The Wired Brain

Motive, Means, & Opportunity

Ramez Naam
mez@apexnano.com
 Motive
Help the sick & injured
 Means
Brain and nervous system prosthesis
 Opportunity
Neural prosthesis to enhance human brains
Motives
 The Deaf
~20 million hearing impaired people in US
~2 million cannot be helped by hearing aids
 The Blind
1.3 million people in the US
 The Paralyzed
2 million people in the US

Reeve was paralyzed in 1995.

Parkinson’s Disease
1.5 million people in the US
 Permanent Brain Injury
5.3 million people in the US
Problems with:
attention
memory
learning
perception
mood
 And Many More
stroke victims

the severely depressed

obsessive compulsive disorder sufferers

> 10 million potential patients in the US
Means
The Brain is Electrochemical
1870 – Fritsch and Hitzig

Moved dog limbs by

electrically stimulating the brain
Human Cognition is Electrochemical

1950 – Wilder Penfield

Produced spontaneous memories by

electrically stimulating the brain
Neural Interfaces Can Control Behavior

1960s - Jose Delgado & Robert Heath

Delgado Animal Manipulation
Sleep
Appetite
Aggression
Pleasure & Pain
Social Dominance
Aggression
Aggression
Heath Human Experiments
“neuro-orgasms”

professions of love

attempted to “cure homosexuality”

creepy
medical uses
 Restore Hearing
1970s – The Cochlear Implant

Restores Hearing to Completely Deaf

 Cochlear Implant
electrically stimulates the auditory nerve
 Primitive Electronics, Big Results

Cochlear Implant Auditory Nerve

< 30 electrodes 30,000 neurons

couldn’t possibly work

produces 90% word recognition

Restoring Vision
Restoring Vision
 Primitive Electronics, Big Results

Visual Prosthesis Visual Cortex

256 electrodes billions of neurons

couldn’t possibly work

“limited mobility” vision

Cortical Visual Implant Video
Controlling Motion
 Primitive Electronics, Big Results

Motor Prosthesis Motor Cortex

1 wireless electrode billions of neurons

couldn’t possibly work

provides useful control

of cursor or robot arm
Controlling Devices
 What’s Happening Here?
cracking the code of the brain

that code is distributed

good results with sparse connections

Controlling Parkinson’s

all Parkinson’s drugs

fail over time
Controlling Parkinson’s Disease
Deep Brain Stimulator
Deep Brain Stimulator
more than 30,000 installed

8-10 hour surgery

$40,000 bill

Recently covered by Medicare

Deep Brain Stimulator Side Effects
Untreatable Depression

Normal Mood
 Deep Brain Stimulator Side Effects
Uncontrolled Obsessive Compulsive Behavior

Normal Behavioral Control

 Deep Brain Stimulator Side Effects
Clinical trials for Depression & OCD Underway

other conditions under consideration

a return to emotion and behavior

but in a medical context

Technology Trends
 Neural Interface Electronics
Implant Type # of Electrodes to Date
(in humans)

Parkinson’s 1
Motor 8
Cochlear 30
Visual 256
Enter the Electrical Engineers

UMich Neural Chip Infineon Neuro-Chip

1024 electrodes 16,384 electrodes
Wireless
Plenty of Room To Improve

55 million transistors
Opportunities
Restoring Damaged Memory?
Repairing the Hippocampus
 Hippocampus Chip
“dumb” replica of the hippocampus

will help us crack the code of memory

 Enhancing Memory?
In 2006

Berger & Deadwyler will

attach hippocampus chip to
a healthy primate’s hippocampus
Enhancing Memory?
In 2006

it probably won’t work

we’ll learn from the attempt

someday soon it will work

Beyond Memory
some possibilities
 Beyond Memory
Language Chip

Broca & Wernicke’s areas

ultimate text input method?

Beyond Memory
Emotion Chip

amygdala & other areas

 Emotional Chip Advantages
Drugs Neural Stimulation
slow to act immediate
slow to stop acting stops on a dime
shotgun approach laser-like precision
( = side effects)
not very tunable extremely fine-tunable
no feedback instant feedback
Autonomous Behavioral Conditioning

broccoli = good

exercise = good

saturated fat = bad

Risks of Self Conditioning
ultimate high

1500 self-stimulations per hour

ultimate addiction

hardware limitations
Beyond Memory
Frontal Cortex Chip

“working memory”
attention
reasoning
decision making
 Communication

to the brain,
imagination = sensation = memory
 Communication

the same neurons fire

when you see an image
when you remember that image
when you imagine an image just like it
 Communication

so if we can send
images, sounds, sensations
into your brain
you can send them
out of your brain
into
a computer
or another person’s brain
 Vanderbilt Experiment

monkey #1 Brain monkey #2

auditory Computer auditory
cortex Interface cortex
 What Else Could We
Communicate?
Sound, Sight, Touch, Taste, Smell
Almost Certainly

Emotions?
Probably

Memories? Knowledge? Skills?

Maybe someday
but not soon
 Major Changes To
human self-determination

human-to-human communication
The Hurdles
Hurdles – Brain Surgery
Risky
Expensive
New surgery for each upgrade?
Conclusion: it will never happen
 What About Eye Surgery?
Risky
Expensive
May get stuck with less than 20/20 vision
Glasses are a fine alternative
Conclusion: it will never happen

Laser Surgery Changed the Rules

 LASIK
had risk, cost, and non-surgical alternatives

sufficiently safe

sufficiently cheap

sufficient benefit (convenience)

revolutionized eye surgery

 Eye Surgeries Per Year
1,800,000
1,550,000
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
200,000
400,000
200,000 20,000
0
1990 1995 2000
Refractive Eye Surgery Cost
$4,500
$4,000
$3,500
$3,000
$2,500
$2,000
$1,500
$1,000
$500
$0
1990 1995 2000
Possible Brain Surgery Revolutions
Stereotactic Surgery

(magnets, images, and robots)

Neurovascular Surgery

(enter through arteries instead of the skull)

Neurovascular Stereotactic Surgery
Neurovascular Stereotactic Surgery
Magnetic Fields Guide Catheter
 Results
12 hour surgeries
now take 90 minutes
with less risk, better outcomes

$40,000 aneurysm operations

now cost $4,000
brain surgery is destined to become fast,
safe, and easy
 Hurdle - Upgrades
only the interface electronics go inside the brain
the rest sit on the outside
Alternative to Brain Surgery
Wearable computing:
PDAs for memory
Contact-lens displays
Throat microphones
 Alternative to Brain Surgery
Poor substitutes for:
instant, precise emotional control
audio, visual, tactile, emotional telepathy
improved memory, attention, and cognition
and more
Recap
Motive
(for now)
help the sick
Means
neural – computer interfaces
in their infancy
rapidly improving
Opportunity
enhance memory & cognition
increase human self-determination
expand modes of human
communication
The Risk Takers
Those who’ve suffered
will be the first enhanced
Backup Slides
Computer Mediated Communication

? ?
Freedo Freedo
m m

Economic Economic
s s
Neuroscience Neuroscience

Bill Jane