As the Chief Executive Officer of Nia Therapeutics , Dan Rizzuto and his team are currently developing a neurological implant that increases the memory of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s diseases and traumatic brain injury. By using deep brain stimulation (DBS) to increase high frequency functions and decrease low frequency functions in areas important to memory, such as the frontal lobe, Nia Therapeutics has successfully improved memory capability by 18%. Though this is only the beginning f...
Dec 10, 2018•35 min
Jack Judy is the director of Nanoscience Institute for Medical and Engineering Technologies at the University of Florida He serves to bridge the divide between engineering, medicine, and the sciences through the work he does with neurotechnologies and neural implants. He has focused on peripheral nerve interfaces and how stimulating these could help amputees in the Wounded Warrior Project. He has worked with DARPA for several years where he has revolutionized biotechnology and biomedicine to con...
Dec 03, 2018•49 min
This is the first of our Neural Implant roundtable where we talk with former guests Doug Clinton of Loup Ventures , Manfred Franke of Neuronoff , and Avery Bedows who founded the neural implant blog, the Substrate. This podcast focuses on the relationship between the public and the neurotechnology in the modern world. The key questions concerning the podcasts involve what, when, how and why should neurotechnology be discussed in public. ~0min - introductions and explaining their experiences that...
Nov 09, 2018•50 min
I talked to Christopher Thomas today about his job as a Science Writer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) . How he went from being a graduate student to working as someone in media for the government. Since this is a new career path on this podcast we talk about the steps to get there and what others can do if they are interested in doing something similar....
Sep 24, 2018•31 min
In this second part of the great interview, I was able to have with Jennifer French in her hometown of St. Petersburg Florida, we talked about the futures of many of the Brain Machine Interface technologies. Since she works for a reporting journal on the developments of the field, she knows everything about what is going on and the potentials of each of the technologies. I found this to be one of the most interesting conversations I have had because I also like to learn about the financial side ...
Sep 18, 2018•45 min
I had the great pleasure to meet with Jennifer French of Neurotech reports in St. Petersburg....Florida!!! In this first part of the episode we talk about her C6-7 spinal chord injury that has left her tetrapalegic for the last 20 years. But just as her accident was epic, so was the rest of her story with not taking no for an answer as being one of the defining themes in her story. Tomorrow we will be publishing the second part of the interview....
Sep 17, 2018•20 min
I've actually been in contact with Doug Clinton for many months but only now have done an episode. He is a managing partner at Loup Ventures which has recently invested money in companies such as Neurable and former guest Paradromics. In this episode, we talk about why their firm invests in companies which have a longer time horizon like medical device companies rather than software companies like in Silicon Valley. He talks about what he looks for in a company when investing and why their compa...
Sep 10, 2018•30 min
In this last episode from my interviews from the 2018 Neural Interfaces Conference in Minneapolis I talk to Dr Jacob Robinson about his idea to image potentially millions of neurons in parallel using a lensless imaging technology utilizing diffraction interference. Using this, it could be possible to get highly developed off-the-shelf products from other fields to make parallel processing more powerful. Apologies for the audio quality, the audio recorder data somehow got corrupted and I had to u...
Sep 03, 2018•18 min
I've been in contact with Lowell Thompson of the Learning with Lowell podcast for some time and have become a fan of his work. He also covers many things Biotech and Science sometimes even touching upon the Brain Machine Interface space. In this joint episode which is being published on both shows, we talk about some of the cool interviews and technologies we have learned about on the show. This may be a recurring episode with Lowell coming on once in a while to share what he has learned....
Aug 27, 2018•49 min
I was able to sit down with Robert Shannon to talk about his pioneering role with Cochlear Implants. It was an honor to talk to him. Unfortunately, there were technical difficulties with some of the microphones so we tried to salvage the audio as much as possible
Aug 13, 2018•29 min
At the 2018 Neural Interfaces Conference in Minneapolis Loren Reith talked about how he improved the Utah Slant Array
Aug 08, 2018•8 min
Joost saw a problem with data management in the scientific space so he set out to fix it. He also helped made cloud storage and sharing much easier with Blackfynn
Aug 06, 2018•9 min
At the 2018 Neural Interface Conference the first person I talked to during the poster session was Gene Fridman of Johns Hopkins who was presenting on the ability to block small nerves using direct current. Since they used ions there were no disadvantages compared to if they used metal electrodes
Jul 18, 2018•5 min
At a poster session at the 2018 Neural Interfaces Conference, I talked to James Eles about his poster on the in vivo imaging of calcium activity during electrode implantation. They were able to image the firing of calcium neurons many times higher than their usual levels which is a sign of damage In vivo imaging of neuronal calcium during electrode implantation: Spatial and temporal mapping of damage and recovery JR Eles, AL Vazquez, TDY Kozai, XT Cui - Biomaterials, 2018...
Jul 18, 2018•3 min
At the Neural Interface poster session, I was able to talk to William Huffman of the Warren Grill lab at Duke University about the reduction of invasive surgery using ultrasound guiding. This reduces the need for larger and more invasive surgeries which are of course much less damaging to the animal or the patient
Jul 18, 2018•3 min
Christopher Heelan presented a poster at the 2018 Neural Interfaces Conference in Minneapolis on one of the biggest problems in BCI research, data processing. This device is able to handle up to 6500 channels at one time and can be used in parallel. They have formed a company to help solve of data processing labs
Jul 18, 2018•3 min
At the 2018 Neural Interfaces Conference poster session, I met with Bin Feng of the University of Connecticut where he talked about the increased nerve conduction velocity using ultrasound. Ultrasound apparently can increase the speed of the nerve transmission even taking out such factors such as increased thermal energy from the inputted ultrasound
Jul 18, 2018•5 min
Jack Whalen of Platinum Group Coatings talks about the coatings that they offer for different electrodes. They offer these electrode coatings which offer improved electrical properties with hopefully good biocompatibility as well.
Jul 18, 2018•8 min
At the 2018 Neural Interfaces Conference Thaddeus Brink of Medtronic talks about being able to sense and modulate bladder fill levels in sheep. Using an API they were able to detect voids and apply stimulation externally
Jul 18, 2018•5 min
University of Tübingen postdoc, Ujwal Chaudhary , and I talk about some of his techniques to unlock patients who are locked in. Those who are paralyzed and cannot move their hands or eyes can have a small non-invasive Near Infrared device placed on their head to be able to decipher binary yes and no answers. The technique measures the level of blood oxygenation in the brain which can signify what a patient might be thinking. With this technology, they are able to be correct about 70% of the time...
Jun 10, 2018•26 min
Joke: In this solo episode, I talk about some of the unpublished work which you can expect out of the Otto lab here at University of Florida. The Turbo Encabulator will be some of the most revolutionary work that will have come into the field of neuroscience: This original machine has a base plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings are in a direct line with the panametric fan. The latter consists simply of six h...
Jun 05, 2018•3 min
In this episode, we do our first Journal Club style episode where we go over a paper. We hope this can be useful to those who haven't read the paper as well as those who have and wanted to hear some outside opinions about the work. This first week's paper is "Long-lasting increase in axonal excitability after epidurally applied DC" Thanks to Ian Malone, Savannah Dewberry and Lauren Lester for presenting this paper
Jun 01, 2018•11 min
After many months of travelling my plans got cut short a bit and I returned to the US. I took a position here at the University of Florida working on peripheral nerves despite my skepticism about the size of the city. Now after about a month of working here I have to say that I am very happy with Dr. Otto, the labmates, the project, and even the city! I hope to be expanding the podcast to include 'Journal Club' episodes which will deep dive into individual papers. This was something that I had b...
May 24, 2018•6 min
In this interview with Dr Cindy Chestek of the University of Michigan, we talk about her projects ranging from neuroprosthetics for amputees all the way to Carbon Fiber implants on the order of 10 microns. We also talk about some of the disagreements that neuroscientists have versus the neuroprosthetics people have on signal fidelity versus high channel counts. She sees a split coming up in the field since devices can't be made to do both things....
Apr 30, 2018•31 min
In this interview, I sat down with Sherman Wiebe of Blackrock Microsystems . We had a short talk during the Society for Neuroscience in November in 2017 where we talk about the benefits of the Utah Electrode Array (UEA). We talk about their arrays which have up to 1000 channels. The UEA is also the only electrode which has been FDA approved in humans. Blackrock arrays also last a long time with multiple years being relatively normal.
Apr 16, 2018•11 min
I caught Andre Snellings on the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) floor and grabbed him quickly to do an interview about NeuroNexus and Michigan Electrodes. We quickly talk about some of the advantages of the Michigan array which has the advantage of being a 3-dimensional electrode. The electrodes are also customizable, "if a customer can draw it on a piece of paper, we can make it" Andre has since left to work as a fantasy basketball writer at ESPN . Let's wish him the best of luck!...
Apr 09, 2018•13 min
One of the coolest demonstrations during SfN in November 2017 was that of Actuated Medical. Ryan Clement was kind enough to sit down with me to talk about some of the amazing reductions their company is able to deliver using ultrasound vibrations. They are able to insert the implants using about half the force and preventing dimpleing as well. This means that the electrode goes exactly how deep you want it to without having a pin cushion effect....
Apr 02, 2018•14 min
I was able to sit down and talk with Pasha Takmakov during SfN after seeing his poster on accelerated neural interface testing. He talks about the research where he could simulate years of degradation in only a week. This could one day speed up the iteration cycles of electrode designs leading to better designs. This recording had a bit of clicking which I tried to minimize.
Mar 26, 2018•20 min
It was really fun to talk to Greg Gage during SfN in November 2017. During our interview, he demonstrated some of the new neural educational toys from Backyard Brains. We were able to read neural activity, send that neural activity into his arm, and finally send his into my arm. I didn't like the last one, it worked but it felt like electricity in my arm. Regardless, the work they are doing to teach children about neuroscience is great!
Mar 19, 2018•17 min
It was a pleasure to talk with Danny McDonnell of Ripple Neuro which is also based in Utah. In this episode we talk about the beginnings of the company and growing organically. He talks about some of the advantages of some new experimental experimentation such as being able to upload your own code and having the data acquisition system be portable. I had trouble with the audio in this file. I was only able to salvage one of the audio files and tried to improve it as best as I could...
Mar 05, 2018•15 min
