I think one of my favorite posters during SfN was with Theo Zanos and the work at the Feinstein Institute involving the vagus nerve. They were able to read insulin, glucose, and cytokyne signals going from the body to the brain. This is the first step in bioelectronic medicine, being able to read and write the information coming from the body. In this interview, we talk about the specifics in being able to read what the body is telling the brain....
Feb 26, 2018•19 min
It was an honor to meet with Ian Burkhart after hearing so much about him. This show has had at least a half-dozen researchers that had published papers based on his implanted array. Ian is a quadriplegic patient that volunteered to have a Utah Electrode array implanted in his brain so that he could move his fingers. Now it has been implanted in his brain for almost 4 years and it is still doing fine. Through the process, he was able to learn to move his own fingers using his thoughts. He even g...
Feb 19, 2018•29 min
Dr Joern Rickert is the CEO of Cortec and I had a chance to sit down to talk with him during the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) in November 2017. In this episode we talk about a bit of what SfN is like and then we continue on to Coretec's technology. Their goal is to make the human brain connectable to Artificial intelligence. They specialize in making soft electrodes and even have made electrodes that can connect to peripheral nerves. They are very versatile and can make many modifications base...
Feb 12, 2018•21 min
I love Isaac Arthur's Science and Futurism Youtube channe l and podcast . So when he covered the topic of Mind Augmentation I asked him if I could share the show on this channel as well. It is a bit different than what this podcast usually is about since it deals with the more science fiction possibilities 100 years in advance. Nonetheless, I think it is very interesting and I had never heard some of these ideas. It should be a fun thought experiment and hopefully, it can spark some new ideas of...
Jan 15, 2018•25 min
Matt Angle is the CEO of Paradromics which aims to make broadband for the brain possible, massively parallel brain interfaces and realtime decoding. They use off the shelf electrode wires which were previously ignored to cheaply create a neural interface that can have 50,000 channels. With a recent $18 million DARPA grant they are poised to start selling implants soon. In this episode we not only talk about the technology but also the behind the scenes look of starting a company in the biotechno...
Dec 25, 2017•51 min
I had a great time at the Society for Neuroscience conference in Washington DC and it was great to hear that the podcast is so well received! "You came out of nowhere but are doing a great job!" Was the general sentiment from many talks with fans of the podcast Straight from DC I went to Mumbai India and I will be travelling here for the next 6-8 months. Therefore my podcasts will be released on a slower schedule due to time and internet bandwidth constraints. I did 9 video interviews and will b...
Dec 11, 2017•5 min
Dr David Friedenberg works at Batelle which is an interesting company with a kind of profit/nonprofit model. In this episode we talk about some software and hardware changes they made in order for a patient to have gradual muscle control. That way if the patient wanted to grip an egg he would be able to do more than simply crush the egg or to drop it.
Nov 07, 2017•22 min
We were able to have this interview in person at the Human Brain Project Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. It was the first of my in person video interviews I hope to make and it was a new medium. You can watch the video here In this interview Dr Mitra talked about his previous work with electronically selectable neural probes. These probes had about 1500 electrodes which could be turned on or off depending on the quality of the connection. He also worked on CMOS electronics which could be put at...
Nov 06, 2017•33 min
Dr Kevin Otto is an Associate Professor at the University of Florida where he maps the neural networks of central and autonomous neurons. There he realized that the body's rejection of these implants is a huge issue and has been working on ways to allow the body to accept the implants for the long term.
Oct 23, 2017•45 min
James Giordano PhD, MPhil., is Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Biochemistry, Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, and Co-director of the O’Neill-Pellegrino Program in Brain Science and Global Health Law and Policy at the Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC. As well, he is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Brain Science, Health Promotions and Ethics at the Coburg University of Applied Sciences, Coburg, Germany, a...
Oct 16, 2017•47 min
Dr Harbi Sohal is a rising star in the field of Neural Implants. He recently won the Forbes 30 under 30 for scientists. At 29, he has also recently become an Assistant Professor at the Feinstein Institute in New York. He has worked with previous guests Dr Andrew Jackson and Dr Ed Boyden and is now working with Dr Chad Bouton. He is working on all the big things in this field: Glial scarring reduction, optogenetics, and bioelectronic medicine. Dr Sohal also generously provided his Feedly subscrip...
Oct 09, 2017•43 min
Dr Douglas Weber has recently come back from a program manager position at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which lasted 4 years. Now he is back to being an associate professor at University of Pittsburgh where he works with haptics in neuroprosthetics. By giving feedback from pressures back into the body the patient does not have 'phantom limb' pain. He is also interested in Electrical Prescriptions where an implant could bypass many medications with electrical signals in the V...
Oct 02, 2017•48 min
Dr Bradley Greger is an associate professor at Arizona State University where he is interested in helping the blind see. The blind person would have implants which go directly to the brain, similar to a Cochlear Implant, which would transmit what a camera saw. In this way vision could be restored, even it if is only 7 x 7 pixel vision.
Sep 25, 2017•45 min
Dr. Slawomir Nasuto is a professor of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Reading in England. He researches computational neuroscience and neuroanatomy. However, in this interview, we were both in a philosophical mood and talked about how to avoid blind spots in experiments. Any experiments in the brain inherently produce research biases of the experimenters and we talk about how to minimize this....
Sep 11, 2017•55 min
Dr. Edward Boyden has co-invented optogenetic tools which allow control of neurons using light. This discovery has won him a prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences which came with $3 million dollars (and he promised to donate $1 million to the Neural Implant podcast!). He also has worked on expansion microscopy which 'freezes' the biomolecules and expands them up to 100x. In this way it is possible to visualize the parts of the brain using more conventional microscopy. He has done many g...
Sep 04, 2017•33 min
Dr Tim Marzullo is the Cofounder of Backyard Brains which uses simple (and cheap) technology to demonstrate neuronal activity to those without labs. It's aimed at high schools and Universities to show kids how brain activity works to hopefully spark their interest. We talk about the difficulties in doing a startup but the aid that grants can have along the way. Be sure to check out their TED talk , it's really funny!...
Aug 28, 2017•50 min
Dr Steve Potter used to be a professor at Georgia Tech but now consults. But many years ago he was a pioneer in the field of Brain Machine Interfaces especially in the area of cultured neurons. He was one of the proponents of the Two Photon Microscopy system which is in common use today. He is also a huge proponent of open source knowledge and works hard to spread it far.
Aug 21, 2017•56 min
Dr Ioan Opris along with previous guest Dr Mikhail Lebedev as well as Dr Casanova had won a $100k grant to have a conference in Switzerland in 2018. This was from the Frontiers Spotlight award. We also talk about his work with memory implants in which choices and memories can be transmitted between animals. They were able to get decision making up from about 50% chance to 70% and 80% using these implants.
Aug 14, 2017•38 min
Dr Ranu Jung is a professor and chair of Biomedical Engineering in Florida International University and recently was FDA approved for an investigational neural-enabled prosthetic device system. We also talk about the future of bioelectronic medicines and she will be on the editorial board of the upcoming Bioelectronics in Medicine journal.
Aug 07, 2017•39 min
Dr Cristin Welle is an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado where they work on a tattoo-like EEG which can help measure whether or not a concussion has occurred. In this way, in sports or battlefield situations you can measure it and see whether you need to treat the patient. We also talk about some of the basics in Neural Implants so this is a nice refresher course for this field.
Jul 31, 2017•34 min
Dr Mikhail Lebedev is a Senior Research Scientist at Duke University where he has worked with prosthetics and Brain Machine Interfaces in primates. Even 15 years ago he was able to demonstrate a primate controlling a robotic arm with minimal effort using only its thoughts. Now they do a little bit more 'sci-fi' experiments where they link up many brains to help solve problems together using telepathy.
Jul 24, 2017•47 min
Dr. Manfred Franke comes on again to explain some of the pros and cons to different educational approaches. We then talk about what we couldn't talk about last time: the approval of his neurostimulator device through the FDA. This device naturally stimulates a tear response in the eyes instead of adding artificial solutions. The device was approved by the FDA in about 4 years which suggests that the future of neurostimulators may be more nimble than pharmaceuticals....
Jul 17, 2017•54 min
Robin wrote a book, The Patient as CEO , where she talks about the future of healthcare. She has taken her background as a Crohn's disease sufferer with dozens of major surgeries to help raise investment money through speaking. She literally created this job herself and this year is on track to raise $250 million for the 3 companies she represents. One company will help reconnect severed connections through Virtual Reality. Virtual Reality may be a better way to see Neural Implants and brain enh...
Jul 10, 2017•33 min
Dr. Bolu Ajiboye of Case Western University recently released the results on the success of the Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) team about helping a paralyzed man to eat and drink using the help of a brain implant.
Jul 03, 2017•34 min
Dr. Andrew Jackson of Newcastle University talks about some of the advantages of using Local Field Potentials instead of measuring neuronal spikes. by using 100x less bandwidth you can reduce the energy required by an implant which would make wireless devices much more feasible.
Jun 26, 2017•41 min
Dr. Tom Mortimer of Case Western University looks back on 50 years of Neural Control and hopes to teach future generations the basics of his research. He is currently putting together his course on Applied Neural Control which is free for now.
Jun 19, 2017•44 min
Jens Naumann was the first person to be able to see using bionic eyes after he lost his vision in both of his eyes. After proving his usefulness he was hired by the team of Dr. William Dobelle as a technical person with first hand (or first eye) experience. He was able to see 19 pixels using this brain implant and with this was able to drive a car which got him on the cover of WIRED magazine. After Dr. Dobelle suddenly died a year into the experiment, Jens was able to pick up the pieces using hi...
Jun 12, 2017•1 hr 10 min
Dr. Jit Muthuswamy of Arizona State University hopes to be able to make neural implants more flexible by being able to adjust the depth of the probes. In doing this it would be possible to individually control the electrodes to get the best possible signal. He also teaches many courses and this shows in his presentation style.
Jun 05, 2017•54 min
In this long episode, Dr. Manfred Franke simplifies many of the concepts behind neural modulation as therapies for many ailments. These can range from phantom limb pain to organ control. He also talks about some of the tricks that are used in order to decrease pain sensations instead of using drugs. These same frequency modulations can be also used to give pressure sensations in prosthetics as well as reducing fatigue by using finer muscle control....
May 29, 2017•1 hr 27 min
Today's guest is Dr. Marco Santello who studies complex hand movements and how they are learned. This is especially useful in stroke victims to be able to help regain control of their limbs. In collaboration with the Mayo clinic, they noninvasively test patients to bring them back to normal.
May 22, 2017•30 min
