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Caitlin Little writes reminders on adhesive notes of things she has to do or wants to remember.
was inspired by Caitlin Little, a teenager with anterograde amnesia who’s unable to retain
new memories for more than a minute at a time; and Music: Not Impossible was inspired
by a gathering of young deaf people at a concert led by a deaf DJ whom Ebeling saw in
an online video.
“They were standing close to the speakers receiving the vibrations from the music
and I had an aha moment,” he says. “A friend of mine suffered a head injury and lost his
sense of smell. I realized you don’t smell with your nose, you smell with your brain. That
made me realize you don’t hear with your ears, you hear with your brain. I figured there
might be a way to create a music experience for the deaf through touch signals that the
brain processed—a wearable technology that imparted a wide range of frequencies, and
even melodic sweeps and swoons, to the user’s skin.”
MEMORY: NOT IMPOSSIBLE
Ultimate Software, a provider of cloud-based human capital management systems,
funded much of the research behind Memory: Not Impossible, the project involving people
with memory impairments, although Ebeling believes the solution can eventually assist
people with cognitive declines like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. “Caitlin is an extreme
circumstance and if we can make it work for her, we can make it work for anyone,” he says.
Among the project’s team members is Silicon Valley engineer Prashant Marathay,
a program manager who served stints at Alphabet, Apple, and Intel before founding his
PHOTO BY MAGGIE STEBER/VII/REDUX