A light that flickers 40 times a second (and why I can't stop thinking about it)

A light that flickers 40 times a second (and why I can't stop thinking about it)

Okay. So I read something a few weeks ago and it's been living in my head rent-free ever since. I have to write it down, partly to get it out of my system, and partly because Arjen and I are going to sit down in the studio soon and talk about it properly — and I want you to have the background before we do.

Here's the thing that got me.

It started with a light. Flickering. At a mouse.

That's it. That's the whole beginning.

Why this lands for me and Arjen

Quick bit of context so you know we're not tourists to this. I've been around light-and-brain devices for years now, and Arjen longer than me on the engineering side — he's the one who actually designs and tests every circuit, I just make things happen around them. A while back the two of us co-created the FlexBeam over at Recharge Health, which, like pretty much everything we do, got started right here in Chiang Mai. After that I got to help develop the NeuroVizr alongside Garnet Dupuis — the inventor behind it — a light-and-sound brain wellness device that a lot of people in the biohacking world will know. Garnet lives up in the hills near Chiang Mai too, so it really is a small world up here.

I say all that not to brag, but because light, brains, and being very careful about what you claim is sort of our whole lives. So when a light story crosses my desk, I read it closely. And this one stopped me.

The MIT part

Back in 2016, a lab at MIT — Li-Huei Tsai's group — did something almost too simple to believe. They took mice bred to develop Alzheimer's, and they flickered a light at them at 40 times a second. Forty hertz. And the amyloid plaque — that gunky protein that builds up in the Alzheimer's brain — dropped in the visual part of the brain by something like 40 to 50 percent.

From a blinking light. I still can't quite get over that sentence.

They gave the whole approach a name — GENUS — and kept going. Add sound at the same 40Hz, and in the mice the effect spread further across the brain: less plaque, less shrinkage, memory holding up better. All in mice, to be clear. The idea is that the brain has its own rhythm around 40Hz, a "gamma" rhythm, and the flicker kind of nudges it, syncs to it. I'll let Arjen explain that part properly when we record — he's much better at it than me.

But that's where it started. A rhythm, a flicker, and a very strange result nobody expected.

And here's the bit I keep circling back to — August

The research grew up. It spun out of MIT into a company called Cognito Therapeutics, with a device that does the same 40Hz light and sound, an hour a day, at home. The FDA gave it Breakthrough Device status. And then they ran the big one — a trial called HOPE. 670 people. 70 hospitals across the US. It's the largest device trial ever run for Alzheimer's, full stop.

Now here's why I can't put it down.

That trial is basically done. The last participants came out earlier this summer, and the results — the real ones, the ones that tell us whether a flickering light actually helps real people the way it helped those mice — are expected in August. As in, next month. As in, right now, while I'm typing this, nobody on earth knows the answer yet. We're all just… waiting.

I find that genuinely thrilling. Not a press release. Not "studies show." An actual, honest cliff-edge, about to be answered, in weeks.

The honest part (because we're an honest-light company)

I have to be really clear about something, and if you've read anything else from us you'll know this is non-negotiable for me.

What Cognito is doing is a medical treatment for a disease, and it is still being proven. Even they don't have the pivotal answer yet — that's the whole point of August. And AriHelder is not a medical company. Helder 2 is a wellness light. We don't treat anything, we don't cure anything, and I would never sit here and tell you a light is going to do something for your brain, because I don't know that, and honestly nobody does yet.

So please read the rest of this the way I mean it: as one curious guy being excited about someone else's fascinating science. Not as a promise about our product. We only ever publish what we've actually measured — and we tell you when we don't know something. This is one of those "we don't know" moments, and I'd rather say that out loud than dress it up.

So… yeah

Here's where I've landed with all of it.

It's so interesting that I keep thinking — we should have this in the Helder 2. Not as some miracle. Just as an option. Forty hertz, in the morning, warm light on your face while you wake up, before you touch your phone. For Arjen it's basically one line of code, it costs us almost nothing to offer, and it's safe — so why wouldn't we let people who are curious explore it for themselves?

And that's exactly what I want to sit down with Arjen and talk through, on camera, in the studio. Just the two of us, the science, and the honest version — what we'd add, what we'd never claim, and where the research actually stands. He'll keep me in line on the technical stuff, and I'll keep asking the dumb questions so you don't have to.

Because here's the wild part. We don't know yet. Nobody does. The big answer lands in August. And if it comes back and it holds up — a flickering light, doing in real people what it did in those mice — I mean… wow.

Imagine if that's real.

Crazy stuff. Talk soon.

— Christian

If you want to go down the rabbit hole yourself:

AriHelder is a wellness light, built and tested in Chiang Mai. No claims — just light.