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
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
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.
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
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...
Joke: In this solo episode, I talk about some of the unpublished work which you can expect out of the Otto lab here at University of Florida.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...
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
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...
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....
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.
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!...
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....
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.
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!
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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.
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....
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...
