In the film Being John Malkovich, John Cusack plays a puppeteer who discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of the movie star John Malkovich. Replace Cusack with a couple of neuroscientists and Malkovich with professional baseball players, and what you basically have is the idea behind deCervo, a New York-based startup.
Jordan Muraskin and Jason Sherwin, the co-founders of deCervo, are out to answer the question, “how do people perceive and make decisions in the real world?” In order to solve this conundrum, the two decided to look at the brains of baseball players and how they make split-second decisions.
Sherwin, who has a B.A. in Physics from University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech, initially started his exploration of the mind when researching how professional musicians had different cognitive responses to music than non-musicians. From there, he began working with the Army to research how soldiers and marksmen react to the sounds of gunshots.
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“Around that time, as I was starting to show some credible evidence that the brains of people with expertise or experience in these contexts responded differently to these stimuli,” Sherwin said, “My partner for deCervo, Jordan, said ‘Hey, do you think we could do this for baseball or any other athletics?’ And I said ‘Yeah, totally.'”
Now, the two had to start to conceptualize how to make this work. While getting into Malkovich’s head was as simple as opening a hidden door in an office building, navigating the mind of a batter takes a bit more effort.
Using an Advanced Brain Monitoring B-Alert X10 EEG headset in collaboration with customized software developed by Muraskin and Sherwin, the deCervo technology can record and collect brain mapping data, as well as response signals based on accuracy and response time, of a participant’s response to a pitch simulator.
“In essence, we can measure using current technology today, those really quick decision processes as they are unfolding in the tens of milliseconds where you make a decision about hitting a baseball or not hitting a baseball,” Sherwin said.
Despite receiving some inquiries after an appearance at the Sloan Analytics conference in March 2013, Muraskin and Sherwin were still in the embryonic stages of their venture and were not in a place to move forward with any teams.
So, in an effort to work out any initial kinks before approaching professional teams, deCervo began working with four NCAA Division 1 baseball programs this last fall: Illinois, Brown, Bradley, and Columbia. But the plan was always to get in contact with the Major League teams.
After some recent articles in the Wall Street Journal, Scientific America, and the Boston Globe, Sherwin says the calls started to pour in.
“At this point we have been in contact with one-third to forty percent of the Major League teams,” Sherwin said.
As of this month, deCervo has worked with four MLB teams and are in talks with at least two of them to engage in a more season-long basis.
Sherwin says that there are two possible applications for teams to use their technology, first as a form of scouting. A team will be able to see which players are capable of quickly and accurately choosing the pitch type and pick the players who show the best ability to do this.
Another application would be as a supplemental training tool. If a team finds a player that displays the best ability to see a pitch, the teams can try to identify what that player is seeing and then try to replicate it with other players.
“The mid-level team that says we want to develop our players rather than just pick the good ones,” Sherwin said, “they’re going to use these techniques that we’ve developed with them for training attention to pick up the ball sooner.”
Although the company is all-in on pursuing professional connections, deCervo is planning a Kickstarter fund to get underway sometime in mid-to late April, upon which they will be releasing their technology, first to backers of their campaign, and then to the public in an app form.
“Once the backers brain data is analyzed, we’re having all their data then sent back to them on their mobile device once our project is complete and we’re able to fund the building of the whole app,” Sherwin said.
According to Sherwin, deCervo is planning to release two forms of their simulation technology.
The first one is the standard profile, which is called the Pitch Recognition Profile. For this profile, the user is shown a pitch simulation in which they will have to determine whether the ball coming towards them is a fastball, curveball, or a slider. The user will be given a hint as to what the pitch may be in the form of a letter on the screen, but ultimately, speed and accuracy are key.
The second profile is called the Professional Profile, where the task of the user is to determine whether the pitch is a ball or a strike. The user is shown a strike zone, but as opposed to the Pitch Recognition Profile, is given no clue as to what the upcoming pitch could be. An added bonus of the Professional Profile, is that users will be seeing pitches that are simulations of actual major league pitchers.
Although the neural mapping component will only be available to those who can make it to the certain locales and possible pop-up events, Sherwin said the app will allow those unable to use the EEG cap to access the simulation and analyze their response behaviors.
“You’re going to get all of the behavioral data, because we’ve got an expanding database of people doing the same video game,” Sherwin said. “We can then back out what the most likely neural profile would be given your behavioral results.”
Even with all of the advancements deCervo has made with their foray into baseball, Sherwin said the company is already considering how to create similar simulations for football and hockey. Still, the possible real-world applications beyond sports remain on the minds of the company’s co-founders.
“As you know, from driving a car, to soldiers on the battlefield, to police officers on the streets, there are quick decisions that are all around us, all the time,” Sherwin said. “The real question is can we assess how those decisions are happening and perhaps make them better? ”
Maybe John Malkovich would know.