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Comment by bonoboTP | Hacker News Reader

> Someone poured their heart and soul into something that may not make a profit!

Sorry but that's irrelevant. A homeopathy practitioner could say the same thing.

Their site front page says in big font: "Dramatically improve focus, relaxation & sleep". And it says science all over the place and contains pretty sciency charts. An intentionally wide range of charts. Vertical and horizontal bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, all to make you go "this looks legit science!"

So where is the peer-reviewed, randomized, controlled, double blind trial to support these claims? The only study that tries to compare it with placebo music seems to be unpublished as of yet and all we can see is some charts. We don't see their methodology, the results, significance etc.

I would have no problem with this if they didn't brand it so extremely heavily on science.

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Hey man, about to respond to your other question, but there was a similar question earlier so thought I'd just take this one first.

Here's a bibliography we're still working on. More to add, but a good start so far: https://www.brain.fm/pdfs/ResearchLibrary.pdf

Here's an independent peer reviewed study on HRV using our tech: https://www.brain.fm/pdfs/ElioConteHRVandBWE.pdf

We're planning on following that one up with a more robust study, because our users do get great results with HRV and it's an interesting topic.

One of our former neuroscientists published a well received meta analysis in a journal, but it's a bit outdated now re: what we're doing. Still, it's on our site if you're interested.

And then of course here's our own research that is pending publication:

https://www.brain.fm/pdfs/EEGFocusAnalysis.pdf https://www.brain.fm/pdfs/EEGSleepAnalysis.pdf

We also do regular analysis of user progress with a few statisticians I work with, and those will be published as well. Sorry, just takes time to get these things ready and through to a journal. Trying our best though. :)

I appreciate your honesty here. If I'm reading it right, result of the focus study is that the Music-Placebo difference is at p=0.044, 0.041, 0.048. So it is significant (under 0.05) but "just barely", which is always a warning sign, especially if the study was done and published by the company itself.

It's actually a very very good result for the tests we did. A similar study using a boatload of caffeine couldn't reach statistical significance. Also I believe strongly that if we'd compared it to say, classical music or some random ambient album, it would have been an even stronger result. The placebo in this study was still generated by the AI, so it followed the same rules - rules that naturally help people focus. The only thing it lacked was the brainwave stimulating modulations. We did see a big difference on an EEG because of that, but the fact is that part of what makes the sessions work is that they follow strict rules, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just makes it harder in this case.

But I actually like it like that. I want a double blind study with identical-sounding placebo and more subjects. After that we can study how it compares to regular music commonly used as study-aids.

Regarding the statistical analysis, result interpretation, etc, I feel I should let Giovanni himself defend his paper. He's dealing with family / health issues right now, but I hope to get him on here as soon as possible. I promise he will respond eventually and clear this up.

> I believe strongly that if we'd compared it to say, classical music or some random ambient album, it would have been an even stronger result.

Strong beliefs like that are still just hunches.

> I want a double blind study with identical-sounding placebo and more subjects. After that we can study how it compares to regular music commonly used as study-aids.

My problem is that you already decided that it "dramatically improves focus, relaxation and sleep". What if the new better study doesn't show the effect? Will you dissolve the company? Will you just change the marketing?

I'd also suggest "triple-blinding" the study, i.e. the person who does the statistical analysis on the computer should also not know which music was which.

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