00:00The technology was used to prepare athletes for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
00:09Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on stage Camille Jeunet-Kelwey, CEO and co-founder of Neurathletics, with a round of applause.
00:32Hello everyone, thank you very much for being here today.
00:36If there are any sports fans in the room, I suspect that just like me, you've been spending far too
00:41much time staring at your screens lately.
00:43Between Roland Garros, the Champions League final in handball football, the FIFA World Cup and soon the Tour de France,
00:51we are truly spoiled.
00:52For us, as fans, of course, it's fantastic. But for athletes, it can be a very different story.
01:02Indeed, calendars are becoming more and more crowded, expectations are rising, and pressure to deliver never seems to stop.
01:14And this raises a simple yet fundamental question, which is how do we reconcile performance and longevity?
01:24Or in other words, how do we help athletes perform better, longer and more consistently without compromising their mental and
01:36physical well-being?
01:38The truth is that a lot has been done already to optimize everything that is physical.
01:45Today, we monitor heart rate, speed, workload, respiration, everything. We monitor almost everything except the brain.
01:57And yet, we know that performance starts in the brain. Movement starts in the brain, attention, focus starts in the
02:06brain, confidence starts in the brain.
02:09And besides, science has repeatedly demonstrated that cognitive or brain training has a major impact on performance.
02:17Let me just give you an example and do a short experiment together.
02:20Do not move. Just try to concentrate and imagine yourself taking a free throw.
02:28Do not just see it. Try to feel it. Feel all the sensation, the position of your body, the bowel
02:35in your hands, the movement itself.
02:38Okay?
02:39What you just did is called mental imagery.
02:43And something incredible just happened in your brain.
02:46Even though you were not moving, neural circuits that are similar to the ones involved in actual movement became active.
02:54And this is the reason why athletes can use mental imagery to improve their speed of movement, their precision of
03:03movement, strength,
03:04but also to continue practicing during injury and to accelerate return to play.
03:12Beyond movement, mental imagery is also about managing pressure, building confidence, and rehearsing or improving tactics.
03:23And I'm sure many of you have seen before pilots or skiers rehearsing a race in their head before it
03:30starts.
03:32Okay, so now the question is, if this is so amazing, such a powerful tool, why is it not more
03:39popular?
03:40There is one reason, which is that mental training remains largely invisible.
03:48In other words, we have no idea of what is happening in everybody's brain during cognitive training.
03:56And this is exactly the problem we solve.
03:59Our athletes and coaches like objective indicators of performance and progression.
04:05And this is what we do.
04:07We make the invisible visible.
04:10I am Camille Jeunet-Kellouet.
04:12I'm a CNRS neuroscientist, CEO and co-founder of NeuroAthetics.
04:16And for the last 12 years, I've been designing neurotechnologies to help managing, improve, restore cognitive and motor abilities in
04:25stroke survivors, patients with Parkinson's disease and sport athletes.
04:30Together with my co-founder, Philippe Tour, we have decided five years ago to bring those neurotechnologies out of the
04:37lab and to elite sports.
04:40Our ambition was to create the world's first brain smartwatch for performance, a tool that turns mental training into measurable
04:51data.
04:53But enough talking.
04:55Let us show you how it works.
04:57Please welcome on stage Antoine and Mathieu, who in real life are our lead user experience and chief scientific officer.
05:08For today's demo, they've been promoted to athletes and coach.
05:13What Antoine wears is a lightweight electroencephalography or EEG that enables measuring his brain activity.
05:22EEG is safe, non-invasive.
05:25As you notice, we have not implanting any electrodes in his brain and I'm sure he's grateful about that.
05:31But it's also easy to use.
05:34The thing is that if we want to have good signals, we have to ask Antoine to stay still, not
05:40to move, to avoid any artifacts in his signals.
05:44So now the EEG has been installed.
05:47Mathieu will calibrate the system, set all the parameters and the training will start.
05:54Because Antoine practices street workouts in real life, they've decided to train his pull-up technique.
06:01So during each trial, Antoine will imagine himself doing a pull-up and at the same time he will see
06:11in real time the brain areas that are being activated.
06:15Because he wants to improve his movements, he will have to train and aim at activating his mortal cortex.
06:23The mortal cortex is just there between your ears.
06:26This is the area displayed in green on the screen.
06:30Depending on the athlete's profile and preferences, this feedback can also be displayed as a video game inspired FPS target,
06:39like you can see in the middle here.
06:41More globally, everything in our procedure can be personalized.
06:46We use artificial intelligence to adapt continuously the protocols, so the feedback, the difficulty, the tasks, so that to maximize
06:55performance and progression.
07:02At the end of the training, all data are synchronized into our web app, which enables a comprehensive analysis of
07:12performance and progression.
07:15So, to summarize, with New Athletics, for the first time, athletes and staff can have robust objective data, brain data,
07:26to optimize their cognitive training.
07:30And this is only the beginning.
07:39Because at New Athletics, we are currently building the first comprehensive operating system for cognitive performance.
07:48A platform designed to monitor, understand and optimize cognitive training.
07:55And today, we've been talking about sports, but this extends far beyond athletes.
08:01To pilots, surgeons, operating forces, and executives, and actually anyone whose performance depends on the ability to learn, focus, adapt,
08:14and take decisions under pressure.
08:19This is what we do at New Athletics.
08:22This is what we do at New Athletics.
08:23This is the future we are building.
08:25And to conclude, I would like to say that we are on market.
08:29We have signed our first contract.
08:31We are now raising funds.
08:33And if you have any questions, please ask.
08:36We still have two minutes.
08:38And if you're too shy, you know where to find us.
08:41Thank you very much.
08:43Thank you very much.
08:50Maybe you have some questions for…
08:55Yeah, you have questions?
08:56Okay.
08:57You stay over there.
08:58Thank you guys.
09:03Sorry, I lost my voice yesterday.
09:05so how are you working with the mental
09:08data? Do you work with
09:10only physical one or you
09:12have the mental screenings with
09:14the sport?
09:17I'm sorry, I'm not sure I heard you but
09:20you asked me if I train them
09:22during physical training. Do you use
09:24the mental data? I mean like mental
09:26health data, emotional stuff
09:28or accept
09:30the physical one?
09:32We work with everybody
09:34so our idea is try
09:36to open mental
09:38preparation. We don't want mental preparation
09:40to be dedicated
09:42only to mental stuff. Basically
09:44depending on the
09:46task of visualization you're doing, you can
09:48do the visualization to
09:50increase self-confidence, manage emotion
09:52in which case it's rather mental stuff
09:54but if you do mental imagery to improve
09:56the technique of a gesture, it's
09:58rather the physical stuff and if
10:00you do this visualization
10:02in order to
10:06improve the rehabilitation
10:08and accelerate the return to highest performance
10:10then it comes to the medical staff
10:12and this is why we also enable
10:14on the web app
10:16all members of the staff to
10:18create sessions of
10:20training and to discuss together
10:22to maximize both performance
10:24performance and well-being.
10:31Okay, we're done.
10:33Woo!
10:35Short.
10:36Sorry, we can interact after
10:38because we have to go
10:39for the next one.
10:40Thank you so much.
10:41Thank you very much.
10:41I'll let you
10:42be in touch with
10:44I'm going to take this off.
10:45Thank you so much, Camille.
10:47Merci beaucoup.
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