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

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 enhancement come to the masses.

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.

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.

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.

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 his technical knowledge of the project and write the book Search for Paradise: A Patient's Account of the Artificial Vision Experiment

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.

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.

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.

In this episode, I personally went to meet Dr. Kevin Warwick in Prague for a personal interview. We talk about how he became the world's first cyborg when he implanted a RFID capsule in his arm in 1998. With this, he was able to control the smart doors in his building as well as to play a personalized greeting when he entered his office. Then in 2002 he had the Utah Electrode Array implanted in his arm and was the first person to receive signals directly into his nervous system. We had a funny conversation about how these events occurred as well what it was like to be able to be the first to communicate telepathically. There are many people who say he was not the first cyborg but that is just a technicality. We can all agree that these two studies were groundbreaking in some way!

Dr. Memming Park is a researcher from Stony Brooke University in New York whose research is on the programming to decode neuronal activity read by neural interfaces. We talk about the limits of this code as well as what would be needed to improve it further.

Dr. Maria Asplund is a researcher in Freiburg, Germany who works mainly in PEDOT. She talks about the benefits of PEDOT as a coating for neural implants. It allows for functionalization of the surface as well as a better connection to brain cells. It has a porous surface as well as good conductance which means that you have a better signal. We then talk about the differences with carbon nanotube electrodes and the benefits of both.

Dr. Dominique Durand has main research in deep brain stimulation, conductible nanoyarn in Neural Engineering, and global electric fields in the brain. We talk about the early days of Neural Engineering back when the terminology wasn't created back in the 70's and 80's. Then we talk about the breakthroughs with nanotube yarn and the possible benefits of this. Finally, we talk about his research with global electric fields in the brain and what this means.

Dr. Kip Ludwig is a researcher who deals with the nervous system as it relates to the rest of the body. His dream is that it would be able to bypass medications which can be ineffective as well as dangerous. It would be possible to directly control the behavior of particular organs. This field is advancing at an incredible pace and even he is surprised by some of the things he hears about.

Welcome to the introductory episode of the Neural Implant podcast. I talk about the goals and aims of this podcast, to interview the leaders in the Brain Machine Interface field. The idea is to bring together the field of neuroprosthetics (brain machine interfaces? brain implants?) in an understandable conversation about the current topics and breakthroughs. I hope to replace needing to read scientific papers on new research in an easy to digest way so people can share thoughts or ideas to facilitate 'idea sex.' This will make the field of brain implants a smaller and more personal space About me, Ladan Jiracek: I am a recent Masters graduate in the field of Nanobiophysics with an undying passion for brain implants. I did an internship at Blackrock Microsystems many years ago and saw the potential in this field. My ultimate goal is to facilitate incredible learning like in the 'Matrix' so that people can download skills. I am also the host of another podcast, Travel Wisdom, about how travel can be more than a vacation but a learning experience. Through this I learned about the power of podcasts to meet and connect people in amazing ways!

Dr. Walter Voit is a Wunderkind of a professor being so young and having been able to secure so much funding in his groundbreaking work. He works mainly with 3D printed materials as well as temperature dependent materials which can be used in brain implants. We talk about entrepreneurship and spinoff companies from this growing lab which now has 100+ members.

Dr. Chad Bouton is an award-winning researcher who was recently able to bypass the damaged area of a paralyzed patient to allow him to play Guitar Hero again. Complex movements like this require intricate control of the fingers which have not been possible in the past. We also talk about the methods used by his team in order to embrace glial scarring and instead of listening to neurons at a farther range. In this way, it is possible to pick up many more neurons per electrode and get more information.