact, as a movie, wow, right? And so, so now all of a sudden, like, it's not just like, little random sparks that doesn't tell us anything. It's like, you know, I can pretty much tell you that, if you know your kitchen is flooded, I'm going to tell you how that's going to affect your life, right? Yeah, probably cooking is going to be a little bit tough. You're probably going to be a little bit hungry, right, like you may, and maybe how you're going to be adapting to that, right? But if you're, if you can't use your bathroom, right? I'm going to probably also tell you how it's going to be affecting your life as well, right? So, so, you know, there's, there's so many studies that show that you know what these areas are supposed to do and what they do in general. And so once we do your brain map, like again, William, hopefully you know, if you'll come from Minnesota, visit Pasadena again, and you know, and we'll do a brain map and, but once we see that, like, I tell people, I mean, it's, it's strange, but I say I'll know more about your your brain, and you'll know more about your brain than you've ever known, right? And it's not, it won't be my opinion, right? It's going to be based on what's been already published. But like, we'll know why you tend to get certain body anxieties, why it feels like, you know, there's a little motor inside of you that doesn't want to stop. Like, like, there's a lot that we know, there's a lot that we don't know, too, of course, you know. But like, Finally, it gives you some actual, some actionable

William Harris  28:59  

insights, right? Yeah, yeah. To your point, this is, you know, we're talking about all these things. There are lots of great options out there for fixing the software, great books to read, things like that. That's not what we want to talk about here today. We want to talk about the actual mapping of the brain and how this matters with the Q EEG and so take me through. For those who are not familiar with what this is like, what happens during a typical brain mapping session?

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  29:26  

Yeah, totally. So I'll tell you how we do it and how we may be a little bit different, but other people will do similar, right? So people will come into our office, or they go to other locations. I mean, you basically sit down with a little swimmer's cap. It's usually red, red or blue, that has 19 little sensors on them, right? So like stethoscopes, they're just listening to your brain. They're not doing anything to you, right? And you're just sitting there for 10 minutes with eyes open, 10 minutes with eyes closed, while we take a movie of your brain, right? So. So if you work with us, we and you have attention issues. We also have, you take a computerized, what's called a continuous attention test, so we can see, you know, how, how much impulse control attention, what we call visual attention versus auditory attention, like we can map all that stuff out as well. So, but usually it's just, you know, you just sit there on a chair with this, you know, 19 sensors, a little bit of gel in each sensor. And you just, you know, hang out, right? You go home. We do all the sophisticated analysis. We do, like, five layers of analysis. I read the squiggly lines, we look for all kinds of things. And then we, like, meet again, either virtually or in-person. And then we'll like, be looking at your brain in 3d and we'll highlight some of the key areas that have been published that are probably relating to some of the things that you have, right? And we don't get to see everything, but again, like I said, we will then be able to start to see that, you know, what's going on and so, so, like, you know, you're just sitting there with a swimmers cap on, like, it's not, it's not some, like, huge pain. There's no pain involved, so it's super easy, but like, it's because of all the sophisticated software and all of the different ways now that we can analyze, we could see it from five different dimensions. And so now, once we have all of that data, and we put that together, and now all of a sudden, again, like we're looking at your biomarkers, we're looking at these networks that are really important to, like, your whole sense of self and your ability to focus on what's called Central Executive network. Like we can look at a lot of this other stuff and so, and then, then the key though is, unlike your diagnosis, which we won't diagnose, we get to then tell you, Look, you've got this thing. Is it getting in the way? If it's not, then, you know, leave it alone, right? But if it is getting in the way, like, wow, well, what if we can help you kind of work on that and maybe improve it, you know? And so, so then that introduces what we call neuro stimulation and neurofeedback, where it's like now it's like, you know, going to the gym. Now you can actually start to work things out. You can actually start to improve these, these areas of your hardware over a three or four month period, and you will literally begin to experience changes in how you go through life as these areas start to improve. It's again, like I said, I experienced it. It's amazing.

William Harris  32:22  

I find it fascinating. I want to dig into that. Yeah, let's say, okay, great. I put on my swimmers cap. You, you know, you got the map of my brain. Now you're like, Will, like you said, you don't have diagnoses. You're not saying, Well, you have ADHD. You're saying, Will, there's a problem in your kitchen. It's flooded, whatever, right, like, there's this thing here. Just to where do you, by any chance have some issues with attention and focus, or whatever it's like, actually, as a matter of fact, I do. And, okay, great, we're going to, you know, work with you on how to fix this. I mean, to your point, the whole reason why you don't have diagnoses necessarily, is this because it's like, What? What? Three people could say they have ADHD, but they have three completely different things from a brain map standpoint, so that that's not necessarily the point, right? Am I understanding that correctly? Abstrakt, yeah. Like, what could it look like for me or somebody else? Like, what are some of the things you can probably see?

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  33:17  

Yeah, so I'll use an example, right? So let's say, let's say there was only one room that seems to be relating to the way that you're that you're be you're feeling, right? So let's just say there's just one room that just, there's some areas around what's called the dorsal media, or medial prefrontal cortex, that has a lot to do with impulse control, right? So, and what that means is that the second like, you know, you're in the middle of doing middle of doing something, you know, squirrel, right? And then you're out doing something else, and then, okay, I'm going to go here, like, like, I can't hold on to my focus for a long period of time if there's interruptions, right? So let's say, Well, we, we, there's this area it should be able to fire in these, these frequencies, we call them beta waves. It should be able to fire with these other areas. It seems like during most of the time, like it doesn't fire much at all in those in fact, it's kind of slower than we'd like it to be. Let's, let's, let's focus on that one thing, and based on on my experience and based on what's been published, we wouldn't accept you as a client unless we thought we can get a minimum of a 30 to 50% improvement in that area that we're working on, right? So sometimes we're like, look, well, I mean, seems that you got this, these really rough issues. You know, neuroscience hasn't identified those rooms yet, so sorry. I wish we could help you. But like, we just don't like, we don't see them, right? But if we do see them, then yes. So then what do you do? In your case, what we would do is we would ship you out another cap, right? It'll be white or black, and now there's and there's a spot to snap on one to four little gold plated dry sensors. And so you put on your little cap, you look really cool with it. We tell you where to snap on. Sensor. We helped the hardware company develop it, and then, and then we say, okay, download this app that we also worked with this other company to develop, and I'm going to program on the back end exactly which frequencies to reward and which ones to inhibit based on what your pattern and tendency is. So this is 100% customized to you, right? So we're gonna go, we're gonna go to your kitchen, if we, if we call that the kitchen, we're gonna we know that, let's say the kitchen fires too slow. We're going to then reward you and have you trained to learn how to speed that up about 1000 times in a given 20 minute session. And how do you do that? Well, on the app, we tell you, Look, tell us your favorite YouTube videos that you like, and we then put it on that app. And we know, neuroscience knows that your brain is wired to want to see that show clearly. Okay. It doesn't need to work to do it. It's just going to figure out whatever it has to coordinate so that it can see that show clear. So we use it to our advantage. It's reading real time your brain waves while you're watching your show. When you go to those slower brain waves right at that moment, the show goes into black and white. It looks like there's rain on the screen, and the sound goes down, interesting, right? And then, and then, of course, and then, you know, you kind of in the beginning, accidentally speed up a little bit, all of a sudden, the show goes back into color, the rain goes away, and the sound comes back, and it's clear, right? And so it's kind of, it's a feedback loop, right? And in the beginning, so it's kind of like, if you like, it's so it's your workout, right? So I broke my shoulder. I'll use an example. I broke my shoulder snowboarding with my son, Elijah, a couple years back in Sun Valley, and, you know, so of course, I go and get rehab, and they give me this pink one pound dumbbell. And they're like, look, just lift your arm up over your head 10 times like this while you keep your scapula down and back. Right? Okay, so, you know, they watch me, and they're like, good job, right? Do it again, right? And it's a pink one pound dumbbell. Like, I'm a pretty big guy and like that, like, but I couldn't even do that, right? And so that's the same concept of what we're doing when you're training. Like, you're just wearing your cool cap. It's a sensor, and we're telling your brain, look, speed up in that one room. Speed up your kitchen. Just a little bit, just a little bit. Good job. Do it again. Will right? Do it again. And so you get about 1000 loops or 1000 reps during that period, you go you then sleep. You train during the day, that's and but then when you're sleeping, it's particularly in REM sleep is when your brain rewires in that one room so that it can do that act, that action better the next time, right? And so then as time goes on, you know, you download you open up your app, you put on your little sensor. It's reading it real time. And now it's over time, though, we make it harder, like you need to now produce bigger and faster brain waves before we make your show clear, right? So it's like, now they gave me the five purple, you know, pound dumbbell, right? And then the and then the 10 pound dumbbell, the white one, right? And so as I get better and as I get stronger, we they make it harder so that I can now really develop. And after a while, like, look like, I can use my shoulders again, right? And after a while, you can use that area again, and so there's a minimum effective dose, usually of about 40 sessions over that, like, three or four month period. But like, once you get, once you get that, like it's, it's meant to be lasting, right?

William Harris  38:32  

Ask about that. Like, you know, if I stopped working out today, you know, my shoulders, my chest, my legs, I'm going to lose muscle mass. It's like, oh, this stinks. You got to keep doing it. Is it not the case? Then with this, you're saying, No, it should be lasting.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  38:46  

Yeah, it's meant to be lasting, right? And so the majority of the case, it's lasting. And of course, there's caveats, you know, you know, trauma, you know, reorganizes our brain, like in new injuries reorganize our brain. There's all kinds of things that can keep happening to us. But what we're doing, I mean, we're going to, you know, holding a neuroscience term this, this is fundamentally neuroplasticity, right? This is fundamentally the idea of neuroplasticity, is the idea that we can change our brain. Well, the what people will often say when they when they think of neuroplasticity, is that neurons that fire together, wire together. So why is this better than the actual gym? Well, because those we've, we've we've helped you learn to tell those neurons to fire together in a certain way. They kept making more connections and more connections and more connections, more connections over time, so that when you're done, as long as you just keep like, if it's the focusing, every time you now focus again, you're reinforcing it, right? And so, and that's the beauty of it, right? That's the beauty, because we do want this to be lasting. We don't want you dependent and having to, like, you know, keep going back over the same for the same thing, over and over again, right?

William Harris  39:56  

So, so you're gonna think I'm really weird with the neuroplasticity side. Stuff. I love the idea of neuroplasticity. I remember the first time I heard about it, like, the example they gave, it's like, you could brush your hands, you know, brush your teeth with your left hand. And so it's like, I did that for a while. It's like, okay, great, I'll go and do that right? Like, do your routine opposite. It's like, you put your contacts in first, put them in last, whatever. And so it's like, did that. But I was like, Ooh, how do I make this a little bit more interesting? And so I started writing forwards, backwards, upside down and then upside down and backwards. It's like, okay, let me just practice it. They started doing it with my left hand. And then I was like, hey, I can write fairly decent now with my right and my left hand. And so I was practicing, and I never got very good at it. I got decent enough at it where I would have a conversation with in one language with my right hand, and I would have somebody talk to me in typically, something like German or something like that, and I would try to write back with my right hand. I learned Arabic. Some of the doctors that I worked with were Coptic, and so they taught me a lot of Arabic, and I loved it. And so I'd have them say something to my left hand. I'd try to write an answer with my left hand, and then have a third conversation in English right here with somebody standing in front of me. And so what was interesting was interesting is I got to the point where I could do like, a one word answer, but then somebody told me they're like, you like, you actually can't multitask, like, it's almost like this thing that doesn't really exist, and so you're really just switching back and forth really fast. But the idea of neuroplasticity, trying to do things, change things up, do things differently, has been something I've always been fascinated by. So I like,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  41:23  

I mean, that's so impressive, right? Like, I mean, everything you're just describing, right? How many people could do any of that? So that's, like, really amazing. And it's a testament to how much, how plastic, right, how moldable and changeable your brain is, maybe even more so than the average person. And that's impressive. I love that, you know. And what I would say, though, is that, again, let's go back to, like, all of your results oriented listeners, right? They would say, Well, what are you optimizing for when you do that? Sure, right? Yeah. And so, right? And so sometimes we may not know, right? It's just like, Well, I think it's good for me, right? And so this is at least the way we work at vital, Vital Brain Health, like, and this is why I'm, I'm wired, which is why I think, you know, we gel so well with them. Is that, like, look, I love to reverse engineer and say, Look, you know, I'm, I want to get from 10 million to 100 million. I want to be able to, but I need to be able to, you know, hold my focus and sustain my focus on these projects for longer periods of time. And I've never been able to do it right, and so, so now I have a very clear, tangible objective, is I want to be able to hold my focus to be able to do these projects. Okay, now let's look and see if we can identify regions of the brain that are going to be highly associated with that, right? And then now let's help those areas do the very thing that you need in order to get those projects done, right? So what happens now is, we really align the neuro plastic changes to the thing that matters the most for you, sure, right? And so now it's like, oh my gosh, everything is moving in the right direction, right? Everything is working towards you, getting you accomplishing your next life goal, right? Yeah, and that's the beauty of it.

William Harris  43:11  

To be clear, there was no point I did it because I thought it was interesting and it was probably detrimental, if we really not good for your brain. I like that you brought this back to the like, these $10 million brands. One of the it seems like that's one of the more critical points that I recognize for people, is they're scaling. They're growing. And what got them to $10 million and then they stuck the and I had Chris Kerry was on here, and he's like, three years in a row, just couldn't break through the ceiling of $10 million and I've talked to enough people where it seems like there's a common theme for them, where it's not even the focus now anymore, but it's they're almost afraid to make the decisions that they need to make, right? Because what got them there? It was fine. And like, you know, throw caution to the wind, and let's just go for it. Now it's $10 million and it's like you could screw this up pretty easily, right? Like you could lose the business that your family is depending on, that all these employees are pending on, like, there's some public shame, like, whatever could be going on, and all of a sudden they know the decision that they likely need to make, but they're scared to make it. And I'm just curious, if you had to guess, you know, around that transition, somebody who's an entrepreneur, they typically end up having, let's just say, a good ability to make decisions with less information. That's what got them where they were. They say, Great, I don't need all this information. I can make a decision. Boom, boom, boom, right? And then they stop being able to make decisions. I've attributed it to the fear that they maybe have there. But is there something that you think is likely going on if you're going to map the brain of that person who was at 1 million, and now the brain of somebody who's at 10 million, something has changed. Yeah.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  44:46  

I mean, a lot of scenarios come to mind, and again, this is why it's unique to each person. But here's a couple probably like, you know, avatars. There's the possibility that you know what got somebody to whatever you know. 10. In our example, you know, maybe they were a bit of a cowboy. Maybe they were just a bit of like, they were able to shoot from the hip, they were able to kind of like, just, you know, gamble. They were able to put all the online, because they had very little to lose, per se, right? And they had a lot of upside to gain. But now what it requires is, you know, a professional, right? And so and so, you know, one person, an old mentor of mine, you know, had his definition of professional and it was something to the effect of, like, it's being able to perform at a high level, you know, consistently over a long period of time, okay, so to be able to perform at a high level consistently over a long period of time. Right now, that's a very different brain. Those are lots of rooms that that are going to need to be different. And for a lot of us, like, we just don't like, we're not used to it. We've never been that, right. Like, so like, that's again, where then, you know, upgrading the hardware is really helpful. Now it's not the only thing, but, you know, oftentimes, that's oftentimes why we're afraid, because now we do have a lot to lose. I can go from 10 to zero, that's that's painful, right? Or we can now, you know, get an order for how many things, and we're not going to maybe be able to, like, be consistent enough to produce all that stuff, right? So that's a possibility, right? I'm sure there's others for this.

William Harris  46:25  

Yeah, I like the idea of the professional though. To your point, it's like, okay, you played basketball, I think, right? We talked about like basketball was my favorite sport, and I could go out there. And it's like, you know, not anymore, let's just say, when I was good, I could probably go out there, I was, I was doing 360 dunks. I could drain a few threes. It's like, Yeah, great. Yeah, great. I could have a good game, right? But it's like, okay, could I do that every single day? Could I do that after running up and down the court, you know, 100 times? Could I do that? It's like, your point, it's like, can you do that for an extended period of time? Could I train eight hours a day in basketball? It's like, no, definitely not now, but even back then, it's like, I was not a professional,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  47:04  

yeah, yeah, exactly. And again, it's a different they're they're different rooms, right? They're different rooms that now have to be called upon. And some of us, you know, we can maybe do it, and some of us, we do it, or we get help, right? And I'm sure, you know, being in the industry long enough, there's a lot of people that never did it, and they just surround themselves with really competent people, and they take the credit for it, right? And so, like, there's all these combinations. But like, again, I think the point is, is that, like, you know, this will be common, you know, this will be very common in five or 10 years, but this, but like, the, you know, the cutting edge people are already doing it, right? Like I'm doing, and I did this, you know, five plus years ago, right? Yeah, so, but yeah. I mean, you need to develop those things and for consistency, where it is boring, where you are, you know, you know, yeah, can I shoot 100 free throws in a row every morning between seven and 8pm 8am right? Like, so, so much so that it doesn't matter what I what, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, how tired I am, it's just on autopilot, right? It's just on autopilot. Like, Well, that takes a different part of the brain than like, the person who's willing to just, you know, dunk, put, like, just do everything. But like hasn't refined, hasn't, hasn't, you know, refined their own internal systems, right?

William Harris  48:26  

We're talking about people who obviously have, let's say, problems like, like, it's getting in the way of your ADLs, right, or your activities of daily living, right, in some kind of a way. And let's say that we were to just, you just want to hyper optimize, right? You're like, I don't know that I have a problem, but I want to get the want to get the brain map done. I want to see what it's doing. And you find some ideas. And you said, Hey, we actually do think that we could get you that 30% improvement, or whatever number that was. You said that we got to do. Has there ever been a case where it was like, optimizing that thing actually was, like, detrimental to their life in some way where it was, like, we actually should have left you with this little bit of deficiency, because, for whatever reason, it made you you. And I think about somebody like Jim Carrey. Was Jim Carrey, because he was Jim Carrey, right? And it's like, if you optimize that out of him, it's like his movies would not have been very funny. And so whatever that is,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  49:16  

right? It's a great question. Yeah, it's a great question. I get it a lot right? Especially, you know, in Los Angeles. I mean, we have people, you know, training all over the country, so, but, but, like, you know, half of our people are outside of California, but the other half are, you know, in the LA area. So we have a lot of directors and producers and, you know, movie people, and then we have a lot of creatives and a lot of CEOs. And so probably the most common question they asked me is, you know, I don't want to lose the parts that that have been working for me, right? And so and so, what's beautiful is that, like, two parts to the answer. The first part is that, you know, we don't we like, we don't change. We you don't lose those things like, we help you choose when you. Want to use them or not, right? So another very, very well known person who is a client, she said, You know, it's not a super power, superpower if I can't control it. And so oftentimes, what training also looks like is you now your ability to control or have agency over the thing that is your superpower, but you didn't really have the control. So, like, Can Jim Carrey still be Jim Carrey when he has to turn it on? But like, can he also not be, like, massively depressed? And, you know, you know, also, like, so part of it is that you don't have to lose it. That's beautiful. Like, because, again, it's like, just because I've got strong arms, that doesn't mean that now all of a sudden, like, I can't walk through doors, or I can't use my legs, right? Like, that's there. There is another side though that I think is really relevant, and I think this requires somebody who knows what they're doing to guide you, which is why I don't recommend still, people just start, like, experimenting on their own brains, right? Like, I've seen over 2000 people. I just yesterday went over a brain map with, you know, a billionaire like, you know, a very, very well known wealthy individual, and who that person's mother has had some, some, you know, dementia issues. And this person was very concerned about, you know, themselves. And also they had some other goals. Long story short, I looked at all of the things that were going on like, like, there were probably four or five things that were not necessarily like they were part of this person's superpower. But I knew, because I've worked with enough people, and I've studied with enough experts, and I, you know, and just they're like, I knew that that with this person, if we messed with any one of these things, like this person would get so out of balance that it would like the juice would not be worth the squeeze for this individual, and so and so I just told that person. I just said, Look, I don't, I don't recommend us right now, right? Like, let's check, let's check you up another year. Let's see how things are going. Let's kind of track here. Here's some other recommendations for some of your concerns, but like, yeah, your brain in particular is got this delicate balance of things that any one of them is not great, but together, they all kind of like counter each other and they balance each other out. So let's leave it alone, right? But that's rare. I've seen 2000 people that I've maybe had that conversation with like, four, right? So, but it was fascinating

William Harris  52:26  

to your point, you're adding another tool. I like the example that you give. It's like, just because you worked out your arms doesn't mean you can't walk now. And it's like you're you're just giving yourself the ability to have another tool that you can use to turn on these parts, these parts turn off, or whatever.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  52:44  

I think that's

William Harris  52:45  

that's comforting to know, because I think there's a lot of people I'll even say that, you know, I went on ADHD medication for three years when I first found out about it, and and I would say that was necessary for me at the time again, not knowing what I know now, potentially, about, like, how it's like, oh, we maybe could have, like, mapped your brain and done some other things too, but at the time, it was necessary to help me kind of set up the systems and the processes that I needed within my own life and and I don't take it anymore, but the biggest concern that I had was like, Am I still gonna be me? Because I valued my creativity, I valued my ability to be very quick and things like that. And it's like, is this gonna make me somebody who I'm not? And I can say that even in that situation for me, this is not for everybody. For me, it didn't, it just, it just allowed me to still be me, but also me that wasn't stressed out, me, that wasn't as you know, brain fog me, that wasn't as you know, hitting anxiety me that was able to actually complete what I intended to do in the first place. And so all that creativity was was profitable now. And so I can see how this ends up being beneficial in those situations.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  53:50  

Yeah, yeah. I think that the easiest way to say it, and in neuroscience, we call it agency, right? What we want to do is help give you more agency over more rooms of your own brain, right? And so and so. I mean, in fact, like, I'm philosophically committed to that, like, that's part of my big purpose is to help restore agency for individuals, right? And so and so, yeah, and so, yeah, you do get to be you. In fact, you get to be more you after than you were before, because if we don't have agency over certain parts of our of our brain, then, like, we're kind of limiting, and we're live, we're living in a bit of a limited version of ourselves, right? And so, so it's nice, so it's not like and so we try to really make make sure that we're kind of honoring that kind of that person is still person centric, like, they're still them, right? And now they just have more access and to be able to integrate and have control over these areas, right? So, it's beautiful. It's beautiful that that's even possible, right? So, what about, you know? And then, yeah, and so, and then, you know, and then, like, that's. Goes over to our families, and we have kids, right? And, like I mentioned, too, like I and for me, you know, I have three kids, you know, and I've, my heart has always gone out, and I've always felt very driven to help other kids, right? Meaning, like, because I see families that really suffer with their kids that have massive anxiety, or they're on the spectrum with a huge explosion of autism over the last 20 years and so and so. Like, you know, in fact, those are those. Like, we love helping individuals. We love helping adults, you know, with their anxiety and their focus and like, it's like, this is, yeah, bring it on, come let's do this. And few things are as satisfying than being able to help you know, a child who, you know, basically, has so much anxiety it's paralyzing. They don't want to go to school. So now, like, and you think about, what would that child's whole life trajectory be when they, like, don't even want to leave the house, right, right? And then have them start to now, have that anxiety go down, and now, the sudden, they start feeling more comfortable. And now they start making friends again, and then now the family is not, you know, just revolving around that one child's, you know, panic attacks and like, and you get to see like, this blossoming of the child like that is also a whole nother, you know, realm of potential that you know, that we love and we're super committed to. So, yeah,

William Harris  56:19  

that's wild to your point. Maybe the thing that's in the way of you scaling the business is not even your brain, but it's somebody else's brain in your family that you're caring for. And so you're focused and distracted over there. Instead of focusing on what you could do if you could help them fix that piece, you could dig in here, right? What about AI? I really, I love where AI is at. It's so helpful. And I it's not going anywhere. Like, I think it's inevitable that it's only going to continue, and it's something that we have to adopt as a society. If you want to perform, you have to, you have to use AI, right? It would be like, you know, LeBron James deciding that he doesn't want to wear my tennis shoes. It's like, well, that's kind of the technology of the day. You need to do this. Like, you're not going to do it in sandals, right? Like, right? If you're going to compete, you if you're going to compete, you got to do it that said, I worry that it potentially could. I've talked about atrophying certain parts of the brain. Maybe not atrophy, though, but like, do we decrease those synapses and firings that are taking place in these different rooms? And if so, is this even a thing that we can make me say that was like, hey, you need to do 30 minutes a day of cognitive training using a device like this to make sure that you maintain the speed within these areas, because otherwise you're not developing those.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  57:39  

Yeah, you know. So So, in short, I would agree, I think that, I mean, MIT just came out with that study that said that showed that there was marked changes in the brains of people that were heavily dependent on AI, and that's, you know, and what they're referring to are those, you know, an LLM, like, ChatGPT, or grog or something where, like, they're just kind of, they've, like, they've outsourced their their thinking, right? They've outsourced their brain. And so, so yeah, it will atrophy, because the other principle of neuroplasticity, which the first one was, you know, neurons that fire together, wire together, the second principle is, use it or lose it, right? And so if I'm not doing the critical thinking, if I'm not learning to memorize all those things if I'm not learning to integrate what I learned, you know, when I read that book, with, with that other, with, you know, something that's going on in my life, and I'm just kind of waiting for, you know, AI to kind of give me all the answers. Yeah. I mean, my muscles will atrophy if I, if I, you know, ride a scooter every day and to get around, and my brain will atrophy if I just, you know, depend on, on LLM So, yeah, I mean, so what do you do about it? I think at some point there may be some compensatory Neurofeedback that has to happen. And hopefully for a lot of the early adopters of AI, like, you just know that, like, use it, but you can't. It's kind of like, again, like being a CEO, like you cannot outsource and delegate out everything. Like you still have to do your parts, and so we still have to do the critical thinking. We still have to organize our thoughts. We still have to read what AI gave us and, like, go back and forth with it 1000 times, right? And I think if, I think if we kind of like battle and wrestle with AI more, that least, kind of keeps us, you know, keeps us sharp, right? So I think, I think that that's a way to kind of address it, because we use it a lot, you know, we're, a lot of our systems are now, you know, LLM based, and we're going to be starting a new company that also is going to begin to do the analysis with AI and begin to, like, you know, help with that. And at the same time, we realize, like, Yeah, but we cannot, you just cannot, outsource your brain. Yeah, right. Like, that is the. That is the

William Harris  1:00:00  

main takeaway. This is the biggest argument that I give to my daughters for why they have to do math when they're like, I don't want to do math. Like, why do like, my oldest now is in pre Calc, right? It's like, it's starting to get to the point where the problems take more than, you know, five seconds to solve the problems. Yeah, oh, that's a very long problem. And I just say I was like, but what you don't understand is like, you know, when am I going to use this? And it's like, honestly, never. Like for the majority of the time, you will not use the math that you've learned, I said, but the way that your brain is wiring connections to solve problems you will use for the rest of your life. It is hiring you to be able to think, to associate and to map and to, you know, put all of these different things together to help you solve problems and that you will use

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:00:44  

absolutely, yeah, I had the same conversation with my son five years ago, and that was the same idea, like you are developing transferable skills, right, right? And these transferable skills you can apply to 1000 different things, and so exactly that, right? Like with math, you got to organize it. You got to get the sequential processing down. You got to be able to visualize it in 3d you got to be able to also just practice your grit muscle, right, practice that part of what's called the central cingulate to basically, like just gets used to pushing through when things are hard and boring, right? Like so again, we and so we don't want to outsource all that stuff and just have, you know, something else, or somebody else doing it, because it will come back and bite us in the butt when we're just totally atrophied, right? So, yeah, important for our kids, important

William Harris  1:01:38  

for us. You have a very good understanding of, let's just say, like the machine, the biology of this. There's another book that I've been reading that I've really enjoyed lately called switch on your brain, by Dr Carawan leaf, and one of the things in this book that she talks a lot about is the idea of how thoughts transform matter as well, right? So, like, obviously, matter transforms thoughts. If you have bad matter, then it's like, Okay, we got to fix this. That way you can wire the neurons away. I have an idea of where you're at, probably because of a bias, but it's like, Which one, which one do you think is more powerful? Do you think thoughts transform matter. Matter transforms thoughts. They're both needed, but it's like, if you had to say which one's more powerful which one?

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:02:27  

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's an either or more. I would say it's an order of operations. I would say it's socks and shoes. I think that, yeah, yeah. I think that your matter needs to work in order to get to a certain level, so then you can now begin to exercise positive thinking and all of those things that she's writing about, right? So matter needs to work first, and like as a as a necessary foundation, and then you can begin to apply those things and why, and what's an example of like the real world. Think about how many people you know. Two people read her book. Karen leaves book. One person's like, this is this totally makes sense. I did. It changed my life, right? The other person is, like, I couldn't do it. Like it just, no, I like, I was not able to. Now, there could be other reasons for it, but, like, again, some of these areas we need to have agency over first, in order to then use them as a tool, to then be able to, you know, implement all of the positive thinking and, you know, manifestation, and all those things that are that are great, right? But, you know, if somebody's dealing with something they inherited and makes them kind of OCD and obsessive and and they're like, I can't, I haven't changed in 20 years. Like, well, I know you can't. I haven't. And I know you can read 10,000 books, and you're probably not going to continue to change until that part really begins to disengage some at allowing some of the other parts of your brain to actually now activate. And so, yeah, so probably not either or I think socks and shoes. But I think matter has to, has to be there.

William Harris  1:04:18  

I love the socks and shoes analogy. I've never heard that used before. That's good. To give another visual representation of what you said, like, what popped into my brain is, it's like somebody says, I want a dunk, and they've read all of the, you know, tutorials about they've watched the videos, but it's like they've got their leg in a cast, and it's like, I understand you're doing all of the workouts that you're supposed to do, but like, your one leg literally doesn't bend right now, because it's in a cast, and so we have to fix that first. That way you can it's

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:04:44  

huge, massive. It's one of the biggest problem solving things that has helped me as a thinking tool is order of operations, right? And so it's very much that, yeah, because you can have both socks and shoes and do them in the wrong order, and you get a very. Different results, right? And so, yeah, yeah, the brain has to. There's certain foundational aspects of the brain that have to work physically first, so that you can use it as a tool to do these other things that you know, Karen leaf is writing about, and others are writing about, too. Joe Dispenza, and how many other people I love where, where we feel our role is, is, if somebody is in the socks phase and they can't get out and like, they can't use their brain as that tool yet, right then, let's help you. And then once you do now, you can run with it right now, you can take that and now do even more, right? And and I, and we've seen that, and we see that with hundreds and hundreds of people,

William Harris  1:05:44  

which is cool, yeah, you went from the iPhone six to the iPhone 17, pro Max with orange. And so it's like, great. Put any app on you want it.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:05:51  

It's good, exactly. Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, you get so much more capacity. And again, and it probably doesn't go from the six to the 17, but it may go from the six to the 10, and then the 10 to the 12 and until, like, like, some of our journey also is a journey of chapters and so and so. What happens is we start to kind of build on top of the things that we did before. And you can do that too with the different areas of the brain. And that's what's kind of cool, too. So, yeah,

William Harris  1:06:17  

well, like getting to know the human being that we're talking to as well. So I want to talk about who is Dr. Giancarlo Lucado. Tell me a little bit about your childhood and how that shaped you to become now, like this brain expert, yeah,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:06:33  

you know, I grew up with most, most of it. My childhood was with a single mom. My mom, you know, raised me in Pasadena, and so I've kind of come full circle back here and but I was, I was always a bit of a nerdy kid, like, I mean, I insisted that my birthdays were at the Museum of, you know, of science, like the science museum here and in Los Angeles. And I made sure that, like, nobody bought me presents until they arrive, so they can go to the gift shop of the Science Museum, really? Yeah, so they could buy me those presents, because those are always the ones that I love, right? The telescopes and the microscopes and, like, the cool flying, mechanical birds and all that stuff and so. But I think a lot of my childhood, through and throughout, was always driven by, like, this deep desire to grow and to learn and to have some kind of purpose and impact, you know. And so, yeah. And so, just as a quick, you know, I mean, I ended up thinking I was going to go help change the world. And so I'm, you know, majored in international relations, and I, you know, and I was gonna, I got a scholarship to get a master's in international relations, and I was gonna go try to, like, tackle those big problems, right? You know, world hunger, you know, world peace, all these things that sound really nice. And I realized, like, Oh, I'm not really wired for this. Like, this is not like, like, I love helping people. I love to, like, make an impact. But like, I kind of need that ability to, like, connect with an individual, right? And I ended up taking a side trip to India, and lived in India for almost a year between, yeah, in my early 20s, and like, I really discovered, like, my like, all of a sudden, like, my body and my nervous system, like, I, like, I had a somatic experience of how awesome our anatomy and physiology is. Like, it like it became real to me. Like I saw my body changing. I felt my mind changing. Like it was like, Oh my gosh. Like, it's not just like, so it was like, anatomy, physiology doesn't exist in a book. Like, it's it's here, it's this, and so, so, you know, so that led, like, all of a sudden I took, like, a completely, like, I went back and took pre meds, and I got another degree and human biology. And then I was kind of getting ready to go into med school when I started visiting, you know, and shadowing other doctors, and I realized, like, very early on, that, like, the licensure in California only allowed them to, you know, give drugs or surgery, like that was what so but I came from India, I was like, you know, I'm super analytical, Like, I love research, and I read, you know, journals for fun. Like, that's, you know, like, but I was like, but, like, I can't be constrained. Like, those cannot be the only two tools that we're going to use when I've experienced my own life. So in his long story short, I discovered that the widest scope of practice in California at the time was to be a chiropractor, and so I'd never been to one. Had no interest in it whatsoever, but I went in. And so I finished my three years of pre meds. I did the four years of chiropractic. I then graduated, and then I started specializing in the nervous system, in at the base of the skull, and helping with chronic post concussion cases and so on. And it was super precise and super analytical and very evidence based. First and so but I realized through that period, like I was, I was on this earth to help really complicated cases, like to help people that were that had something blocking them, and and to like think in kind of out of the box ways that, like, could identify what that those, that main constraint was, and remove that constraint, and all of a sudden have them go to this new breakthrough, right? Like that is my like air. That's my oxygen, you know. And so, so, you know, went through that, and then, of course, took care of them. And I've already told you the part of, you know, segwaying into here, so, you know, but like, I was kind of always that kind of kid that was always a little bit maybe too purpose driven, a little bit too hyper focused, a little bit like I wasn't the most laid back kid, and I probably I won't be the most laid back guy, but that's okay. But we

William Harris  1:10:58  

need people that have that desire, like there's no way you can get to where you are comfortably, like you have to have something where you're just saying, like, Yeah, but this is more important to me than my comfort at this moment,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:11:11  

yeah, yeah. You end up sacrificing a lot, but you know, yeah, you

William Harris  1:11:17  

you've gotten to go do some pretty cool things too. I know you were talking to me, you got to go to speak at in Helsinki at the biohackers Summit. And there are some blue stuff and eyeballs, like, I don't even understand it. What was going on in Helsinki?

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:11:34  

Yeah, so, I mean, so many directions to go in it, first of all, like, these are, these are, these are gatherings of people who are really committed to, like, just pushing the envelope to what they could be, how they could feel, how they can perform, right? So, so it's like, it's the it's the bleeding edge, it's not the cutting edge, right? And so and so, yeah, I mean, so it was wonderful to, like, show up in the summer Helsinki, you know, Finland, like, it's just the most random place I thought I would be. People are coming from all over Europe and Middle East and the US and and then everybody comes to, like, show their stuff. And so, you know, there's, you know, I'm meeting these great guys. There was this like, guy, he was, like, six foot three, and he's like, got glowing blue eyeballs. And I'm like, and I was like, I think I know what that is, but I just got it. Okay, I'm a bite. Just tell me what? Why are your eyeballs blue? And he's like, Well, there's this thing called methylene blue. You can use it to kind of help, you know, increase your mitochondria, which gives you more energy, and you can be clear and think about it. And he's like, people put on their tongue. He's like, but I learned, if you put in your eyeballs, like, you get absorb it better. And I was like, you know, great, sure, you know, do I want to try? No, I do not want to try.

William Harris  1:12:55  

So, like, the irises or the sclera, like, what's blue? The sclera, the Skubana,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:12:59  

is blue, and, you know, and I think he had, I don't know, I can't, I think what color his eyes were, but, I mean, you know, you look, you look wild, right? But, like, that was an example where it was, like, it was part, this is good for you, and also part, like, kind of, like a bit of a show, you know, and so, but what's wonderful was that there were just so many tools. I just, you know, I learned about so many people doing amazing things, all, you know, people with more cutting edge research on, like, psychedelic therapies and, you know, mixing different therapies with other types of, you know, biomodulations and things like that, all the latest of like, you know, the peptides and like, so like, there's all this cool stuff and, and so it was a ton of fun. The people were wonderful there. And, you know, and I came back, you know, also, well, I came back also, both impressed, but also realizing that there were a few things that actually changed people's baselines, that actually changed their traits and and it I actually came back thinking, you know, I think what we've got here too is pretty good. And again, it's not either or. But, you know, I realized that there's just, there's you could spend your whole lifetime and all of your your resources on trying to, like, get that extra point zero 1% edge, and at the end of the day, like, what if you just did the predator principle and, like, did some of the few things that are going to get you 80% of the way there, and then kind of deal with all the rest of the stuff as it comes along. So it also gave me some perspective. So it was, there's

William Harris  1:14:42  

a lot of those things like you said, you know, caffeine or, you know, cold showers, things like that that are, maybe they're they're helpful, but they're not changing the underlying, foundational principles. But I know that you also are a little bit passionate about. Breath work too. And breath work, I think, is one of those ones that is. It has a little bit more foundational characteristic changing things here as well. Tell me a little bit about some of the breath work that you're into and why? Yeah, yeah. I mean,

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:15:15  

there's so many different types of breath work. Why I love breath work will is probably the most direct way to change our nervous system. It's free. It's the it's like the closest thing to like us, right? It like, it's so intimate, and you can do it at any time anywhere, right? And so, you know? And so for me, it's also a bit of a full circle coming back from, like, being in India, you know, 20 plus years ago, where that was what we did, you know, at like, six in the morning on the bank of the Ganges River, you know, just a mile from where it comes out of the glacier and the Himalayas. Like, you know, like doing breath work there, from people that have been doing breath work for 1000s of years, right? Was, you know, like that. Those are some of my roots as well, right? And so. But it's so natural, like it's so part of who we are, and we can incorporate it into so many things and so. But when I say breath work, I mean, believe it or not, I think one of the most powerful things that somebody can do, like all the time, is literally just paying attention to your breath, right? And it sounds silly, but like we don't realize, like I when I focus on something, I literally stop breathing, yeah, you know. And so I literally stop breathing like you. And then the carbon dioxide builds up in my system, and then the part of my brain reads that the carbon dioxide is building up, and then it tells me that I'm stressed and that I'm anxious, because, literally, that's what our nerve it will put me into a fight or flight state, and so, so for me, it's like, it's part of my constant thing of, like, am I while I'm here with You? Like, am I also just mindful of my breath, because it helps with, like, what we call somatic work. It helps get me back into my body. It helps to also like pace myself. And then also, what it does is it begins to like align a lot of the areas of my brain to literally begin to fire in a more harmonious way, right? And so, but, you know, there's that one, and then there's, like, all the ones that, you know, Andrew Huberman has been so famous on recommending, like, the physiological size. And then there's like, box breathing, that is, I do all the time, and I love, and it's what like, but the Navy SEALs do. I think the, I think the I think that anybody who also wants to perform at a high level should have a good relationship with their breath and be able to use it in at least one or two ways, right? And you get to choose what just feels more natural to you. But I think that, like, that's a great thing, that I think there's just so many positives that, you know, there's no downside to having good breath work as part of your just daily routine.

William Harris  1:18:07  

You know, you talk about how it's, it's an ancient thing, right? And it's like you are over in the Himalayas. And for me, I think about the Bible even talks about this as well. And I believe the there's the tetragram of yod Hey, Vav, Hey. It's like, a y, h, V h, right? We don't necessarily know how it was pronounced, right, but this is the name that God says that He is. He's like, this is my name. And the way that a lot of times I've heard people suggest that it's like, there are no vowels and like, that's like, from an agent standpoint, that's just how it was. But there are no vows, because it really just sounds like you're breathing in. It's just like, right? It's like, just like breath. And it was like, he's like, my I am just breath. And even if we go back to it's like, what did when, when man became a living soul, from, from a biblical perspective, it says God breathed into him and he man became a living soul. And it's like, breath is life. And so being able to, like, you said, like all, all sorts of ancient philosophies talk about the importance of breath work and how important breath is to literally just the foundation of life.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:19:08  

It really is, and it goes, it goes so beyond just, it goes so beyond just even, like, oh two, right? Like the actual breathing is like there's something else happening. There's something else that's kind of pushing through us. There's something else that's aligning in us that we just don't have technology yet to measure, right? But it definitely goes beyond just, you know, moving gas through our lungs, right? There's we know from experience. It's so much more than that. It's so cool.

William Harris  1:19:40  

Yeah, it's been a lot of fun talking to you, learning from you, if people want to work with you, if they want to have their brain mapped, what is the best way for them to work with you, follow you?

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:19:50  

Yeah, I would still say the easiest way is for so I think Vital Brain Health. You know, anything on social media or our website? Prior website is the place to go, vitalbrainhealth.com. And, you know, we have a lot of people that fly in for the map. They go to Disneyland with their kids, and they fly home, and then we work with them doing all the remote work, you know, Boston and New York and, you know, Salt Lake City and so on. And so I would say, that's the place to go. And then, yeah, that's, I would just say that that's just, that's the way to do it.

William Harris  1:20:29  

Keep it simple, one place. Send them there. Well, again, I can't thank you enough for your time, sharing your knowledge, sharing your wisdom with us. It's been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot myself, personally. I've shared a lot personally as well. Appreciate you chatting with us today. This is great.

Dr. Giancarlo Licata  1:20:44  

This is a great platform, so thank you for having me, yeah.

William Harris  1:20:47  

Well, thank you everyone for listening. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:20:51  

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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