The Glow Up - Fabulous conversations with innovative minds.

Understanding the Brain and Unlocking Human Performance with 3D Tools - Johnny Hartman

• Nathan C Bowser

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Johnny Hartman is the founder and CEO of Vision Systems, a company pioneering the use of advanced 3D visualization and neurotechnology to better understand the brain and unlock human performance. 

Drawing on his background in both neuroscience and immersive technology, Johnny is building tools that allow researchers, clinicians, and athletes to visualize brain activity in real time, optimize training, and accelerate recovery.

Key Takeaways:

  • 3D Brain Visualization: Vision Systems has developed interactive 3D models that map brain activity, making complex neural data accessible and actionable for both experts and non-experts.
  • Performance Optimization: The technology is used by elite athletes and trainers to identify cognitive bottlenecks, enhance focus, and personalize mental training regimens.
  • Clinical Applications: Clinicians use Vision Systems’ platform to track recovery from injury, monitor therapy progress, and communicate brain health insights to patients and families.
  • Bridging Research and Practice: Johnny’s mission is to close the gap between neuroscience research and real-world performance, making brain data useful for everyday decision-making.
  • Accessible Neurotech: By combining immersive visualization with user-friendly interfaces, Vision Systems is democratizing access to advanced brain analytics, moving beyond labs and into sports, education, and wellness.

Johnny’s journey began with a fascination for how the brain works and a frustration with the “black box” nature of traditional neuroscience tools. He saw an opportunity to make brain data not just more visible, but more meaningful-helping people understand, train, and heal their minds. 

The company’s 3D tools have already been adopted by major sports teams, neurorehabilitation clinics, and high-performance training centers.

Looking ahead, Johnny envisions a future where brain visualization is as common as heart rate tracking, empowering individuals to unlock their full cognitive and emotional potential.


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In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

nathan-c---they-them-_1_05-13-2025_134030:

Hey, Glow Up team. Sometimes we gotta talk about the fine print.

Johnny Hartman:

But We have these eight assessments that basically lean into the idea that we create a measurement or a baseline that you can come back to and check against, and the doctors can go, oh, you're here. And then if there's an incident. That's really where we were looking at originally and then, yes, there's definitely something we're seeing and understanding it can help bring back to an incident. But all of a sudden we took this into a pilot with a professional organization and shall we say the athletic trainer came back and went,"It's like their CNS lit up, what's going on?" And so we're really interested in what the, the idea, especially around the neuroplasticity,

Nathan C:

Hello and welcome to The Glow Up Fabulous conversations with innovative minds. Today I'm talking with Johnny Hartman, co-founder of Vision Systems johnny, it's so good to see you today. Thanks for joining me.

Johnny Hartman:

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Nathan C Bowser:

Amazing. Let's get into it! Can you tell us about, who you are and a little bit about what you do at Vision Systems

Johnny Hartman:

Yeah, I co-founded this company about eight years ago with Dr. Bruce Wojciechowski. He's an optometrist who broke my brain and he came to me one day and asked me,"How do I take someone who is waking up from a coma and put them into VR?" And it was just such an intriguing question that led to lots of more conversations and eventually a company that's evolved and spun out. I've been floating around the Northwest and everything from a media perspective is really more my background. But, it's been really interesting to take what is the research side of my world and apply that into medicine. And what's come out of that over,'cause we've been in stealth for a while. We're coming out here, we've been in since about six or seven years, honestly. So yeah, we're super excited!

Nathan C:

Can you, dive in a little bit, to the problem space? And the core problem that you're working on at Vision Systems and how the work that you've been doing those last six years

Johnny Hartman:

Yeah, so

Nathan C:

have developed?

Johnny Hartman:

What kind of we came to with the crux, or what I came to realize is that there was no ruler for measuring kind of visual perception and, visual human performance in 3D space is all over the place, right? Our best kept secret was, like what ESPN Sports Science. I mean that, when we come to laying on what is, Apple's got right people, everybody's trying to understand it, but we really were coming at it from a very, broken place. And I realized that because I started to come from it from a true accessibility design. Because we started in VR with eye tracking, which is, I started in VR in 94, AI in 96. I, run a research lab since 2006. But we found that the ability to engage someone at that level really was at that almost like Stephen Hawking like interface, if you recall the kind of Intel touch board they did many years ago with him, as the primary input. And we built out all this technology and stack in and around the eyes and realize that the eyes fatigue very quickly. And Toby and Pupil Labs and others are out there doing a lot of interesting things when it comes to the eyes. But the medical side of this has always been, oh that's nifty and things. So having clinicians and doctors and research here at the get has been very interesting because what it's allowed us to understand is that we can create an objective measurement for an individual's visual and cognitive functions. So we're working directly with Dr. Bruce, who's a neuro visual, and then Dr. Alan Gee who also has his PhD but, working with us to understand what it means to measure everyone with these tools. So we basically, in a nutshell, we've built a ruler here for understanding kind of your neuro visual, in and around what our eight assessments is how we've started, and then we have some training mechanics and quite a few other things that have come out of the research.

Nathan C:

So what does understanding how someone's vision systems, help you understand things like cognitive, and I think you even mentioned like sports performance. How do these tests that you've developed help give insight into like performance and brain health?

Johnny Hartman:

Yeah, really, again, that idea that the ability to measure, so creating a"quantified self" in a real way with clinicians and doing it through these different assessments, which were basically, we took what were, we've gone beyond this, but our original path was we took the analog and we digitized it. So the Snellen, which in optometry is that big"E" chart on the wall you're looking at. We took that and we digitized that. So we've got what we call"Archer" is the digitized version of that. We have something called"Hunter" which is an evolution where things move and do a bunch of stuff. We have these eight assessments that basically lean into the idea that we create a measurement or a baseline that you can come back to and check against, and the doctors can go,"Oh, you're here." And then if there's an incident, that's really where we were looking at originally and then yes, there's definitely something we're seeing and understanding it can help bring back to an incident. But all of a sudden we took this into a pilot with a professional organization and shall we say the athletic trainer came back and went,"It's like their CNS lit up, what's going on?!" And so we're really interested in what the, the idea, especially around the neuroplasticity, because I think that's really where in the long run we can really stretch our legs and help people a lot because it's small nudged behaviors, not these grand gestures, which really makes the key differentiator I feel like.

Nathan C:

So I wanna clarify something that you just said that I heard you say. That this trainer, you said, noticed that their CNS is that central nervous system?

Johnny Hartman:

My apologies. I spent too much time in the military, and then acronyms. Central nervous system. Yes! Yes. They took our assessments before they took a physical, and what they noticed is all the physicals of the guys who did it compared to the ones who didn't there were some very early interesting indicators that made them and their eyes light up and has made a number of other projects and things, that we're working on that I should probably be careful about. That work towards the performance as well as the wellness and, honestly, where we started this kind of aging in place space. Which is really interesting.

Nathan C:

Interesting how, the act of taking an assessment that engages your visual system engages different parts of your brain might actually also be like stimulating and training those areas at the same time. You said something at the very top about your partnership

Nathan C Bowser:

in founding vision Systems that

Nathan C:

it started around a conversation about virtual reality, but it also seems tablets, you mentioned accessibility was a big importance to you. So how do you go from like a conversation about doing tests in VR and end up with tablets as your focus? That's a great, twist on the innovation angle.

Johnny Hartman:

Yeah, we were really gonna be bound stuck in a hardware dependency that would be very bad or limiting for us as a company. And so what we really needed to do and why it's taken as long as it has, is the fact that we wanted to move beyond just, I don't know if you want to call it a one trick pony or a one lane. It's not one trick, but it's more of like a one lane pony, so we abstracted, we knew we needed the data platform, we needed the platform because the data analytics was really where we were at that point. We'd had a lot of capture and informatics and stuff that we were, raw research data. But we really realized that it was, like we need to be able to have centralized, it needs to get universal in a simple way, and honestly that's really where I'm trying to push us, is to make this as accessible and as simple as possible. This is why I wanna make sure this happens above anything else in my world. Beyond my wife and son being healthy and happy and taking care of my family is because I want to help a million kids in the next three years. That's our goal here, to just give this away as a baseline for all of these kids! We're already in process of talking to different groups and we see there is so many other opportunities to, be able to what I will say at least cover costs. As soon as we mix in some AI and some of that stuff. Get baseline, get your baseline in and work through with these kids. So we've been working through a couple of programs and we're really hopeful that we can get in. Honestly, our biggest hurdles have been things like just a misunderstanding of technology or people seeing us for something and then all of a sudden they associate us with a competitor or someone, they put us in a category and now all of a sudden, oh you need to be just like they are. And we're like, but that's any who. But I think we can get around a lot of that with just the idea that let's just get these kids vaulted. Let's get these kids in and baselined.

Nathan C:

When you're looking to, start people engaging with these tests to make that baseline, to start to understand, get this picture of their mental and cognitive health. What's the impact that you hope to make, by engaging students with this kind of information and how does it help them manage and understand their health, their performance through the years?

Johnny Hartman:

So the biggie that we see is a lot of things where it's just the day-to-day ability to improve yourself through small behaviors. Even if it's not a daily pattern behavior, just going in on a regular and making sure, a lot of people go to sports, especially when you get to the performance side of this or the other side, when they talk about the bonks and the bruises and those kinds of things. The reality is the majority of those bonks and bruises happen in a car or car accidents. So that's anybody, anywhere, anytime. So being able to have continuous kind of baseline understanding where you're at and where you can progress to and how fast. This is really where we're getting into our trainings, which, what those do unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, they break you down. It gets, I've got one of my partners who's this is just madness how can I possibly, it's our pounce. He's at I think, he was at 60 for his start. He's at nine now and he can't even he can't even get to the first dot, it's just it just breaks you down and tries to get you to what that limit is. Which has created some really interesting things, which is again, for the kids to know, hey, on the senior side of this, what we've unfortunately realized from starting to work with the elite athletes is there may be an age at which you'll never see a green again, because even an elite athlete with a deficit gets to what would be, that the bottom end is still in that green. But it's on that bottom end of the green, but the high end of that elderly population. So we've literally, we're putting a blue band in, we were doing, we were trying to do red, yellow, green to keep it as simple as possible. But we wanna, yeah, like these kind of more data and the normative, getting there slowly.

Nathan C:

So there was something that you called out that, I think is worth taking a little bit of a moment on and celebrating, right? It sounds like one, and most people don't necessarily have a baseline, or they don't have a, an understanding or a measurement, to your point at the beginning, they haven't necessarily measured where their cognition, where their brain function is today. And then there are these moments that might happen, not just on the sports field, not just playing football or other contact sports, things that are pretty every day, like being in a car accident, getting a concussion. If you've had an incident or an injury, all of the care that would typically happen for you moving forward would be based on some averages about what that doctor would expect to see in somebody like you. And now with a Vision Systems baseline and an understanding of where you've been, you can actually start to compare today against how you were before the crash and potentially be way more specific and personalized in your care. You know, head trauma takes a while and to get any kind of signal that you're making gains, that you're building synapses back, to give you encouragement or even to give you tools to lift weights with, it could be really empowering for folks who often are left just waiting to be average.

Johnny Hartman:

Lifting weights. The doctors lean into that a lot it's kinda like lifting weights with your eyes. But the idea that this is, it's just you like calisthenics or anything else, your visual system. And it starts with the eyes.'Cause the eyes, that's 80% of your input comes in through your visual system. And that's this, your visual system. As Doc says, one of his early mentors said, it's not two balls on a stick. There's this whole interconnected process of what's going on in the brain and all the microbe chemicals and all right, all of this stuff that's going on that we don't go, oh yeah vision. And if you've ever watched anything like, Science Channel brain games or anything, and they talk about what we actually like we only glint this small little component of what is our reality. The rest of it, it is all like we make it up, don't tell anybody! So you know it's this, which also comes back to the eye tracking. The doctors talking about the idea of that train, retrain, test, retest. While that is a single and solo sample, we're getting into a world where we are going to get enough data to where we're gonna be able to say,"Hey, if you're 18 to 24." We don't have that yet other than in small pools or samples or pilots where we have some interesting data. But, the growth as we can go and grow with this is really gonna help to get us to understand like, how can I action this? Because that's the other part of what we're doing with the data, is we're taking it back to the doctors and saying, okay, now with this and this, what can you do? And I got a call from Dr. Bruce. This one made me so happy. He's like,"How'd you like to 3x your data without altering the platform?" Yeah, we sent eye patches to one of our customers." And I'm like but doctors are brilliant." Like you're not, we're not thinking. Yeah. That immediately gets us left eye, right eye, both eyes, which in the optometry profession gets you into, and in the research side, this is how we can do more comparative too. Okay, yeah, this should be covered under insurance because, or whatever, right? Which is, ideally where we'd like to be able to say and go, and we've got a lot of research to do in a lot of different areas But, being able to action those across an ecosystem, whether that be on the iPad, in VR, in xr, there's a number of other, things that we've been working at. And then under understand that data through what is, so first we make the doctors un and us understand it, and then we spend. What is it? Quite a bit more time, honestly. And then we go, okay, this is how it becomes a red, yellow, green, which is what we, were now red, yellow, blue, green scale to, to lay things out within so that we can make this understandable to people and. I gotta say the latest update that we're about to push the reporting system is finally to a spot I'm so happy about because at a glance you can look and do like a dots per second comparative or whatever the metric is, but there's like little arrows and they're greener and right, and they tell point an up or down, and so you can like. Even if you don't know anything about the platform, you still start to grok and get semblance. And as we go and grow more, we simplify and simplify this. And this is really coming back to the tracking and the VR with the coma patient. we created a patent, we're calling the SSP Scale status, symptoms and performance. And we're trying to get that to a one to 10 scale. What we're gonna do right now is peel back to a percentage, and in fact, we'll probably always keep percentage because that's a little holistically more understandable to people than the one to 10 scale that we have. But we really do. Want to be able to go there. Because what that also does is that takes the survey and the questions that are weighted and brings that into a three vector scale and a measurement. So we take over time and Right. So status, symptoms, and then your performance in current time. So it gets into this kind of deeper measurement that I think we're gonna be able to get to. when we can measure it across this scale, when we understand how we, how do we take a ruler to our performance in 3D space?

Nathan C:

Yeah, It must be challenging to, as you're learning, as you're acquiring data, as you're learning about, the data that you've collected, new applications, new ideas, new layers of data, layers of insight, continue to reveal themselves. I'm curious, how do you. Plan and prioritize. when so much of, what you're doing is both invigorating and exciting. how do you know which signals to go after? and, which ones should be part of the master vision and strategy.

Johnny Hartman:

At the, we come back to our mission and our vision, right? So a lot of this comes back to the medical, the clinical side. it's really that slow boat side. But really that's also the side where we get to give this away to a million kids, which is really a huge point. To all of this. And then you look at what the opportunity is in market and without having to, I don't wanna say have shackles on because, I don't wanna make the clinical or medical side feel. But trust me, I've been in other industries where the regulatory, and not saying that they should, loosen a lot of medical regulatory, that's not the point. But it's just a very different environment to operate in, which is something I've learned. but in the other areas or other industries where we can action and leverage the technology, IE the performance side. So we are really just leaning into what our customers, we're hearing what they have to say, All right. Here tweak. And that's pretty much what we've been doing for probably the last six to. We started 12, about 12 months ago with more of the clinic and trying to get him into the daily pattern and we're headed to that in a small and contained way with the aging in place kind of thing for them to be able to do some study stuff, which I should be careful a little bit about, but that gets very interesting.

Nathan C:

you have a bit of, there's a vision, behind all of this exciting tech and opportunity. the show is called The Glow Up, and I'd like to think of that as a notable transformation. You could also just call it short-term goals, right? So in the next, six months or so, what's a glow up, that you're looking to make, with Vision Systems

Johnny Hartman:

I think being able to, promote some of our, initial customers, I think that'll definitely be happening. and being able to speak a little bit more about some of the things that we're doing, when it comes to that. And then I think The extension of some of the research pieces, when we get a few more, things extended. We already have some things in place, that I can SKO talk about. As we get that gets real interesting because. we are not gonna solve this. This isn't about us trying to solve what is measuring our ecosystem, right? That is not we don't, I'm not delusional enough and the doctors are not right. Has gotta be a rational approach in how people do this. Again, subtle, small, right? It's not about I'm gonna lose 500 pounds and put on 800 pounds of muscle, right? that's totally unachievable and not even if you achieve it, it's not sustainable. So it's what are those small, measurable things that you can do even in the moment in life, because maybe that's very different for a 74-year-old than it is for a 34-year-old.'cause the 74 just wants to hold on the 34 wants to push a little bit more'cause he thinks he might get another year or two out of that primed pump'cause he saw LeBron do it until, or whatever. I just watched Chris Paul, who is gonna be the only player in NBA history to do all games and he will be 40 years old. He played all games this season. He'll be 40 years old in May, so at 39 did not miss an NBA game. First time in NBA history. that's a new level of understanding the human body and performance and taking care of yourself in a way, which I think that's part of why we wanna really lean into that side of the performance market.

Nathan C:

the idea I'm struck by, as somebody who's a communicator, the idea that you may have to explain your cognitive health and how your baseline can help you get what you want out of life to everyone from, sounds high school students to retirees and maybe even lower students to retirees. the stack of, perspectives and goals that, potential client base may have is really notable. I love, that you're focused on starting small, starting where there's value and, always making sure to measure and, bring the scientists along. Good on you for that.

Johnny Hartman:

I, just gotta say, it's like the drunken bachelorette party or bachelor party rolls into town fairly regular as of late, because exactly what you just said. we'd never make it to there. Because what we have to do right now is we have to listen to our customer. We have to do what they say, finish what the right, like I have been tried to be pulled off this and I'm like a dog with a bone on it at this point. So I think if we really wanna try to do this, it starts with that first step. It's an elephant, right? You take that first small bite'cause a million kids love to do it right this second. I gotta think about what does that mean for me as a company?'cause there's hosting fees and things like that. So Right before, I don't know how many people have been through the raise process, but, for the most part we have bootstrapped completely to this point, and, we went out and then we're talking to, what we, had hoped were going to be people that understood the vision and whatever, and began to understand the vulture capital. You know what it means when people talk about that?'cause they're like, that's great. Gonna save the planet and all, but I'm not gonna make 90% unless I do this. So yeah, it's just come on. I think there's some big problems out there in the world But I think we all need to think about making all companies B Corps or something.

Nathan C:

I love it. We're getting a little bit of radical business strategy in here at the same time as, transforming how we measure and understand our brains. You alluded to the next question actually, which is, at this phase of your work with Vision Systems, is there anything, that you're looking for or would like to engage the community around?

Johnny Hartman:

I think it's, trying to figure out a smart path to help these kids over the next three years is what can be a slippery slope potentially. just, getting to a point where. I don't wanna distract too much from this, but there is a bigger mission, that we're getting attached to and leads toward what I was saying about, every business is a B Corp. I do believe one of the things we're looking at is joining with, or. Figuring out what becomes a nonprofit for a research institute so that we can allow businesses and companies to interact and inventors to thrive in an ecosystem that can integrate and leverage the ecosystem of universities. And then allow them to take their smarts and turn that into what become other spin ups. So some of these other incubator models and stuff. But the idea is, we don't, okay, I got a question for every economist on the OR money guy, okay, I need to, or earn every quarter. What happens after a hundred quarters? How do you just the never ending have to earn and do better, and that's the God of all business has led us to some really scary places as we can all see. So I think there needs to be a real big rethink of how we all collectively, work towards figuring out how we tackle the future. I think that's through things like this potential partnership with the, nonprofit organization and the university side of things, leaning into the research and then helping, doing what doc's doing, which is, when somebody from one of our customers calls answering and saying, Hey, this is what this means, and understanding that on that side we can do some things and do the training and the gamified pieces, but when we see something, we're not trying to diagnose or be clinicians or anything. We're just saying, Hey, you should call. So that's, you asked what the things are, right? Trying to figure out what that kind of, resource network for referral, that kind of thing. I think that's been a question. I've asked my team and, we've got a couple of different groups that we've talked to, but what that might look like for us as a company in the next, year, nine months, something like that to start to look at something like that, I think that makes sense.

Nathan C:

Amazing, partnerships and referrals and a whole lot of, ethics in, value-based business. It sounds like, just a little in the mix. Awesome. Johnny. Each episode of the Glow Up, we like to make an opportunity to give a shout out, community spotlight to groups that are doing good in the community, whether it's nonprofit, or other innovative project. Is there anybody that you'd like to give a shout out to?

Johnny Hartman:

I gotta say, we, they've been with us from the get, Wyoming Human Health Laboratory. what they're doing there, is really innovative. It's in Jackson. there's some really interesting things going on there, so I'd love to give them a shout out and some love.

Nathan C:

Amazing. Shout out to WHILL amazing, Jonny. We always go far and deep when we connect. I am so glad that, we could check in today and hear how Vision Systems is really helping people, with accessible digital assessments, that help people both measure understand and potentially, lift weights, with their brains. It has been so inspiring to hear how, despite your interest in deep tech and all of the flashy, trends and modalities, that you could be choosing from, that you're really using, your connection to your customers and the clinical medical data, that you're developing with your partners to really understand and direct the future engagements with your ambitious plans. So glad to talk with you today and thank you for joining me on The Glow Up.

Johnny Hartman:

Thank you so much.

Nathan C:

Thank you.

nathan-c---they-them-_1_05-13-2025_134030:

Hey, glow up team. Sometimes we gotta talk about the fine print. The content discussed in this podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice. Statements about this technology have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult a licensed healthcare provider for medical advice or concerns. Thanks y'all. Let's get into the show.