Evoked Response is combining neuroscience with music to create innovative and novel music therapies.

Following the launch of our new Neurotech report, we are showcasing the dynamic and innovative companies we feel are driving this exciting space – our trailblazers. Over the coming weeks, we will be bringing you extracts from our nine trailblazer profiles; each profile includes a flagship product deep dive which offers a forensic consideration of product development, efficacy, target market, channels to market, success factors, IP and funding.

Here’s the lowdown on Evoked Response, and to read the full version of Evoked Response’s profile (and much more besides!) in our HTML neurotech report please click here.

Evoked Response is a music technology company with a twist – It has identified 12 different music variables that impact the brain in different ways, which, when applied as direct, non-invasive brain stimulation doesn’t just evoke an emotional response, but actually shifts mental state.

Through its music, Evoked Response can supercharge focus and productivity, relaxation, sleep, and athletic activity. In representing a new frontier of digital wellness, the company’s core objective is to enable as many individuals as possible to experience the mental enrichment it can provide.

The original fundamental idea behind Evoked Response was born in 2000, when CEO Adam Hewitt, who has a self-proclaimed synaesthesia to music, went to a meditation retreat and was played a sound that instantly made him relax. Through this experience, and his skills as a programmer and musician, Adam developed the idea that music could “program the brain”, which blossomed into a ‘neural programmer’ workstation, and the founding of “Transparent Corp” in 2003. This application was incredibly popular with scientists and universities, even at a time when the science of brain wave activity was still nascent, but there was a continued frustration that this type of program wasn’t accessible to individual users.

Subsequently, backed with a National Science Foundation grant from the government, Adam created Brain.fm, a science-based music app for focus, sleep and relaxation, which he describes as a “real renaissance for the field in general”. Brain.fm has become an incredibly popular app, with a good attrition rate, and to date has generated US$6 million in revenue.

Adam is always looking at ways to improve his product, but recognised that the Brain.fm app was competing in the same sphere as many meditation and relaxation apps, which would limit accessing the more significant market he needed to meet his core value of “enriching the experience of as many individuals as possible through neuro-based music”. 

To target this much larger audience, in 2019 Evoked Response was developed as a B2B company with the aim of getting this unique technology into the hands of as many existing businesses, pharma companies and governments as possible.

To date, following over 20 years of technological development, Evoked Response has created thousands of hours of music covering different conditions such as ADHD, insomnia, anxiety, mental fatigue, and the enhancement of productivity, workflow and fitness. The technology continues to be refined by the company through large scale, double-blind, internal studies. These studies use behavioural tasks to measure things such as attention, speed and accuracy to hone the music for maximum enhancement in different target populations.

Evoked Response has also already partnered with many wearables that usually contain EEG sensors to diagnose focus and sleep quality, but which also require a non-invasive intervention to improve what it is they are diagnosing. The Evoked Response team has also worked with the US Olympic Wrestling team to enhance athletic performance through its music as an all-day companion to manage sleep, wellness and anxiety.

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