Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds

by Carmine Gallo

As he spoke to his TED audience, Raghava was wearing a biofeedback headset that recorded his brain activity. The headset was connected to the computer on which he was displaying the images. The audience saw a photo of an old woman’s face that Raghava affectionately called “Mona Lisa 2.0.” The borders of the slide revealed his brain wave activity. In the live demo, Raghava said that not only could the audience see his mental state (attentive, meditative, focused), but he could actually project his mental state onto the woman’s face. “When I am calm she is calm. When I am stressed she is stressed,”13 he said. Sure enough, when his brain waves or mental state changed, so did the woman’s smile. Her frown grew more intense before turning up into a smile.