AI for Kids

How AI and VR Help Kids (and Adults) Relax (Middle+)

• Amber Ivey (AI) • Season 2 • Episode 21

Share episode

Send us a text

What if technology could help you understand and manage your emotions better? Dr. Alicia Mckoy, founder and CEO of PeakMind, takes us on a fascinating journey through the intersection of neuroscience, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence in the quest for better mental wellbeing.

The human brain processes emotions through chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, and adrenaline, triggering our fight, flight, freeze, or relaxation responses. Understanding this complex system is crucial for managing our emotional states effectively. 

With stress contributing to 60-80% of disease according to health organizations, Dr. Mckoy's work couldn't be more timely. She introduces us to concepts like ultradian rhythms—natural 90-minute cycles when our brains are optimally prepared for focus and learning—and explains how traditional school and work schedules often conflict with these natural patterns. Schools that have restructured around these rhythms have seen remarkable improvements in student performance.

Perhaps most exciting is Dr. Mckoy's pioneering work with virtual reality therapy. This "rehearsal therapy" allows people to practice stressful situations or experience calming environments while measuring biometric responses. The emergence of "VRX" (virtual reality prescriptions) represents a groundbreaking shift in healthcare, with doctors now prescribing VR experiences alongside or instead of traditional medications.

For those without access to advanced technology, Dr. Mckoy offers practical strategies anyone can implement: identifying your main stressors, noting where you feel stress physically, developing advance response plans, and prioritizing quality sleep.

Sign up for the weekly newsletter here to get up to date news on AI for Kids: https://aidigitales.com/newsletter

Resources

Support the show

Help us become the #1 podcast for AI for Kids.

Buy our new book "Let Kids Be Kids, Not Robots!: Embracing Childhood in an Age of AI"

Social Media & Contact:

Listen, rate, and subscribe! Stay updated with our latest episodes by subscribing to AI for Kids on your favorite podcast platform.

Like our content, subscribe or feel free to donate to our Patreon here: patreon.com/AiDigiTales...

Amber Ivey (AI):

Welcome to the AI for Kids podcast, where playtime, learning and creating collide bit by bit. Ever wonder how your phone recognizes your face. How does a game learn to get harder as you get better? This is AI. This podcast is designed for kids like you and your human parents, making the complex world of AI easy to understand and, most importantly, fun. So are you ready to unlock the mysteries of artificial intelligence? Subscribe and join us on AI for Kids. Hi everyone, welcome back to AI for Kids. Today we have Dr Alicia Mckoy, founder and CEO of PeakMind. Dr Alicia, can you tell us about yourself and what inspired you to start PeakMind and what is it?

Alicia Mckoy:

I've been a business owner for 20 years but my original degree I went to a college for interior design. So interior design I make offices really pretty, I design them, I create blueprints by drawing and using AutoCAD and computer programs and make offices amazing. So I've done that most of my career. No-transcript kids don't either. So I formed Peak Mind, a set of mental well-being tools, and I use really cool innovative products like virtual reality and augmented reality to help people learn about their emotions.

Amber Ivey (AI):

Mental well-being is something people are just now starting to talk about in the last decade, beyond just saying hey, it exists, but also trying to do something about it, so I'm excited that you're doing something about it. Before we dive into VR and the cool stuff you're working on, I want to talk about when you were a kid. What was your favorite subject that you always liked? Learning about the brain and design work. What were you talk about when you were a kid? What was your favorite subject that you always liked? Learning about the brain and design work. What were you thinking about when you were young?

Alicia Mckoy:

I wasn't thinking about neuroscience, ai or technology, but I liked art. That was the root of my interior design. I liked moving furniture around in my bedroom. When I went to college and they asked me what did I do as a kid that I enjoyed? I said, well, I played basketball and volleyball. And I asked me what did I do as a kid that I enjoyed? I said well, I played basketball and volleyball, and I like to move my bedroom around and playing basketball and volleyball. If you're not the top 1% of athletes, you're probably not going to do that as a job. So I looked at interior design and said let's try it.

Amber Ivey (AI):

The fact that you had the opportunity to do something that you love and you actually brought that into your current day. I think that's so cool. Speaking of AI if you could build any AI tool to help people or do anything, what would it do and why?

Alicia Mckoy:

Get us to better quality of life faster, whatever makes us truly happy. Get us to that faster and easier, that would be amazing.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I agree, because AI can close gaps or help us get to exactly what you're saying get to our goals. I'm excited about the future of it and what it looks like, but I'm even more excited to dive into the work you're doing. You've created a mental well-being app. Explain that so folks know what that means, because, again, like this, is a thing that many of us don't actually deal with and don't actually handle. You created the app. It uses AI to help people Great. Can you explain how it works? You created the app. It uses AI to help people Great. Can you explain how it works? How can AI support our mental health? What are you doing in this space?

Alicia Mckoy:

I'll break it down. I talked about feelings and emotions, sometimes called social, emotional learning. Social is how we interact with other people. Emotions are the things that we are processing inside with chemicals, hormones, those kinds of things. I think a lot of us, you know, even in middle school, we say our hormones are acting up, we've got a lot of energy, we want to bounce off the playset.

Alicia Mckoy:

Hormones and chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin Some of the other ones that people might have heard are cortisol or adrenaline. You know you got an adrenaline rush, and so that's natural. All our bodies have that. Our brains process that. As soon as we see something, the visual goes to that part of the brain and says what do we need right now? Do we need the adrenaline? Do we need the dopamine to feel loved and accomplished? Did we get a hug from our mom or see our mom? Did we get a little bit of oxytocin? All of that happens so fast Maybe not as fast as AI can process. I want scientists to tell me if our brain processes faster than AI algorithm. I don't know. But so when our brains take that in, we go into fight or flight sensation with those chemicals. We go into freeze mode, fight mode or relaxation mode. It's a choice, right? We process the social emotional environment around us and what somebody is saying to us, is it a bully, being mean to us? Then we're going to go into fight or flight.

Alicia Mckoy:

We're either going to stand up for ourselves, defend ourselves or run away, or in our minds, we're going to shut down and go inside. So that's fight or flight, freeze or fawn. If it's a loved one as the hugger, then we have that loving sensation and it calms us down. It decompresses us. I want to help people understand that. So a lot of what our app does is education. So my magic equation in life is comprehension, which is understanding what we do in school. We comprehend new topics, and so I think that passion drove me to want to build this application to store all this great knowledge that therapists and neuroscientists tell us about the brain and the stuff that I've researched. I store it in easy ways. Log into the app. And I say I store it in easy ways, log into the app and I say I'm feeling lonely right now.

Alicia Mckoy:

Ai is processing all of the great, rich content that I've created and other experts have created. It says, based on you, alicia, as a 40-something diverse woman, here are things you've talked to us about, kind of like chat, gtp, right, it stores in memory how you've interacted and it says based on all this, we think the best way for you to not be lonely was to call a friend. That took two minutes. I haven't thought about my best friend. Let me think about her.

Alicia Mckoy:

I wanted to create something that helps remind employees where we spend most of our waking hours, that there's things that can help us produce better work. We can be happier in our social interactions in the office. We're more creative when we have better hormones in our bodies and don't have adrenaline. It's just creativity and logic and emotions. They're tricky. The more we know, the better we can do for ourselves. Coping skills help regulate and feel better and get our body in a better state. Teaching people about those coping skills and hopefully people practice enough with our technology VR and they are practice and rehearsal training and once you do that enough, your brain stores that for the next time you're in that fight or flight sensation. When a bully comes at you, you think through all the things you've practiced and say peak mind taught me I can do this or I can react this way, instead of being in fight.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I can calmly respond. You're right. Some of the things I didn't even know about. I've heard fight or flight my whole life. I'm a freezer in most situations, so I've learned that about myself. The thing you're so right on is training your brain to process what is happening and then to elicit the response you want not the response that happens because you train it another way. That is brilliant.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I'm excited about continuing the conversation and learning more about what you're doing in the workplace for kids in the classroom. We all benefit from what you're doing at Peak Mind. Otherwise, we're going to react, and that's just natural. There are some classes where they're like. This is how you think about your emotions, but unless someone sat down with you and help you learn how to process your emotions, if you're in like a bad state, growing up in a bad state or growing up in environments that you don't have that, it is hard to recover. I know we're talking about workers. Why do you think it's important to help kids, teachers and adults overcome things associated with chronic stress anxiety? Every time I read an article, it's talking about how high anxiety is. And how do we do that, especially with tools like AI at our fingertips?

Alicia Mckoy:

The pandemic. You know we're suffering. We all went through a major trauma. It sticks with you in different lengths of time. Some people can release the trauma. Sometimes it sticks for years. The pandemic was chronic and compounded traumas. Our immune system is a little shaky. Our autonomic nervous system was flared up because we were all in fight mode and it needed to calm it down. Automatic nervous system. A lot of tools have come out after the pandemic allowing people to regulate and re-establish how they feel.

Alicia Mckoy:

Sixth grade science teaches homeostasis. Homeostasis means my baseline, where I'm the most calm, where my body is the most regulated and my homeostasis is different than yours, different than the next person. Tools that help to tell us when we're dysregulated, either manic or hyper, or we're hyper aroused, which we're just lethargic and we're lazy and we just don't feel good, we might be depressed. That's under homeostasis. Tools that help us balance that in life and know where we're at are super important, which is one of the reasons why I started looking at all the scientific evidence that bio-wearables like Fitbits and Apple watches and EEG headbands and things that can tell us what's happening inside of us, that are non-invasive right, they don't have to swab me for saliva, draw my blood to tell me where my hormones and chemicals are at. They give a slight indication. I think those are great because it's easier to use to give me information about myself.

Alicia Mckoy:

I think at different points our brain develops at different stages. Younger kids they're learning a lot. The formative brain is starting to grow and that's the physiology Ages 10 to 12, to me that's one of the most critical ages. The brain is forming emotions and how I react when this emotion happens. It's forming synapses. If this experience happens, how do I react? The more we see our parents and friends reacting, we're making those connection points to learn about healthy emotions and healthy processing and to see our parents and friends reacting, we're making those connection points to learn about healthy emotions and healthy processing and to see our parents and teachers showing us and modeling positive behaviors. That's what our brain is storing. When you get older, like middle schoolers, you have that baseline which may not be healthy. Things like this are exposing people to relearning and reprocessing. Therapy is amazing for that Stress relief tool.

Alicia Mckoy:

The CDC, the Center for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization are both indicating that stress is a cause of 60 to 80% of disease in America. If you go to cancergov, slash stress. It'll tell you there's not enough scientific evidence to prove that stress is causing the cancer tumor. But what it says on that page is that once you have the first cancer tumor, the first tiny one, when you stress, stress in our bodies tries to protect that tumor. It doesn't know that tumor is bad. So you just form a protective bubble around that tumor and it gets to grow. So you definitely don't want to stress. If you have any of those conditions you can go to cancergov slash stress and read more. We know that's one disease.

Alicia Mckoy:

Stress inflames us. So too much cortisol and too much adrenaline is causing us to be shaky, right. Sometimes we feel it in our gut, feel our heart, right, we start to pound and so sometimes stress and anxiety are. There's a fine line between the two. But in America our medical system doesn't classify stress as a medical condition. They label you anxious In presenting with stress-like symptoms or chronic stress symptoms.

Alicia Mckoy:

They have stress or depression, they can list, or anxiety or depression, they can label you. So you get therapy and insurance money to pay for solving that. And so I think that that's a major thing in America that we have to overcome because international insurance agencies they recognize that stress is a condition upon itself. It doesn't mean I have to be labeled anxious or depressed. I may be stressed, leading to anxiety and a depression, but it may just be its own thing. Life is hard, school is hard, teaching is hard. We don't have the coping skills. Yet Stress alone, if we lean into that, chronic stress means I'm stressing for two or more hours a day. If somebody pulls out in front of me, I slam on my brakes. I just had a stress response. Then I shake it off and I keep driving. That's how quick a stress response is meant to be. Or I hear a kid yell. I need to react. The kid's okay.

Alicia Mckoy:

We are living in a chronically stressed society where we're seeing an up arousal way too much during a day and that's what's leading to 60 to 80% of disease comorbidity. Wow, I'm learning so much. How do we overcome it? Especially the middle schooler. I've been talking to groups here at my office area that we've had several different groups of students coming in and the document that I put together for middle schoolers says you know, first step is identify three main stressors.

Alicia Mckoy:

Just take a pause, point today. Stop what you're doing, sit in a quiet space and think about what is causing me stress today. Is it technology, people around me, the environment? Think about where you feel it in your body. A lot of times we're not present to what's happening in our bodies. We're not present with where I'm feeling it. That can make a difference, especially if you talk to a therapist or a doctor. They're going to want to know OK, where are you feeling it, so I can help you overcome it.

Alicia Mckoy:

So start to write those and then write a list of a stress reliever. Think about OK, if it's this situation, how could I not get into that? Again, this is preventative. If we think about it in advance, we can start to prevent stress from flaring up, becoming chronic down the road. Do the visualization, even if it's sitting there, thinking through a couple different opportunities. Use chat, gtp, say to it you know, the next time that somebody says this, what are some polite ways I can respond? Read the list.

Alicia Mckoy:

In practice, those are quick things, but there's a ton of other great tips to help mitigate stress. The main one for adults is sleep. Sleep is when our body can release negative hormones pulsing through our bloodstream throughout the day, when we get into deep sleep and we reheal and refuel our body. The last study on sleep said you want an hour and 45 minutes of REM sleep when your brain is trying to work through stressful situations that we have in the day and we're asleep but our brain is processing and you're dreaming of how I can overcome that. So we need that REM sleep so that we feel like, oh, I have a potential solution the next day. And then we want an hour and 45 of that deep sleep so that that's when our body can heal itself and that's really the only time your body truly regenerates. It takes laying in bed for seven to nine hours to get that deep sleep.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I didn't think about that. You're dropping so much knowledge and I'm excited as we continue this interview because I'm learning so much. I didn't realize the amount of time you get into REM sleep was only a small portion of the total time you're asleep. One, Two also thank you for the exercise because I think a lot of times we are in this chronic state. Why do I have headaches? Why do I feel my chest tight? And often we ignore it because you assume that's the state you're living in. We can be aware and then take steps forward. Before we continue, I want to play a game to break it up a little bit. We have a quick game called Tech Trivia. I'm going to ask you some fun questions about AI and well-being. True or false? Ai can have stress. No, why?

Alicia Mckoy:

not In the clinical definition of stress. It can't have that. But maybe it stresses itself out.

Amber Ivey (AI):

We agree. Maybe one day it'll get to that point with AGI or whatever, but right now it cannot. All right, next question Are you ready? What is AI's brain called?

Alicia Mckoy:

Ooh, I know the Alexa brain is called Lex, but I don't know the general one.

Amber Ivey (AI):

Thinking. For me I was thinking neural networks, but I like Lex as an answer. It's cool because, thinking about the area of work you've done and the work in AI and the science or study of the brain to understand how AI works, it's interesting to see where AI continues to evolve. And even just playing around here, like you said earlier, can an AI be stressed? Imagine talking to an AI and it tells you it's stressed. Yeah, how do you deal with that? Or it's trying to help you deal with germ stress. There's so many things that are going to be interesting in this space. As something that has a fake brain navigating with people who have an actual brain.

Alicia Mckoy:

For sure. Artificial emotional intelligence AEI is not an acronym that most people have heard. It kind of gained some popularity and then I kind of saw it drop off and wasn't really talked about. That's why they coined it artificial emotional intelligence to mimic the human brain, and maybe that's part of what they're calling some of these other acronyms. That was at least seven, eight years ago.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I had not heard about that. I've heard about emotional intelligence, but not the artificial part Interesting. I want to check that out and learn more. Let me continue us on. You've also written two books about the workplace of today. Can you share one important lesson from your books that could help kids manage stress or stay focused in school?

Alicia Mckoy:

In school. I would talk about ultradian rhythms or circadian rhythm, the way in which our brains process information. So we hear flow state a lot. I think more these days get into flow and you can do a project for an hour and a half or three hours and you can work on a hard task. What that is neurologically circadian rhythms I think we hear about it sometimes with the sun. So when the sun's up we're awake. When the sun's down, we're supposed to be asleep. That's just how our bodies think of the world.

Alicia Mckoy:

Ultradian rhythms are the study of okay, when we're awake during circadian rhythm, that rhythm of being able to logically process things and learn hard new tasks, focus on deep projects.

Alicia Mckoy:

Neuroscientists like Dr Andrew Kuberman have podcasts and studies on those. They say that two times a day we can get into a 90 minute ultradian rhythm and those are the times that we are the best, when we're learning new topics, when we're in flow state. The rest of the time, our brain needs kind of that pause, it needs a reset, it needs a break, it needs reset time. Right, we need to do other things that are not those hard learning tasks. School times during the day have not really. We didn't know these neuroscience things when the Department of Education school is going to be from 730 to 330. We didn't know these things. Then they take a look at these studies, change their rhythm and implement VR therapeutic and the VR training will get into why those could be important for kids in their learning, Understanding that about our brains and trying to listen to it, be rhythmic with it and better support our body, Lowering stress, being the best version of ourselves.

Amber Ivey (AI):

Now you make me want to contact my employer and let them know. We need to be up to date on recent research. There is a school in Austin, texas. They've done what you said. They only have two hours of intense learning in the morning with AI. The rest of the day they're still in school. They're interacting, doing physical things, building IKEA furniture, learning about robots. They've been life skills. Those kids test higher. People going to the school probably have funding and money, so that also may be a reason why they are also doing well and things like that. But the fact that people across the school test higher than other places was interesting to me. The other thing someone said one of my earlier interviews they have like an AI app.

Amber Ivey (AI):

It's like a story time. A little character allows kids to learn with routines around bedtime, playtime, eating, depending on the time of day. It may not be time for a kid to learn math. We force the child to learn on this schedule. We only have this 90-minute slot. How do we make sure the hardest work is happening there and then giving kids the time, like you said, to go play or do something else? I'm hearing that more often. Thank you for saying that and I'm hoping that folks are listening and trying to even figure out how that works in their world, or teachers are thinking about how they truncate time and what it looks like for kids. I think yesterday we spoke to students and parents about advanced manufacturing and STEAM, which I want you to explain in a second, and I want you to talk a little bit about. What did you talk to them about? What were some learnings that came out of it, and then also what is STEAM and what is advanced manufacturing for people who don't know what that means.

Alicia Mckoy:

STEAM has definitely been heard of more than some other topics science, technology, engineering, arts and math. Our panel covered a lot of that. I wore an EEG headband while I was talking to the students and then be able to pull up on my phone. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta I'm in high beta because beta means I'm active. If I was in delta, I would have been sleeping, and I wasn't sleeping on stage. I was in beta, working and talking, very active. That's what my brain showed.

Alicia Mckoy:

Art are visuals that we show in our VR simulation. That's. An artist has to create those visuals because we want it to be appealing for people, to want to put the simulation back on and to be able to see with crystal clear clarity the beach. When I take somebody to a beach meditation, you know today somebody, one of the blue waves. We worked on a science study with some police officers and they really thought they were like oh my gosh, this feels like an island. Men, women, young, old all admire the art in the visuals. Science, technology, engineering, art and math Our data scientists know way more math than I do.

Alicia Mckoy:

Steam is critical. Advanced manufacturing is so we buy hardware from other people. I don't make the EEG brain sensor. I don't make the VR, I buy them from companies like HP. We create the software, the whole simulations loaded in there over high speed Wi-Fi.

Alicia Mckoy:

Everybody knows Wi-Fi right. They know more about advanced manufacturing than they probably think because they're going to complain if that Wi-Fi is slow. Fast, low latency speeds, 5g and Wi-Fi that's advanced manufacturing, improving processes. So thank goodness our AT&Ts and Verizons over the years used advanced manufacturing to improve the speed of Wi-Fi so that we can download our shows and watch Netflix faster.

Alicia Mckoy:

If they hadn't done that, process improvement, which is definition of advanced manufacturing, is improving processes, you know, for the overall benefit of consumers in usually hardware or building cars, but it's also, I say we're the invisible products using advanced manufacturing. It's easy to see a car made by a robot than a Subaru plant advanced manufacturing To process those 100 million lines of biocode. We use low latency speeds. On edge computing, we keep it local, on-prem, on-premises. So edge computing is what we use because I want to protect your data. If you tell me how stressed you are and you're sharing your fears with me or your worries or what makes you happy, I don't want somebody in the cloud to grab that. So we keep it and use different hardware and technology to protect that E is for edge computing.

Amber Ivey (AI):

So, kids, if you're listening and want to like dig into deeper to that, you can go to that episode while I'm getting into show notes. Dr Alicia, what is the one big thing that came out of those panels you've been on that you want to share?

Alicia Mckoy:

with us. Happiness comes from finding our purpose. So if we want low stress live, then we want to do things that make us happy, and things that make us happy are typically our purpose or knack. What are you naturally good at, the sooner we find what we're good at not always right, it's not always going to lead to a happy life, but we're going to have more happy moments if we're doing things that we really love to do and that we're passionate about.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I want to dig deeper into the cool things you're talking about, like VR. How does that work? How are you using VR to help people manage stress?

Alicia Mckoy:

Rehearsal therapy is a type of therapy to help you see what a happy, low stress life looks like. Some of us can sit back and we can close our eyes and we can visualize. I am not naturally a visualizer. Some people are great at it. Some people are not. So for those that can't, when they close their eyes they can't envision what it would be like to just walk into a room and everybody pats you on the back and gives you a love and makes you feel successful and says that they're proud of you.

Alicia Mckoy:

We can create that simulation in VR and model for you what it should be. If we show you and you feel it scientifically, we're looking at the biometrics. I can see you're getting happier and healthier by lower blood pressure, lower heart rate, higher heart rate variability, which is a high, is an indication of how healthy you are and how quickly your body can get out of stress. I can see somebody with a low HRV getting up to 60, 90 and hopefully over 100. That's telling me their body is producing less stress and able to overcome it. Through this simulation, what I want is for them to realize I like that. I want more of that in my real life. That's great. Augmented reality. Now I expect that because I'm deserving of it.

Alicia Mckoy:

When we know the feelings that made us happy and loved, we can say to real people hey, could you do this for me, or could we do this together, because it would make me feel good.

Alicia Mckoy:

I can create anything right. I can take you to the beach, if you're in Indiana, or into a boardroom and teach you to thrive, which is one of our simulation. If you're just so tired of somebody not listening to you every time you walk into that room, how do you take back your power? We can do talk narrative in our avatar that walks you through that and you're sitting down at a boardroom table. You're preparing and practicing for that next time that you're physically there. Can't do that with just me. It would take me and a lot of therapists and a lot of coaches all across the world to go in depth. But then I couldn't even really show and model unless I hired a bunch of actors, which I guess I could do. But that's a lot more work than creating a VR or AR simulation and then loading that simulation to people all across the world that want to buy it and try it.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I look forward to more of that happening. Training new skills Gaming is big in that space, but to use it for things like to go through the process I love that we learn through experience, or hope you learn an experience, but imagine if you could have those modules to deal with a scenario where someone at work or school is not treating you right. The benefit of that is amazing. I appreciate that you are thinking about these things and actually doing them. As the world moves into the metaverse, we're going to need more of this. What are some practical ways? Teachers can either help students or students can help students or even their teachers, use AI or other technologies to improve their stress, improve focus, because if we only have this 90 minute window, how do I focus for X amount of hours? And that's for kids, adults, whoever has to sit in front of a screen or in a classroom for a long time.

Alicia Mckoy:

We talked about homeostasis. In VR I can do a scary simulation. There's one that's not our simulation, but you go to the edge of the Grand Canyon in 3D. It's going to upregulate your blood pressure a bit, get your heart rate going, which is good when you're lethargic and you need to be awake, downregulate. I can take you to the beach. If you don't have tools like that, as a teacher, jumping up and down, getting them to move their hands, doing some light cardio can upregulate you. I've seen teachers turn off lights or just turn one light on when bringing kids back in from recess because that helps the body downregulate from screaming and running around. So there are tools like that. There's also blue light screens that you can do in your lights of your classroom. You know you can put beach scenes in the light filter so they can look up. They have the light but see stars or mountains. So that's bringing in some of that nature therapy to the classroom, which scientific evidence proves that it helps our body to feel safer and regulates that autonomic nervous system.

Amber Ivey (AI):

Now you're giving me ideas. I have a light here and I'm like this probably needs to be a blue light, just because I often am doing interviews, and I love the idea of integrating light filters or things like that to change it in a way that uses like a lower level of technology, but it can have big impact. We're going to move to our next segment, dr Alicia. We're going to do something fun to learn more about you. Versus the old school bio, it's called Two Truths and a Dream. Tell us two true facts about your life and one dream job or fact you had as a kid. We're going to guess which one is a dream, so I'll play along, kit. You're playing along at home.

Alicia Mckoy:

Whenever you're ready, get two truths and a dream. I created a SaaS platform. I was able to drive really fast race cars in my younger days. I have written over 75,000 words about de-stressing in the workforce.

Amber Ivey (AI):

Let me start from the beginning. You created a SaaS app written over 70,000 words on this topic, but then also you. What was the for that one? When you were a kid, you wanted to be a professional race car driver. Kids remember earlier. First, you created a SaaS mental wellbeing app called Peak Mind. Earlier, she was talking about her software and what she did there. I'm going to hold that for now, but I think that's true. The second one she mentioned 75,000 words I mentioned earlier in the question she's written books. The other piece is wanting to be a professional race car driver. That's still dreamy for sure. So we're going to go with. The dream job is professional race car driver. I want you to explain a few things. If that is the dream, talk about when was that a dream? Talk about that and then tell us the name of your two books. I think the SAS mobile app is Peak Mind. I just want to make sure we got those right, correct. Good job. What are your two books? And tell us about race car driving or the dream of that.

Alicia Mckoy:

My first book is Be Well at Work on Amazon. The companion to that is a workplace guide, like a guidebook that you can get out your highlighter and your pen and work along and put your own thoughts and action steps into the guidebook, and so that's also on Amazon and it's creating a new workday culture.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I love it. And then with the Peak Mind app, was that your first app? How did you get to an app and not something else? Why? Software as a service? And for kids, sometimes they're hardware companies hardware as a service, software as a service.

Alicia Mckoy:

I'm trying to figure out why she chose software 10 years ago, I realized mental well-being was lacking in the workplace. I started to think about how can I solve this? At first I just wanted to buy a book or hire somebody. When I realized that really wasn't out there, I said okay, I'm just going to hire a bunch of therapists and I'm going to send them to all of my clients and they're going to go coach them and teach them how to lower stress in the workplace. I didn't think that was a scalable solution and finding therapists that want to work in corporate America versus just where a traditional therapist. You go to their office and they just see 20 patients 30 patients a week in their office. It was a different business model to ask them to come to the workplace. Software as a service was booming and so when I realized that, I said I wonder if software as a service can store my thoughts in the brain of great therapists, send this information to people all across the world. And it can. That's the benefit of software as a service. Saas platforms that companies buy and then you give it to the benefit of your employees is how we operate. So that's why I decided software as a service was the avenue.

Alicia Mckoy:

The last year we realized stress should be a medical condition. In America we also realize software as a medical device or in a medical device. Sand or SIMD is also two potential avenues that we may want to go in the future with our product. So it's still keeping that foundation, but treating it like a medical device, because one of our competitors does very similar VR simulation, but they were able to get clinical reimbursement so they were able to get the American insurance industry to cover half the cost of their product.

Alicia Mckoy:

There's a new industry called VRX. Instead of getting a prescription, you can now go to your doctor and get a VRX, because a lot of people can't take Tylenol or they can't do pain pills for any different reason. If you're in pain and can't do pain pills, cedars-sinai and Dr Brendan Siegel were able to prove out that virtual reality therapeutic was just as effective in treating that pain, because pain is relative. If you don't think about your pain if I can distract you you have that bum ankle. You're only going to remember it when you're focused on it. He's led the industry to help companies get insurance to cover some of this stuff. That's our future. That is so cool.

Amber Ivey (AI):

I didn't know about VRX. I didn't know that you could even do some of the like you said getting paid back for different medical codes, for some of this work, learning so much. And for kids who want to start their own company or work for a startup. These are great tips, dr Alicia, before we go, I want to give you space to give any more advice for kids who want to learn about AI and how it can help them manage stress or improve their mental well-being.

Alicia Mckoy:

There are a ton of great mental well-being apps that are free. I say, start there. Mine costs money and maybe someday it'll be free to people. But you know there are things you can download off the App Store or Android Store that are available today to listen to meditative music, to do a guided meditation. Tons of free YouTube I still look at a lot of YouTubes because there's so much variety out there and save the ones I like. There's a ton of free, accessible tools If you have Wi-Fi. If you don't, the public library has CDs still that you can go into the library and listen to.

Alicia Mckoy:

If you're struggling with something, seek help, ask a trusted advisor, ask a teacher, go to your school counselor, you know, if you're an adult, reach out to a friend that's trusted expert or a therapist and really lean into your emotions. The more we know, the more we can do. We're all learning about mental well-being and mental health. If we stay in the mental well-being and do more of the preventative stuff that I talk about, then hopefully we have less mental health issues and incidents that we have to. Then, you know, maybe go on a prescription to deal with or to treat or do some deeper therapeutic. So preventative care is something that I think I really hope that we all start paying more attention to, and and that you know, includes self-care, checking in with yourself, pausing, re-regulating and sleeping good.

Amber Ivey (AI):

Thank you so much for joining us today, dr Alicia, and thank you to all our listeners. Don't forget to subscribe to AI for Kids. Rate the show and stay curious. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us as we explore the fascinating world of artificial intelligence. Don't keep this adventure to yourself. Download it, share it with your friends and let everyone else in on the fun. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. See you next time on AI for Kids.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Amber Ivey (AI)

Host