How Science Lab 3 is Combating Age-Related Memory Loss with Sleep-Based Olfactory Therapy
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Show Notes:
In this episode of Mission Matters, host Adam Torres interviews Alan Bernstein, CEO of Science Lab 3, live from the Newport Beach Investor Conference. Alan shares how his company created Memory Air, a scent-emitting sleep device that passively stimulates the brain’s memory centers. Backed by over 30 years of neurobiological research and fine-tuned over eight years of development, the product is designed to help combat age-related memory decline. Bernstein also discusses his entrepreneurial journey, FDA collaboration, and the company’s mission to improve cognition for aging populations worldwide.
About Alan Bernstein
Experienced Principal with a demonstrated history of working in startups. Skilled in Business Planning, Coaching, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, and Strategic Partnerships. Strong education: graduated from University at Buffalo, The State University of New York and from UCLA.
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Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show. Just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so today I am in Newport Beach at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
And let me tell you, having all kinds of fun, I’ve been listening to pitches, been talking to investors, been meeting with investors companies that are raising money and all of the above. I mean, it’s been a lot of fun to come every year. And my next guest is Alan. Alan, welcome to the show. Hi, Adam.
Thank you. Alright, so what brings you to the conference today? I was invited by a developer of devices Hmm. Who develops our device. Mm-hmm. And that’s how I found out about the conference. That’s awesome. And name of your company? The name of our company is Science Lab three. We make a device called Memory Air.
Mm-hmm. It’s the largest improver of memory ever discovered. How’d you get into the memory business? So interesting. So as it turns out, one of my best friends. Is a professor and scientist at the University of California Irvine. Mm-hmm. Department of Neurobiology. Mm. And he’s been studying for 30 years plus.
Yeah. The connection between your ability to smell and your ability to remember. Interesting. Wow. And that’s the seminal discovery he makes that. Your ability to remember is really dependent upon your olfactory or your, your smell ability. Wow. And so huran, so he was the expert there. Were you the entrepreneur or how did you, like how did he rope you in?
Man, it’s hard to go ahead and commercialize something as we know of. And scientists don’t always have the. Right skill sets to do that. That’s a very PC way of saying it. I have to agree with you. So I can’t do what he does. Yeah. And what the rest of the scientists do, of course. But. I’ve started several companies.
Mm. And this was just too good not to bring to the public. How did, so were you an entrepreneur, like from a young age, or was it later in your life? Like how, how’d you start as an entrepreneur? Like in general, even before this company I went to work for large organizations. Mm-hmm. And in marketing for, in universities and in for non-profits.
Yeah. And while I was there, a good. Buddy of mine who was a professor at Pepperdine mm-hmm. Called me up and said he has a marketing issue with one of his students who is a dentist. Mm-hmm. So as it turns out, I met the guy and I started promoting what his particular profession was. Yeah. To gain patience for him.
Yeah. And that worked very smoothly and we grew that into several businesses. Which serviced over 100,000 professional practices. Wow. In the United States and four foreign countries. Wow. I sold that group. I started several other companies, some not successfully. Mm-hmm. But then this came across my field of vision.
Mm. And we know all the problems with memory. Mm-hmm. In the world. Yeah. And it affects people over the age of 60 in particular. Mm-hmm. So, and the world is aging. We call it the silver tsunami. Yep. And as you age, you lose your ability to smell and you lose your ability to remember. Mm-hmm. As it turns out, your olfactory ability, your is the one that is the controlling sense of all your five senses for cognition.
Mm. So when you lose your olfactory receptors and your ability to smell. That whole privileged access. Oh, you stop remembering. Super highway starts shriveling up. Whoa. And your main memory centers. The hippocampus. Starts shriveling up. Wow. And what So use it or lose it. Use it or lose it. Whoa. So as it turns out, if you smell right now, you likely cannot smell anything in this room.
Yeah, it’s pretty fresh. For the most part. We’re under the air conditioner. We’re decent. We live in a place where there are no. Olfactory stimulations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re not in the, we’re not in the forest anymore. We’re not. And everybody bathes. Yes. Yes. So we don’t smell that much. Hopefully. Hopefully.
No, hopefully. So as it turns out, because of this aseptic kind of environment we don’t get a lot of stimulation here, but yet we need stimulation to keep these receptors fresh and that whole neural pathway, we call it privilege access. To these main memory centers, fresh and keep your memory fresh. Mm.
That’s So now, so now you have this idea, what, how do you take this thing to market it? Like, how does this happen? It was not easy. Yeah. ’cause even when you explain it, it’s easy to be like, oh wow, that’s amazing. But like, how do you like commercialize? How do you take this to market? Yes. So the, the whole.
Let’s the whole technology and the whole science behind this means that you have to stimulate these receptors many times a day. Mm. Well, you can do that if you wanna go ahead and open up a bottle of essential oil, if you will. Mm-hmm. Smell it for about five seconds, put it down, open up another, smell it, et cetera.
But no one’s gonna do that 80 times a day. Yeah. And that’s what we do for you. Wow. And we do it automatically. So because of that work involved mm-hmm. We’d had to go ahead and find a way to automate the whole process. Yeah. Because that’s what’s required to rebuild that super highway to your memory.
Interesting. So that technology was eight years in the making. Mm-hmm. We spent two with the FDA before the FDA finally said to us, okay, we understand now that your low risk. No risk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we don’t feel that we need to regulate you. You can go directly to the public. Mm. Then it took five years of engineering to figure out how to do it.
Mm-hmm. Because one of the big problems is that you can’t give yourself a whiff of something. Mm-hmm. And then go ahead and. Have another whiff and have another whiff and Yeah, because to clear it up too, it has to clear up too. And you have to like, it’s, it can’t be invasive to your day. That’s really, it needs to be discreet odors.
Mm. And then you have, because it takes a long time to do that manually. When we automated it, we figured out how to do that and how to deliver it while you sleep. Oh, that’s smart. So you don’t even have to do anything. Oh, that’s great. You just have to, I mean, everybody sleeps. Mm-hmm. And it goes on. An hour after you go to sleep.
Mm. And then it emits 80 odors while you sleep. Oh. And it just, and it does it in such a way that it’s discreet. And therapeutic of value. Mm. But clears out of the room right away. Ah, I get it. So that you don’t smell anything in the morning. Yeah. And also while you’re sleeping, you don’t consciously smell anything.
’cause olfaction is the only system that does not go through your sleep center. Mm. In your brain, the thalamus. Wow. So it’s just automated and you’re good and you decide. Does it, so the ach the machine, you turn it on before you go to sleep and when you wake up? Or does it just leave it on or? How does that work on a timer when you just go ahead and plug it in?
Mm-hmm. The very first time you get it, just before you go to sleep, you just push a button and that’s it. Wow. It remembers when to go in every, yeah, goes on every night. Yeah. An hour after you go to sleep. Every, then we have to refresh. Yeah. The odorants monthly. So we send you something, it comes into your door.
You just take out the old, put in the new, shut the door, and that’s it. Wow. No work. Nothing to remember. Nothing to do. I’m to trying to like think about like, what 80 cents looks like 80 different cents. Can you, are they 40 odors twice a night, so, okay, so, okay. 40 twice a night. Yes. So can you name a couple of the odors for me please?
No, we don’t share that. That’s proprietary information. Oh. So it’s not like, okay, so just to be clear, no, but this is a good question. ’cause I’m thinking about like, you think, okay. One. When you talk about odors or scents, you’re like, okay, is one potpourri is one like you? I think candles when you say this.
Yes. Understand. And probably most people would think that. So yes, as you said, but you did answer the question, it’s proprietary and they’re not your Yes. Off the shelf odor slash am I saying right? Odors or, yeah. Odors or odorants. That’s fine. Okay. Or scents. Scents. Okay. So people can actually replicate this themselves?
Sure. If they wanted to. No, this is gonna take an hour and a half. Not for 40 different, no, no, no. And do this. No, that’s the issue. My point being though, is that if you happen to be awake or something, I know it’s non-invasive and there it’s a small, it’s a smaller scent, but it would be things that if you did wake up and if you did happen to notice, it’s gonna be things that you’re used to smelling is my question.
I guess. So the science shows that. All the odors have to be pleasant. Mm. If they’re not pleasant, then it doesn’t work. Hold on. You can’t throw a skunk in there. No. You can’t throw a skunk or something else. You can’t throw anything else in there. Come on some. And we know this. What about Doritos? Doritos can be pleasant for some, some for not.
That’s very good. Good question. I, we have not tested that clinically. I don’t know. I, I want the Dorito same of mine. I’m just throwing that out there. When you go back to Rito we will test that because the way we test it is we fill you while you sleep. This is in our test trials. Whoa. So when you, there’s something that you like, yes.
You take a deep breath, no way like this. And if it’s something you don’t like, you go like this. Oh. So it’s, is it calibrated? Then can you calibrate for some people or, that’s interesting. We do the calibration for you. Wow. You don’t have to do anything. What does that process look like? You have to go to sleep.
Well, that’s what the scientist figure out. No, I you, no, I mean like a test, a length of time. I mean, that’s what I mean. Yes. Like to get through the test. Would it be a week, a month? No, a couple nights. A so it goes on an hour after you go to sleep and it stays on periodically? Yeah. For five and a half hours.
Yeah. So basically six and a half hours from the time you shut your eyes. Mm. And most people sleep that length of time. Yeah, of course, of course. And so on. The am I, am I understanding though, like when they were doing the calibration part, there, there had to be like focus groups or something like that?
For the, for the, for the, what you were talking about, for filming them. The, well, we are not the only scientific lab in the, who works on this of course. There are half a dozen and probably only half a dozen labs in the world. Wow. At universities who work on this particular issue. Oh, that’s so fun. Of old faction and cognition.
Yeah. So it. When we read their literature in peer reviewed journals. Okay. That’s how we know what they’re doing. I see. And that’s how they know what we’re doing. I see. I’m always curious to get to like, how did the development get done? But that makes a lot of sense when you say that. Like, ’cause that’s the way to also get it.
It’s really tested, really tested, just That’s correct. Scientific review. Yeah. And we have a, a substantial scientific. Group at the University of California, Irvine, New York Department of Neuro Biology who figures all this stuff out. So the big question is, is everybody, you know, using this thing, like how, what do you think about it?
Everybody wants one, I’ll tell you that. Yeah. Well, we’re sold out now, so we’re Oh, wow. We’re, we have waiting lists. Yeah. And are you, are you’re at the Newport Beach Investor Conference? Are you raising for production? Is there anything like that going on or, well. As it turns out we were well funded Yeah.
In our seed round. Okay. We have no institutional money. Mm. Simply high net worth individuals, accredited investors have invested in us. Yeah. We’ve raised substantial amounts. Likely we will raise another round mm-hmm. For scaling. Yeah. In the fall. Okay. So right now we’re, do you know what that round’s gonna be at roughly?
We do not know at this particular point. Okay. Mm-hmm. It’s all about the sales curves. Gotcha. As we know. Gotcha. But we are, we’re optimistic because the inventory sold out in a couple of weeks. Whoa. Amazing. Alright, well, last thing I want you to do is I want you to look in the camera and when you have new inventory or somebody just wants to learn more, how do people follow up?
How do they connect? Sure it’s simple. Just go to www memory air.com and it should be self-explanatory in depth. Even if you are a scientist or if you are a physician, there should be significant information for you there to understand exactly how the science works. Fantastic. And for everybody at home watching, just so you know, we’ll put the links in the show notes, so you can just click on the link and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Alan, thanks again for coming on, man. Been a pleasure. Thank you, Adam. Yes, thank you so much. Good job.
