We're sunsetting PodQuest on 2025-07-28. Thank you for your support!
Export Podcast Subscriptions
cover of episode Chip in the Brain? How Brain-Computer Interfaces Could Change Medicine

Chip in the Brain? How Brain-Computer Interfaces Could Change Medicine

2024/5/3
logo of podcast WSJ’s The Future of Everything

WSJ’s The Future of Everything

AI Deep Dive AI Chapters Transcript
People
B
Benjamin Rapoport
Topics
Benjamin Rapoport: 我致力于将神经接口技术从科学领域转化为医学应用。为了确保医疗设备安全,微创性至关重要。早期脑机接口技术需要穿透大脑植入电极,存在损伤大脑的风险。而我们公司Precision Neuroscience的脑机接口技术采用表面微电极,最大限度地减少了对大脑的损伤。 我们的设备通过检测大脑表面的电信号来实现与数字世界的交互,这就好比在一个嘈杂的体育场或鸡尾酒会上,你需要从众多声音中识别出特定的人说话。因此,我们的电子设备需要处理大量数据,并将其转化为可理解的信息。这需要一个校准过程,让机器学习软件学习每个用户的脑电信号模式。 目前,我们主要关注脑机接口在医疗领域的应用,特别是帮助行动不便或言语障碍的患者。脑机接口可以作为一种数字旁路,帮助患者将思想转化为行动,这就像为大脑提供了一种神经假体。 脑机接口技术是一种平台技术,未来可能会有许多基于它的应用。它就像键盘和鼠标一样,是一种交互工具,未来可能会有更多意想不到的应用。 将实验室技术转化为可靠的医疗设备需要大量时间和努力。未来几年,会有多种脑机接口技术进入临床试验阶段。我们希望在未来五年内,脑机接口技术能够成为临床标准护理的一部分。 脑机接口可以被看作一种通信技术,其带宽的提升会带来更多应用,这类似于通信技术从拨号上网到高速网络的进步。脑机接口技术有潜力极大地提高沟通效率,甚至可以实现更直观的思想交流。 我们设计的脑机接口植入手术是一种微创手术,通过一个小切口将薄膜电极放置在大脑表面。电极数量与带宽成正比,增加电极数量可以提高带宽,但不会增加手术风险。 脑机接口技术将改变医学、神经科学以及我们对残疾的认知。它可以帮助残疾人重返工作岗位,并获得独立和尊严。先进的脑机接口比目前的医疗植入物更贵,但其价格不应该成为使用障碍。患者使用脑机接口的过程是一个学习和适应的过程,他们需要学习如何控制设备。

Deep Dive

Chapters
This episode explores the potential of brain-computer interfaces to revolutionize medicine and how we interact with computers.
  • Researchers are developing brain-computer interfaces to help people with disabilities like paralysis or speech impairment.
  • These devices decode brain signals and translate them into digital commands, enabling users to control computers with their thoughts.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

So i'm going to say the word and I want you to repeat IT. Okay, I wait like a second after I see, say IT you say okay, to say father, say youth brush good. Back in february, Jeffery keffer underwent .

brain surgery at pennsylvania hospital in philadelphy to relieve some of the symptoms of parkinson's disease. A team from the wall street y journal was there, too, because keeper was taking part in an experiment that could change medicine and maybe our relationship with computers.

For just under half an hour, an experimental device SAT on the surface of key fery brain, collecting data on the movements of his hands as he followed directions on the screen, making a fist, holding up specific fingers, and then .

actually with your hands moving. And I want to the screen and end in the line that the year. 应该 直接 是。

Even though key ford didn't actually move his hand, the implant gathered data on the electrical signals produced by his thoughts. And that data could help train a future device that could give patients the ability to use a computer just by thinking about IT. For decades, researchers have been working on developing devices like this called brain computer interfaces, and scientists hope that one day these devices could allow people to interact directly with computers, no mouse, keyboard or touch screen as .

technology changes. The nature of our interactions with technology changes.

Doctor Benjamin rapport is the cofounder of precision neuroscience, the company behind the brain computer interface that Jeffery keeper had temporarily implanted.

Rather than using voice or gesture to control the interface, the interaction with the computer comes from your thoughts. Thoughts do have a physical reality, and that is electrical activity that's taking place in the brain, and that electrical activity can be detected and decoded. Brain computer interface then uses that decode to thought to interact with the digital world.

Before leaving to start, precision rapport was also one of the founders of neural link, elon musk brain computer interface company. That company also started human trials of its own device this year. But in just a few years, rab report says this technology will start becoming more common with some medical patients and could change the way we all interact with computers.

Anyone who's active in the field now that needs to be focused on bring computer interprets of medical technology, I would like the field to move in the direction of making brain computer interfaces or widely available form of user interface. And I suspect that will happen on some level from .

the wall street journal. This is the future of everything. I'm danny Lewis.

I SAT down with doctor rapport to talk about how brain computer interfaces work and how, in the coming years, this technology could change the lives of people with severe mobility issues or paralysis, and maybe eventually changed the way healthy people interacted with computers. stuck. correct?

Devices that let people link their brains to computers seems like sipi out of movies like the matrix or video games like cyber punk, twenty seventy seven. But researchers have actually been working on them for decades now, primarily as medical devices, doctor APP aport, who would benefit from something like this.

Right now. We're focused on brain computer interfaces as a medical device that's designed for people with certain kinds of disabilities, in particular people who either can't move their hands or an arms and or people who can't speak.

I'm thinking in particular of people, for example, with one or injure or certain forms of brain stem jury or certain forms of stroke that allow them to think they're totally sound of mind, but unable to convert those thoughts into speech and motor action in the way that you and I can. And for those individuals of brain, computer interface functions kind of like a digital bypass that interfaces with the thinking part of the brain. But bian passes the part of the brain that connects to the parts of the body that are not working, and thereby enables them to convert their thoughts into actions in the real world. So just like people are used to prosthetic limbs, for example, we are developing neural prostheses that support and convert thought into action.

So this is the first step with the ultimate goal.

You know it's it's hard to predict the future, but if you look backwards in the history of computing in every generation, there has been some major change to the nature of the user interface, and that has given rise to all sorts of applications that have been difficult to anticipate at the beginning. And so I think you can think of bring computer interfaces as a kind of platform technology apart, which I think a lot of ciena fc discovery is likely to happen and a lot of additional technological layers are likely to be built.

What do you mean by a platform technology?

The interface is a product, but in another sense, a tool, just like a keyboard is a tool or a mouse is a tool, and with a touch screen is a tool for those methods. Interacting for the digital world don't necessarily allow you to what you could do with them, and yet they allow all kinds of intuitive expression and creativity. So I think will be facing a similar reality with brain computer interfaces.

Right now. We're really focused on brain computer interfaces as a medical technology. They're been twenty plus years a very serious work on the scientific side of really understanding how do we build the component parts of a brain computer interface.

And then just because you have done IT in laboratory, doesn't an that you'd do IT in a reliable manner for every patient, every person out of the box in a way that safe, repeatable, reliable and passes all of the requirements of a medical device, let alone on something that could be used by the average person down the line. So all of that is a lot of have you lifting and has taken a lot of time. And we're at a very exciting point today.

We are a few different print computer interfaces are including hours at precision entering a state of readiness where is being used by doctors and patients. That itself is incredibly exciting. And the next couple of years will see several matching versions of the technology enter clinical trials. That's going to take some time. And I think IT won't be for a number of years until we see a world in which would talking about consumer electronics and and other things.

IT is really interesting to think about this technology. I E S being more of a medium, I guess.

versus this is a single purpose device for sure. Another way of looking at that, that sometimes is helpful, is to think of brain computer interfaces as a communication technology.

Many of us remember the days of dialup, and we are familiar with this notion that as you increase the benefit of the communication channel, the realm of possible applications and the seamlessness of the computation and communication and overall experience increases, think about the transition from the telegram to a voice over a telephone line. That was a big step, right, right? That was really A A change in technology and also reflected increased band with communication.

And you think about how we communicate, you know, typing, texting is somewhere in the order of four hundred and eighty words per minute. But I think we all have this notion that we think much faster. You don't think in terms of words actually IT for most of us, IT takes a lot of effort to put our thoughts into words. Some of us are Better headed than others.

even even me.

who talks for all. Okay, certainly myself. I speak for myself. And so, so, so if there is a possibility to transmit half thought at a time, uh, whole paragraphs are at a time or somehow intuition at a time, that could be very powerful. I don't have a way of doing that just yet, but certainly the ban with out the communication channel that we're working on, I think we will expand to that type of possibility, and I think that will change the nature of communication.

We should mention, this isn't your first company in the field. You cofounded neurological alongside elon musk, and you ended up leaving to start precision. Why did you decide to leave and start a new company?

I am pretty much devoted my entire professional life to bringing neural interfaces from the world of science to the world of medicine. But I felt that in order to move to the world of medicine and technology, safety is paramount. For a medical device, safety often implies minimum invasive.

And in the early days of brain computer interfaces, there was this notion that in order to extract information, which data from the brain one needed to penetrate the brain with tiny, little need like electrodes, and those have the drawback of doing some amount of brain damage when they're inserted to the brain. And I felt that IT was possible to extract information in which data from the brain without damaging the brain. And so I am my colleagues, foreign precision neuroscience with that philosophe in mind, that minimal invasiveness, scalability and safety, where the foundation of what we felt was a very important direction to take neuroleptics. But the neurological system is based on penetrating micro electrodes. The position system is based on surface microelectrodes, which are tiny electrodes s that coat the surface of the rain without penetrating.

And do you still own stock in neurology or have any sort of financial stake in them?

I'd rather not answer that question in .

a public for newer link did not respond to our requests for comment. So let's talk about, you know what you're doing at precision. How does your brain computer interface work at precision?

The physical interface with the brain is a thin film, about a quarter of the width of a human eyes lash that conforms to the underlying service of the brain. And inside that thin film are embedded tiny, little platinum microelectrodes, each one about the size of a neon. And each of those electrodes is connected to electronics using a very, very thin plate and wire.

The electrodes are arranged in a ela structure, and so the electrodes coat the surface of the brain in a very regular geometric pattern and can detect electrical signals from the brain surface. The brain contains lots of signals but also a lot of noise. So it's kind of like being in a stadium or a cocktail party where you're interested in person speaking next to you, but there's also a lot of chatter.

And so the electronics needs to handle that is a lot of data, and and that needs to be done in a way that is power efficient and doesn't heat up the brain tissue or the body tissue. And that requires compression of the data. Those digitized neural data are transmitted to an external system, and that's where the translation of biological signals into and intelligent form takes place, kind of like a machine translation, and everyone's sprain is different. It's possible to know where your language region is or where your hand motor function is in general terms, but exactly where the electrical signals are that correspond to you intending to move your fingers is a little different from you, to me, to the next person. And so there is a calibration process that is required to learn if a user is thinking, intending to move or speak through which the machine learning based software learns how to interpret the brain signals of one person or the next person.

How have your patients described that feeling at precision?

We're still in the early days of understanding how patients to experience the the neuroscience ACE. They do describe IT as a process of sort of trial and error to understand in a sense what they should be thinking and then figuring out what works in a conscious kind of way and then IT becoming intuitive.

I think we're going to earn a lot more about this in the coming months and and in the rest of twenty, twenty four and twenty five, I think we will see the number of the people who have exposure to the technology in the clinical studies and critical trials expand significantly. So I hope i'll be able to answer that question with more data in the in the months ahead. And I guess the belongs we do IT the less magical IT will .

seem brain computer interfaces have come a long way, but what will you take to get them onto the market? And where might this technology go once it's left the lab that's after the break stay with us?

Doctor rapport precision neuroscientists aiming to have some of these devices, at least some form of them, commercially available on the market next year in twenty twenty five. Do you have a target Price that you're aiming for? Or you an estimate or a goal of how much an implant like this will cost.

What i'll say now is that the advanced interfaces that we're talking about will be more expensive than current medical implants. Ts, that deep brain stimulators and the like that were represent today's technology. And that really has to do with the amount of R N D that's gone into making them available. But IT is very important to all of us that, that the technology be accessible, affordable, committed to the Price point, not being a Carrier to entry.

And and I think there's another way of looking at this from the perspective of a person who has a disability and is looking for, uh, technology that can give them the kind of combination of dignity and independence and also the ability to do some of the things that they can do because they can move their hands or fingers in the way that you are. I can most of us in the field today believe that a person like that will be able to hold a best job again with the brain of puter interface technology. We think we will be able to enable smooth into IT a functionality that will allow that person to type you, use powerpoint, use excells the internet, send email, do all the things that the average worker can do, perhaps even Better.

And with that comes the ability to have some amount of privacy, dignity, financial self sufficiency. If you then ask, well, what does that worth in dollar terms to a person who was not employable and is now employed and can support their family again? You know, a fraction of that is going to be the cost of the device.

This is still brain surgery. What's the procedure actually like?

We have designed a mainly invasive procedure that involve us making a tiny little slit in the scalp, and that allows us to make an incision through the bone that is listed a millimeter in in thickness. And because the electorate films are very thin, we can slip them through a little slit in the bone onto the brain surface.

And we have various imaging technical that allow us to do this with a high level of safety and precision to make sure that the electors are place safely on the brain surface, in the right place. And the safety and move ability of these electorate, aries, allows us to slide them over the brain surface, allows us to map with the high level of accuracy and confidence exactly where the key areas are. So we know to within ten millimeters where the right area is before we go in.

But once the elevator is on the brain, we can move IT a little bit to make sure that we're getting exactly the right signals from exactly the right location. And so the survey doesn't end until we're sure about that. Thinking towards the future of this technology, do you want the bandwidth, the communication channel, to be able to scale over time? You want to go from three g to four A G to five g to six g? And in the context of ring computer repeat, that ban with really is proportional to the number of electrodes, each of our current generation electrode modules contains a thousand and twenty four microelectrodes. We can place many of those channel modules on the brain right now without doing any incremental brain damage, without taking much extra time, without any incremental risk. And that safety with scalability is an important trade for us.

So then fast forwarding into the future, what will the brain computer interface field look like in the next five years, ten years, fifteen years?

I would be giving you the wrong impression if I said I could predict where we're going to be in ten years or more. But but we're really trying to engineer a world in which these devices are part of the clinical standard of care. Five years from now, I think that's totally possible.

And I do think that over the next couple of years will see probably a couple of brain computer interface products go from sophisticated R N D in start of companies into approved medical products available for patients in need. And that is going to change medicine. I have no doubt that's going to change clan neuroscience.

It's going to change how we think about certain forms of disability. Beyond that, it's really hard to say, but I really think that what we understand about the brain is in some ways limited by the tools we have to investigate IT. And as more people work with direct bring computer interfaces of the kind we've been discussing, I do think we're going to learn a lot about the brain that we didn't know. We're learned a ton. And what comes after that? You know, I asked me in five years.

Doctor bedroom amin rapaport is the cofounder of precision neuroscience.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

The future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. This episode was produced by me, gamy Lewis. Thanks for listening.