This is Neo Mohsenvand.
He’s a scientist who constantly
records his life.
It sums up to 18 hundred hours
of video.
But it’s not just video,
he’s also recording his feelings
- using these devices,
which he wears every day.
He calls it Mnemo and he thinks
it will one day
change how we remember and react
to what happens to us.
Knowing more about yourself
it's gonna change the story
of your life.
Neo is part of the
Fluid Interfaces team
at MIT Media Lab.
Where scientists are developing
wearable technology that could
make us better at
regulating emotion
making decisions
or remembering the past.
We have the opportunity
to create the first
comprehensive database
of human experience.
This wristband
records my heartrate,
my skin conductance,
which is a really good index
of how stressed
or how excited
a person is.
I record my body temperature,
the headset is recording
what's going on in the brain.
Mnemo is recording
all this data simultaneously
to build a bank
of Neo’s memories:
Experiences that he can revisit
and also learn how he was
feeling at that moment.
For example,
here's us interviewing Neo.
And here's what that experience
looks like in his memory bank.
And this is what's being
picked up by the sensors.
He started recording his life
nine months ago.
And nearly every night
he goes through
the day's footage.
He's built a system
that speeds up the video,
and slows down
only for the moments
that made him especially
anxious, happy or calm.
It's me listening to audio books
or music.
Some sort of memory
amplification system
Where I can watch it
in five minutes and understand
all the important moments.
Neo is hoping
something like this
could actually be wired
into the brain
and create an artificial memory
for people with brain diseases
like Alzheimer's.
Someone asks you,
"what did you
have for breakfast"?
You just think about breakfast
and it immediately finds
the video of that moment.
And for example you can
see it on your phone
or if you have smart glasses
you can see it in your glasses.
Both of my grandmas
got Alzheimer's.
I had the opportunity
to take care of one
of them for a while
and it's such a
heartbreaking disease.
If you look at the products
that are available
for Alzheimer's,
most of the technology
is about how to
lock the cabinets
and how to
make sure the patient
stays in the room.
Nobody is building devices that
can bring them
back to functionality.
The first step is collecting
as much data as possible
to feed into a software
that can recognize faces,
objects and patterns
in a particular person's life.
So Neo is his own
research subject.
And he's willing to
wear this as long as it takes
to build that database.
He's gotten used to the staring.
Luckily his girlfriend
has gotten used to it too.
At first I was just annoyed
cause I was like,
I don't like being filmed
I don't like it when people
look at me.
So I don't want to be filmed.
But then I'm like,
you know, I love vlogs,
and I love watching people,
and I love having memories
so now I'm just used to it,
I actually like it a lot.
And it's come with
an added bonus.
Neo says sifting through
footage of his day
has made him more aware
of the things that
make him happy,
and he seeks those out more.
Moments where I get food for her
- I like watching her eat.
Doing physicial activity
together, it always leads to
lasting calmness.
So in that sense,
it's kind of like a
private psychologist.
You're constantly analyzing
in the context of your memories
to figure out what
you should do next.
I think more about
investing my life
on things that actually matter.
And I think much less about
the tiny things that bother me.