Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions

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 could provide perspective to the discussion. ~7min - how neural stimulation can promote healing similar to a pill in medicine. 11:30 - the participants discuss increased investment in neural technologies. ~20 min - Discussions of the difficulties of getting answers from brain scans and transition to regulations posed by the FDA. They agree that people must gain trust through witnessing other people consume neural technologies for the idea to gain popularity. This was a great show and the format went well. I think there will be more of these types of shows in the future.

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.

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 of the science that we all do.

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.

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 companies don't worry about FDA approval and even see it as a benefit. Doug is also the host of the Neurotech Podcast which covers many similar things in the field of Neural Implants but with a eye more towards the investment side of things.

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 use the external microphone from the cameras which were filming the interview

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.

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

At the 2018 Neural Interfaces Conference in Minneapolis Loren Reith talked about how he improved the Utah Slant Array

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

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

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

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

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. The technology is essentially an fMRI which is much more portable and less costly.

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 hydrocoptic marzlevanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbling is effectively prevented. The main winding is of the normal lotus-o-deltoid type, placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots within the stator. every seventh conductor is connected by a nonreversible tremmie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the "up" end of the grammeters. For those of you that did not understand all of this I recommend brushing up on your neuroscience vocabulary using Memrise. I especially recommend the Brain anatomy: Areas, Pathways, and Endocrines course which goes over everything from what tanycytes are, the location of pituicytes, what the arachnoid is, the role of the tegmentum or the difference between dorsal, ventral, caudal and rostral. UPDATE: I may not have been clear enough that the Turbo Encabulator is not a real device. You should not have understood anything I talked about in my description! It was just a way to show that learning necessary vocabulary is important.

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 been thinking about for a while and I was happy to find out that the Otto group already does an excellent job with their weekly Journal Clubs. I hope to also start making explainer videos which will go over some of the fundamentals of neuroscience and neural engineering. So the point of this episode is to say that I am happy and that the quality of this podcast will be going up thanks to outside help!

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 got so good he could play Guitar Hero. This was my first interview during SfN and was still learning how my equipment worked. The beginning of the recording has some background speaking but that goes away after the first few minutes.

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 based on what the partners need. Although I enjoyed this interview very much, I am a bit low energy because I had a bit of a fever during the interview.

I love Isaac Arthur's Science and Futurism Youtube channel 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 what is possible.

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 biotechnology space. We talk about raising money and how it differs from an academic path.

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 be slowly working on getting the audio and video up. The thing is, the video side Is 120gb which I have to upload into the video editor... lets just say that's about 119gb more than I can upload per day here on Indian internet! So thanks so much for giving me so much verbal support at the conference! I'm glad you like it and it really motivated me to continue!

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 the end of the probe which could reduce the data transmission (and heat) by 10x.

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, and was formerly Fulbright Visiting Professor of Neuroscience and Neuroethics at the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany. He currently serves as a member of the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Advisory Council for Human Research Protection; and has served as an appointed member of the Neuroethics, Legal and Social Issues Advisory Panel of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and as Senior Science Advisory Fellow of the Strategic Multilayer Assessment Group of the Joint Staff, Pentagon.

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 subscriptions. Feedly is an RSS feed which delivers daily news to you on the news in the Neural Implant field. Hopefully this is easy to download, otherwise, send me an email at [email protected] and I can send it to you

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 Vagus nerve.

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 great things but is not resting on his laurels!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.