WEBVTT - Neural Pixie Dust 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:14.160 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.400 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.040 I think most of our listeners probably tuned into our 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.400 episode but the future Shot, so they are probably familiar 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:26.000 with the concept. But even if they're not familiar with 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:29.320 the concept the future shot, I think they might feel 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:32.160 a little of it. Let's get through with this episode. Yeah, 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.840 because the toddlers in Future Shot talked about this idea 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:38.960 of having these sort of neural prosthetics. I didn't call 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.600 him that, but it's more like brain computer interfaces. And 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.760 this was a wild idea in the seventies. But hey, 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.280 let's let's get real here. I mean, this thing is happening. 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.680 In two thousand and three, the world's first brain prosthesis 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:56.680 was put into an animal, and then just this year 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:00.200 there was an auditory brain implant in a toddler. So 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.240 we can see that this is becoming more and more common. 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:07.280 And I attended a panel at the World Science Festival 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:11.800 on this very topic. It's called cells to silicon your brain. 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:16.280 And by the way, it always seems to be like 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.760 the the year that all this stuff is going to 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:20.800 be here for real. I don't know if you've noticed that, 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:23.840 but they talked about the steps there that they're taking 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:27.520 right now to make this more of a reality. And 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:30.160 we'll talk about that in a second. Yeah. Yeah, to 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:33.600 your point, those are the new two thousand's, I guess, 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:36.360 the years we can look to and say, this is 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:38.640 the technology we're gonna have, This is the life we're 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.800 gonna have because of these advancements. And to your point, 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:45.319 we've seen some pretty impressive steps made thus far. I mean, 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:49.200 the uh cyborg rat with the with the brain berth 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.600 thesis and cyborg Toddler. It's pretty great now not to 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:54.440 not to to get too caught up in the idea 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:58.120 of the cyborg, because if we've we've discussed before, technological 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.040 adaptations on your body, inside your body are becoming more 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:04.720 and more every day, you know, ranging from a pacemaker 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.280 to a risk watch, and so we're just seeing the 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:12.640 natural extrapolation of that idea. Yeah, you're augmenting your natural abilities, right. 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.880 I wear glasses, so I'm augmenting my vision. Yeah. None 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.960 of this makes anybody less human. All it does is 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.799 either makes up for injuries or or or some sort 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:27.680 of shortcomings in one's biology, or it is it is 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.320 gaming the system a bit, or maybe gaming the system 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:33.480 a lot, depending on what the augmentation is well. And 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.920 you would need this sort of gaming of the system 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.480 quite a bit if you were someone like I say, 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:42.120 stroke patient who have lost the ability to move your limbs. 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:46.280 And neuroscientists John Donohue was actually talking about this on 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:51.000 the panel. Specifically, he referenced a stroke patient named Cathy, 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.079 and he showed this film of her. She sustained permanent 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.080 damage to her brain and as a result, the axons 0:02:57.200 --> 0:02:59.799 that run along her spine and deliver information from her 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:03.960 motor cortex or her limbs were incapacitated, and so she 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.359 was relegated to a life in a wheelchair with others 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.679 helping her to move and to feed her. And then 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.160 she signed on to this five year experiment with Donna 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.600 Hue and others other researchers, and there was an implant 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:22.040 inserted into her brain that interacted with robotic arms that 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:26.119 would do some things for her, like like get the coffee, 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:28.560 like actually bring coffee to her lips, which she hadn't 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.120 done for years. Yeah, in the video footage, of this 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:34.320 is pretty remarkable because, yeah, she has not in and 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.200 over a decade, she has not raised a cup of 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.000 coffee to her own lips, of her own volition, and 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:43.280 now she's doing it. She's thinking the robot arm into action. 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:45.600 It's there's nothing, you know, she's not moving anything with 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:48.480 their tongue, it's nothing with their muscles. It's all inside 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:51.560 her mind. She's thinking about the movement and it is happening, 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:54.400 and it's amazing. It's it's it's the stuff that you 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:56.240 would often think, even today, you tend to think of 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:59.320 as science fiction, the idea that I'm commanding a machine 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:01.920 with my mind, I'm moving something other than my physical 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.360 body with my mind, and yet here it is. Yeah, 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.000 it is amazing. And so how do you get your 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.600 thoughts externally out there to do something for you. Well, 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:12.840 it turns out that what you do is you insert 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:16.320 a wire into the r motor cortex. And what this 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:18.839 wire is doing, it's just it's not a very big wire, 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.040 so it's not like she's got things, you know, sticking 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:23.440 out of her head. But what it's doing is it's 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:27.920 fishing for neural spikes. Now, what are neural spikes? Okay, 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:32.080 every time neurons fire in the brain, they're shuttling ions 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.280 back and forth, and there's an electrical potential change there. 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.040 So if you have a wire inserted into the brain 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:42.920 that can detect that electrical change and when it does, uh, 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:45.279 you know, changes in the ions when you're on stir 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:51.159 about and meat Uh, it will actually transmit information out 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:55.279 to a computer to say, I detect neural activity here 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.240 right now, and it's measuring that. So we've talked about 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:02.320 this before with the Jennifer anistone neurons. I think that's 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:05.840 what we called them. That when someone is thinking about 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:09.480 Jennifer Anderson, some people I which I should say not everybody, 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.000 you will see a spike in neuronal activity because there's 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.960 a whole database of information and memory they are related 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:21.159 to Jennifer Aniston and so the signal is really very strong. Well, 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.280 the same thing happens when you're thinking and you're concentrating, 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:26.800 like I would like to move my arm right now, 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:29.960 and I'm trying to think about moving my arm. All 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.360 of those neurons which sort of coalesced together to give 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:35.680 off a strong signal, and that's what that wire could detect, 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.360 identifying what that signal looks like and then feeding it 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:43.080 out to this machine. I I often in looking at 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:45.120 this topic, I keep thinking of it in terms of 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:49.080 the road, like a mountain road. The early examples we 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.839 talked about that the rat prosthesis that had to do 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:57.560 with the damaged hippocampus, or the the toddler um prosthesis, 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.320 which specifically was an auditory brain stem and plant. These 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.080 are cases where you have point A, point B, and 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:06.520 point C. All right, you know you have a road, 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.159 imagine a road across the mountains from your house to 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.400 the store. But then that middle point is is a 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.239 part of the road that's washed away by by a flood. 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:17.760 So what do you do? How do you get from 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:20.920 A to to C? Well, you put a bridge over it, right, 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.480 And that's what a lot of this technology is figuring 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:27.000 out how to fill in that that gap, to how 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.120 to bridge that gap from from one from a healthy 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.520 part of the brain to another healthy part of well, 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.040 let's just say, a healthy part of the chain of 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:38.800 of of action and reaction to to bridge that gap, 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:41.280 you know, in a way that lets you function again. 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:44.200 And then in this we see we see a situation 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:46.880 where we're not only bridging the gap. We're building the 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:51.679 bridge out of the organism itself into an external system, 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:54.640 an external robotic system. You're right, because in this case, 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:59.000 point A is the neuronal activity. Point B would normally 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:01.960 be those acts on in her spine, but because they 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.440 can't send the signals to the body, what we're doing 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.400 here are what researchers are doing is they're taking those 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:11.960 signals out externally, out of the organism, as you say, 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:16.040 into the computer to decode that neuronal activity, and then 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:18.920 points C would be the robotic arms instead of her 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.360 own arms. And what is so amazing, so fascinating about 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:25.160 this is that what they're doing is that they're taking 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:30.960 the sounds that that these neuronal spikes made and they're 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:34.840 decoding them. So you might have like five blips that 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.480 that really mean move the arm to the right. You 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.400 might have seven blips that are decoded as move the 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:45.600 arm to the left, and that is then being put 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.720 into the robotic arm as a command. So the fact 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.880 that they can even take the information out and decode 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.640 it in a way that makes sense um and then 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:58.840 obviously matches up to what Cathy is thinking because she 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.040 can corroborate that. Yeah, you really get the sense. It's 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.480 almost like listening to a conversation through a wall, and 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.600 they're making sense of it through uh in sort of 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.600 indirect ways, but they're getting enough information out of it. 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.480 They're getting they're they're getting enough of the points they 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.960 get their high highlighting those neural spikes and then figuring 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:20.560 out what it's it's asking for and then reproducing it. Now, 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.280 the crazy thing about this, it's that they are getting 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.280 this neuronal activity from just a sampling of the neurons. 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:29.240 So maybe about fifty neurons out of the billions of 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:33.480 neurons in your brain, uh or the billions of synapsis. 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.960 So that's I mean, that's tiny, that tiny bit of 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:40.720 neural activity can be picked up and then acted upon. 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.240 I believe in the in the in they talk to you 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:47.000 you attended World Science Festial Robert crow which Um compared 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.079 it to to voting, where you have like a small 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:52.679 portion of the population that's voting and the rest are 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.480 not voting, but you're you're figuring out what the public 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.880 wants as a whole based on this small sample. And 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.280 that's kind of what's happened here with the with this situation. Yeah, 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.079 definitely check this out. You can go to RORLD Science 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:08.120 Festival to their website and just look for cells to 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.640 Silicon and you can see this talk. It's really great. Um, 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.720 so there are drawbacks this of course. There's the idea 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:16.720 that it may not be something that you could have 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:18.760 in your brain long term. Kathy has had it for 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:20.800 five years. She hasn't had any problems. But we know 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:24.600 that the body doesn't like foreign objects in it. That's true. Also, 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.040 it's worth noting that the robotic reach and grasp actions 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:28.800 are not going to be as fast as or as 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:30.920 accurate as those of the enable bodied person. I think 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.240 that's that's that should be pretty obvious. We're not at 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:34.800 the point in the technology where it's going to be 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.960 a one for one, but but it's it's a step 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:41.440 in that direction. Yeah, and uh. Donny Hue says that 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.600 the neural spikes are not always the same from trial 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.240 to trial. In other words, there's five blips, might be 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:49.560 six flips the next time or seven, and so they 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.080 have to figure out the pattern each time. And he 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:55.440 said that it's very likely that those neural spikes are 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.360 influenced by other conditions at the time, so it could 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.079 be hunger, it could be a particularly emotional state or 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:05.920 a physical state. UM, which is all really fascinating because 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.600 we've talked about a propri reception before, and we talked 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.040 about it and people who have lost the ability to 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:16.040 move their limbs and um, and how all of this 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:20.800 influences the body, the physical state of the body. So um. 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:24.560 Obviously it's not something that is perfect right now, but 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:27.800 it's the beginnings of something that could be really important, 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.440 that kind of neural pixie dust of the future. And 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:35.760 we'll get to that later. Now. Another fascinating example of 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.119 this technology can be found in the work of HeLa Nuremberg, 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:44.240 who is a neuroscientist working on technology for a prosthetic 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.120 I yeah, because she says that more than ten million 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.200 people in the US are blind or facing blindness because 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:55.760 of diseases like macular degeneration, and for the vast majority 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.920 of them, it's the prosthetic devices that are available right 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.360 now that are their best hope, but the ones that 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.960 that are common right now are not necessarily the best. 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:11.240 And she has created a neural prosthetic device that is amazing. Yeah. 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:13.560 Now think back again to that analogy I'm made about 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.080 the road point A, point B. In point C and 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:19.320 point B that middle point is washed out by a flood. 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:20.680 How do you get across it? How do you build 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:23.240 that bridge? So, when when you're looking at something just 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:25.959 with normal vision, normal healthy vision, you have the image 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:27.960 that's going to your eye, it's hitting your retina and 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.079 then the middleman that point B that it is the 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:34.360 retinal circuitry, and this essentially extracts information from it and 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.400 converts it into a code. And these are electrical pulses 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:39.959 that are sent to the brain. So to your point, 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:42.200 what do you do when the photo receptors die? What 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.400 do you do when one link in the chain vanishes? Yeah, 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:48.920 because that's what happens with macular degeneration. Those photoreceptors on 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:51.520 the retina die off, and then over time all the 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:53.839 other cells and the circuits that are connected to them 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:58.360 die off to renderingly you effectively blind. So the only 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:01.679 thing that you're left with are those put cells, and 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:03.680 those are the ones that send the signals to the brain. 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:06.240 But because of all that degeneration, they're not sending any 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:10.280 signals anymore. And if you have a regular prosthetic for eyesight, 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.160 um you could allow a person to see bright lights 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:17.360 or high contrast edges, but these are shadowy with like 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:20.720 really no real detail. And what you're using in this 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.800 regular prosthetic for eyesight is an encoder that takes in light, 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.240 but the firing pattern is all over the place. So 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:30.600 what you need then is a device that can mimic 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:33.560 the actions of that the front end circuitry of sight 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:37.440 send signals to the retina's output cells and and and 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:39.800 in this you're you end up mimicking the actions of 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.760 that front end circuitry, so you're taking the image converting 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.160 them into the retina's own code. Yeah. What Nuremberg has 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.600 created is um this prosthetic device that has two parts, 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.360 an encoder and a transducer. Now that encoder mimics the 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:56.400 actions that you say, that front end circuitry, and then 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.600 the transducer makes the output cells send the code to 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.880 the sin and the result is this retinal prosthetic that 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:07.320 can produce normal retinal output. And we're talking about is 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:10.840 is a set of equations that they can implement on 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.120 a chip. And so she's saying, hey, it's just math here. 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.360 And that's the exciting part is that if you take 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.840 these two components of the prosthetic device, then you can 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:24.960 mimic real eyesight in a person who is blind. Yeah, 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.320 it's pretty pretty, pretty phenomenal. And we're talking about that 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:30.400 the individual would wear a sort of camera that has 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:33.120 an encoder of a device that's taking that information from 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:35.959 the camera and translating it into the retinas code, translating 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:38.720 it into a version that the brain can make sense of. 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:45.119 You're talking about a real direct link between mechanical artificial 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:49.960 sensory and organic reasoning of that sense information. Now, to 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:52.080 get a sense of this, you should definitely check out 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.680 the talk because she shows two different examples of how 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:59.240 this works with a regular prosthetic device and with this 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.080 new one. And what she shows is sort of a 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:08.280 readout of the neural firing activity and regular eyesight um 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:10.720 the regular prosthetic and the new one. And you will 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:14.480 see that in the new prosthetic and regular eyes eyesight, 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:19.840 those patterns are almost identical. It's not perfect, but that 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:22.080 middle part, the regular one right now that just has 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:25.720 the encoder that just takes in light, is very imperfect. 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:28.520 And then she gives the second example of she said, 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:30.800 you know, we wanted to take a snapshot of what 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.600 people were seeing or what these primates were seeing, because 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:38.600 I believe they're in human trials right now, clinical trials. 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:42.600 But what those um images that we're seeing. You see 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:46.000 the regular eyesight, you see a baby's face. It's perfectly rendered, 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:48.320 of course, right because you have perfect eyesight. Then you 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:51.600 have the regular prosthetic and it's very shadowy. You can't 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.680 even make out the pattern, which is amazing because you know, 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:58.200 you and I have discussed before how humans are pattern 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.520 recognition machines and yet there's no not enough data points 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:04.240 here to really make a clear picture. And then you 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:06.480 have this new device that she came up with, and 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:08.960 it is plain as day that that is the baby space. 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:14.360 It is not exact, but can you imagine being someone 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:18.120 who has lost their sight and you all of a 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:22.000 sudden are hooked up with this neural prosthetic device for 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:26.160 your eye and you're able to see something is I 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:29.120 don't know, iconic and recognizable as a tree or a 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.720 baby space. Again, yeah, I mean you would have have 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:34.320 some level of detail as well as just you know, 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:39.080 an abstract idea of your environment just for navigational purposes. 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:42.200 So it's pretty pretty amazing stuff. Yeah, And as you 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.040 had said, this sort of washed out areas, um, you know, 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:47.840 from points A to C. This is something that Nuremberg 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:50.200 is is imagining for the rest of the brains, and 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.040 not just eyesight, but for stroke victims. So in the 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.440 cortex of trying to create this sort of communications center 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:59.680 using the same sort of device. Yeah, figuring any any 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:02.640 kind of situation where there's a there's a gap, where 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:04.520 there's a missing link in the chain or a damage 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.360 link in the chain, then we could conceivably go in 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:11.800 there and build that that bridge, that neural bridge from 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:15.040 point A to point C. All Right, we're gonna take 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:16.480 a quick break, and when we get back, we're going 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:18.520 to talk about it. Just sort of neural dust that 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.520 we may all have sprinkled into our brains in the year. 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.480 All right, we're back. Uh So, if you were not 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:38.000 future shocked by the earlier information about sort of the 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:42.000 current state in the in the depending state um of 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:45.600 these these neural enhancements, then hold onto your bridges, because 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:49.480 we're about to look at where this could go, where 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.680 this is going, and how it could dramatically change not 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:54.840 only our lives, but but but what it is to 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:58.000 be human. Yeah, Okay, so think back to Kathy and 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:00.560 think about that wire in her brain time I believe 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:04.840 is referred to as brain gate. UM. Michael Maharbits has 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:08.800 created a new kind of prosthetic in the form of 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:12.960 these cubes as small as neurons. Okay, we're talking about 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:17.960 fifty microns across. Now. The thing is is that they 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:22.880 don't um they don't work with electromagnetic frequency because they're 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:25.840 too small, so you can't have something like a wire 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.240 detecting them. But you can use sonogram to detect these. 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:33.120 And what they're thinking is that you could have these 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:36.320 sprinkled throughout your brain and you would have all these 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:41.120 different data points measuring that neuronal activity, and you could 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:45.840 have a far more robust system that not only exports 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.040 the sort of neural activity, the sort of thoughts that 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:53.280 you're having, that maybe even imports information. So when you 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:56.600 start to think about this, this neural dust as it's called, 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.600 and you start to see how you could have these 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:04.480 prosthetics not just external to you, but implanted in you, 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.840 and you could have this this really very uh sophisticated 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.840 system of information coming in and going out of your body, 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:15.720 out of your brain. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:19.200 the ability to to have more of a hands on, 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:23.639 real time idea of what the brain is doing just 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:26.080 throughout the course of the day, not just when you're 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:29.320 hooked up to some machines or or your run through 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:32.960 an fMRI. I. This would be like a daily constant 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:36.119 understanding of what your brain is doing. Yeah, and I 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:38.159 mean you you see this. That the fact that you 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:41.320 could have more of this neural dust spread throughout your 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:45.560 brain again, more data points of collection, more ability to 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:48.560 import that data. But not only that, you could have 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.520 this stuff in there maybe for the rest of your life, 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:53.520 because as we discussed before, the brain is not like 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:56.200 foreign objects. But if you have something as tiny as 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.199 a neuron, it's very possible that it could pass in 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:03.040 the body as something that's uh supposed to be there. Okay, 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.399 so at conceivably then at even an early age, you 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:10.000 are injected. Your brain is injected with this dust, and 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:12.720 this dust is spread out through the brain and it's 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:18.360 all reporting and receiving information from the outside. Well. Right, 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:22.440 So for someone like Cathy for instance, um, she would 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:24.840 get sort of an upgrade here because again let's assume 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:27.720 that there's some sort of implant here or a prosthetic 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.600 device that could easily allow her to to move her 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:37.640 body around um, and maybe even she could receive directions UM. 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:42.240 And that's where this thing gets really weird, because you 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:46.560 could effectively use this as a brain upgrade. And we 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:48.119 talked about this before, and I think it was in 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:52.480 monkeys that they had their neural path at ways tinkered 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.159 with when they were making decisions, and the idea was 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:59.159 you could increase neural activity in one direction so that 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.800 they made spec scific um movements or decisions about what 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:05.639 they were about to do the right decision, right. So 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:08.639 what if you have this neural pixie dust and it 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:12.440 could bolster your memory, It could create stronger neural pathways 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.560 to information. I mean, you wouldn't have to study so much, right. 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:19.840 It's it's pretty fascinating because we're talking about not only 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.480 not only using this technology to bridge gaps and to 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.800 service a bridge where an area was damaged, but just 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:30.359 to speed up the connections, to improve the the the 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:33.560 overall road to where you have you know, just imagine 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.280 again to use the analogy of the mountain mountain roads 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:38.840 where you have lots of bridges, not because the the 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:44.040 road is unsafe, but because this makes the transportation, faster, smoother, 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:48.040 uh and uh and and altogether more effective. Right, It's 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:49.960 a kind of true all because not only would it 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:53.720 be helpful for say, struck victims or someone with you know, 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:58.320 immacular degeneration in this case, UM, but because conceivably it 0:20:58.320 --> 0:20:59.920 could work in the same way that nurembergers to be 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.640 sing her system. But yeah, it could just give you 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:07.040 that sort of lift that everybody has been fantasizing about 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:10.359 and thinking about in terms of upgrading your brain in 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:13.360 a way that it runs faster and smoother. As you say, yeah, 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:16.040 and you could have like a daily or weekly email 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:18.040 that you received telling you what you're almost like you 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:20.320 would web traffic for your website, except you would have 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:22.280 a readout saying, hey, this is how your brain is doing. 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:25.400 This is your your neural activity for a given day, 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.120 a given week. Yeah. And here's the thing again, this 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:30.960 is that we're not just talking about um output here 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:35.760 working with an implanted prosthetic devices, but we're also talking 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:40.840 about input. And while this doesn't work on an electromagnetic frequency, 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:43.600 it does work on that that sort of ultrasound. In fact, 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:48.120 these neural pixie dusts are called tuning forks for ultrasound. Uh, 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:51.800 the idea is that maybe you could still kind of 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:54.920 hack into this system, and that would be a problem, right, 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:58.920 you could hack into someone's neural circuitry and have them 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.119 doing things. So, so you don't mean just in the 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.640 sense of life hacking where I'm improving my brain by 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:06.920 having the neural pixie dust. You're talking about an outsider 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:11.119 hacking into the device that's it's it's attuned with my 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.200 neural pixie dust and essentially hacking my brain, hacking my 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:19.000 my memory, even hacking my my perception of reality or 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:22.000