Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking, the podcast where
Speaker 1: we talk about the future. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: Voge OBAM, and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe the Possessor of
Speaker 1: the Acts of Destiny. Um, we we now have an
Speaker 1: official Forward Thinking plastic toy axe that was discovered in
Speaker 1: the House to Works office toy box. Yeah, so now
Speaker 1: it's ours. I don't know what we'll do with it
Speaker 1: or why it's forward thinking, but we may do an
Speaker 1: episode on the future of axes and ax text technology.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's good of of plastics. Yeah, plastic ac
Speaker 1: is in particularly quite different future than that's true. Well,
Speaker 1: that's not what we're talking about today though. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about brain computer interfaces. Uh what now, you looking
Speaker 1: at me like what I want to talk about axes? No,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. I have no idea what we talked about that. Okay.
Speaker 1: Brain computer interfaces is what we're going to concentrate on today.
Speaker 1: And uh, and really it's exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's an interface that allows you to interact with a
Speaker 1: computer using just your brain power. That sounds like science fiction.
Speaker 1: Well at one point it was just science fiction, but
Speaker 1: now it's science fact and in fact there we've made
Speaker 1: a lot of progress in this field. There. Essentially, the
Speaker 1: way this works, you have to understand the way your
Speaker 1: brain works. You know, you have neurons in your brain,
Speaker 1: and the neurons communicate, They pass along messages and commands
Speaker 1: to the various systems in your body using a combination
Speaker 1: of electric signals and chemical processes. Right, and all these
Speaker 1: neurons in your brain are connected by things axons and dendrites,
Speaker 1: and they and they create complex patterns of electrical charges
Speaker 1: that surge back and forth. And this is what manifests
Speaker 1: as thought right and uh, and also as a command,
Speaker 1: So like when you lift your arm, you know, or
Speaker 1: as Buck Rubonds would say, throw a harpoon. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the the neurons, because they are communicating through
Speaker 1: partially through electricity, not solely through It means that if
Speaker 1: we had found a way, if we could find a
Speaker 1: way to detect electrical activity and to assign particular types
Speaker 1: of electric electrical activity to particular tasks, we could interpret
Speaker 1: that electrical activity and translate that into something that a
Speaker 1: computer could understand like a command. Right. Yeah. Well, the
Speaker 1: interesting point this goes all the way back to was
Speaker 1: the first time that someone noticed that the brain makes
Speaker 1: this electrical current, a British physician named Richard Cayton, I believe,
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so so this this has been this
Speaker 1: is not a new idea, no, no, no, it's certainly
Speaker 1: a fantastic one, right, Yeah, The whole idea of being
Speaker 1: able to harness computer power is relatively new. But the
Speaker 1: fact that we have we've learned about the electrical activity
Speaker 1: in the brain, We've not about that for a while, right.
Speaker 1: And so essentially, what what your brain is doing is
Speaker 1: it's producing meaningful action based on electrical impulses, which is
Speaker 1: actually the same thing a computer does, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: electrical impulses manifest as meaningful action. Yeah. In that case,
Speaker 1: the electrical impulses tend to be on very tiny microprocessors
Speaker 1: and going through extremely tiny channels on these microprocesses we're
Speaker 1: talking about on the nano scale. Uh. And so if
Speaker 1: we were able to to detect and interpret these these
Speaker 1: electrical patterns that go on in our brains in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way, we could then create an interface with a
Speaker 1: computer and pass commands through thought and in fact, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty crazy, but it's awesome. But how do we read that?
Speaker 1: I mean, how do how do you figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on inside someone's skull? Well, it's actually simpler than
Speaker 1: you might think. It's it's it's difficult, and it's it's simpler.
Speaker 1: At the same time, it's um So your brain is
Speaker 1: producing electrical impulses and in a way, it's not all
Speaker 1: that different than the data you'd create by punching keys
Speaker 1: on a keyboard or moving around the mouse. When your
Speaker 1: brain thinks a thought, something physical happens. If you have
Speaker 1: a way of detecting what that physical thing is that happens,
Speaker 1: then you have a way of creating input. All you
Speaker 1: have to have is some kind of sensor or machine
Speaker 1: or way of gathering the input from the brain. That's
Speaker 1: the part that's hard. Now, that's one part that's hard
Speaker 1: is actually exactly teaching teaching the computer or the or
Speaker 1: the person or the robotic limb. You have to teach
Speaker 1: how too, how to interpret a thought into an action,
Speaker 1: and that there's a part of a challenge of that
Speaker 1: is that two people could go into the same lab
Speaker 1: to have their their thoughts analyzed Essentially, you can get
Speaker 1: an m R I machine, for example, and look at
Speaker 1: the brain activity and and you tell the person inside
Speaker 1: the machine, all right, I need you to think about
Speaker 1: lifting your left arm. And then you watch the parts
Speaker 1: of the brain that light up, and you say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: those are the parts of the brain that I want
Speaker 1: to concentrate on, because I'm designing the system so that, uh,
Speaker 1: the person will be able to control a robotic arm
Speaker 1: that would be in the place of their left arm.
Speaker 1: So you think, but then you get a second person
Speaker 1: in there and they think about it, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be slightly different places, so it's not like one size
Speaker 1: fits all. Well, let's make this concrete. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: what we're actually talking about doing in terms of the technology. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: so what are some of the ways that people think
Speaker 1: they can actually detect electrical impulses in the brain and
Speaker 1: and do something useful with them. Well, the the least
Speaker 1: invasive and the least expensive, and the uh probably the
Speaker 1: easiest would be the e G. Right. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: you already mentioned m R I, and m R I
Speaker 1: can do this, but it can't do it on the
Speaker 1: go right. No, right machines are very large and not magnets,
Speaker 1: and then m r I is really better used to
Speaker 1: again determine the best places to put an electrode to
Speaker 1: detect these electrical impulses. So you kind of use it
Speaker 1: in the testing phase, not in the execution phase. Right,
Speaker 1: The m R I U seems very useful for UM
Speaker 1: figuring out what you need to do, but not for
Speaker 1: real time control UM. But so yeah, you mentioned the
Speaker 1: e g. The electro and cephalogram um and this this
Speaker 1: goes back by the way, a German neurology names Hans
Speaker 1: Burger found the way to read current by electronic placement, honestly,
Speaker 1: so they put electrodes on the scalp itself, which detect
Speaker 1: any electrical activity. Wait a minute, though, you'd have to
Speaker 1: think that if you're just putting electrodes all over your head,
Speaker 1: that's got to be a really high noise to signal ratio.
Speaker 1: That yeah, because your skull actually does block some of
Speaker 1: the electrical signals and also distorts some of them, which
Speaker 1: means that if you want to talk in terms of resolution,
Speaker 1: you would have low resolution signals, meaning that uh that
Speaker 1: you would get you'd be able to detect activity, but
Speaker 1: you would your accuracy would be fairly low. So be
Speaker 1: like taking directions from somebody who's on a cell phone
Speaker 1: inside a bomb shelter underwater. Yeah, yes, it's exactly like that.
Speaker 1: Or as I was going to say, maybe like if
Speaker 1: you were to put the electrodes on your scalp and
Speaker 1: the the let's say that the hardware and software that
Speaker 1: you're working with allows you to move a cursor by
Speaker 1: concentrating on it on a screen. If you're wearing the
Speaker 1: electrodes on your scalp, then it may not be that accurate,
Speaker 1: and it may require you to to spend a lot
Speaker 1: more time concentrating and trying to move that cursor than
Speaker 1: it would if you were to have a more invasive procedure. Right.
Speaker 1: So here we come to the other and perhaps most
Speaker 1: promising technology, right is the the surgically implanted electrode. Right.
Speaker 1: So this in this case, you have you have gone
Speaker 1: and you've actually removed part of the skull and gone
Speaker 1: into the brain. Or you may just put the electrode
Speaker 1: on the surface of the brain, but there are also
Speaker 1: procedures where in order to get to specific parts of
Speaker 1: the brain im you actually implant it directly into the brain.
Speaker 1: This also has some problems. Obviously, one being invasive surgery.
Speaker 1: There's always worst there and and it's you know, that's
Speaker 1: a big decision. Uh. The second problem is, or potential problem,
Speaker 1: is that it can cause over time, scar tissue can
Speaker 1: form over the electrode, which will create that sort of
Speaker 1: insulating problem that the e G has where you're going
Speaker 1: to get signals blocked or distorted because of the scar tissue. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then also until recently anyway, it also meant that
Speaker 1: you were you had to be tethered to or Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would have essentially a connection point that would extend
Speaker 1: out from your skull and you would have to connect
Speaker 1: a wire to that, and that wire would be connected
Speaker 1: on the other end to whatever device it was that
Speaker 1: you were controlling, whether it was a computer or a
Speaker 1: robotic arm or whatever. Though this problem has recently been
Speaker 1: somewhat conquered. Um, we can talk about that in a minute.
Speaker 1: So okay, so we're talking about neural implants. An electrode
Speaker 1: a little piece of metal. It's a chip that goes
Speaker 1: in your brain and it takes those electrical impulses and
Speaker 1: it sends them to a computer. But we have to
Speaker 1: think that uh, it can't be that easy, right, It
Speaker 1: can't just send the electrical impulse to the computer. There
Speaker 1: has to be really advanced software r right, it understands
Speaker 1: how to deal with these impulses, or based on an
Speaker 1: extremely uh complicated set of probabilities, can figure out that
Speaker 1: that little blippy block probably means this thing and as
Speaker 1: opposed to that little blippity blob, which generally speaking, the
Speaker 1: way that I understand that this works is that it
Speaker 1: requires a long session or multiple sessions with scientists and
Speaker 1: doctors to go through the process of saying, all right, uh,
Speaker 1: we want let's say, let's say given, we'll give an
Speaker 1: EXAMPLETS say it's a robotic arm and uh and they say, well,
Speaker 1: we want you to uh to lift your left arm.
Speaker 1: And let's say it's a person who is fully capable
Speaker 1: of doing this, And so the person lifts their left
Speaker 1: arm and they interpret those signals and they say, all right,
Speaker 1: these are the signals we want. These are the signals
Speaker 1: that say lift the left arm for the robotic arm.
Speaker 1: And you repeat that test many, many, many, many many
Speaker 1: times to get as accurate a picture as possible of
Speaker 1: the neural activity that's going on when you lift your
Speaker 1: left arm. And then you eventually say this represents the
Speaker 1: input for the robotic arm to raise up. So then
Speaker 1: the next time you lift your left arm and you're
Speaker 1: hooked up to this system, the robot arm also lifts
Speaker 1: it arm it's arm, and you have to do the
Speaker 1: same thing for all the different commands, so things like
Speaker 1: gripping or twisting your wrist unless you've actually designed the
Speaker 1: robotic arm to have some of these features automatically. I
Speaker 1: saw one video where the robotic arm would automatically grip
Speaker 1: something if it if the palm came into contact with
Speaker 1: an object, so that you didn't have to go that
Speaker 1: extra step to think, make the fingers close at a
Speaker 1: certain point. Yeah, the sensor is easier to produce than
Speaker 1: the brain transfer. That makes it hard to do like
Speaker 1: an open hand slap though, Yeah, you just griped the
Speaker 1: person to challengee instead pinching their cheek. Yeah yeah, so
Speaker 1: so so don't future problems duel of the future. I
Speaker 1: would say that if my cheek were pinched by robotic arm,
Speaker 1: I would consider myself chagrined. Yeah, but anyway, the the
Speaker 1: would defend your honor and you'd have to I would
Speaker 1: demand satisfaction. Yes, Okay, I'd have to go and grab
Speaker 1: our mystical acts. UM, so they bringing it back. So
Speaker 1: the getting back to this, if you're talking about someone, obviously,
Speaker 1: one of the big uh potential you is for this
Speaker 1: technology is to help people who are severely disabled, who
Speaker 1: are perhaps paralyzed or quadriplegic and cannot cannot do a
Speaker 1: lot of things for themselves. And so for them it's
Speaker 1: a learning experience because they may not know, they may
Speaker 1: lack the capability of doing whatever physical action they need
Speaker 1: to do to send the command, So it ends up
Speaker 1: being more of a learning process both for the person
Speaker 1: and for the machine. Yeah, and luckily, our brands are
Speaker 1: incredibly plastic, and UM are are very good at still
Speaker 1: continuing into adulthood developing new neural paths in order to
Speaker 1: figure out these kinds of processes. Right write plastic as
Speaker 1: in changeable, not actually right, correct that they are not
Speaker 1: made of vinyl. So uh yeah. So you talked about
Speaker 1: UM helping people who have severe body disabilities, and I've
Speaker 1: actually read about a few of these cases and they're
Speaker 1: kind of amazing stories there. UM. In the end of
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, there was a woman who is quadruple
Speaker 1: Egypt and UM. From what I've read, it looks like
Speaker 1: UM neurobiologists at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center they
Speaker 1: enabled her to through a neural implant as so an
Speaker 1: electrode in her brain control a robotic arm with which
Speaker 1: she could feed herself. And all it took her was
Speaker 1: a couple of days of practice before she could move
Speaker 1: this robotic arm with her brain to feed herself a
Speaker 1: piece of chocolate. So yeah, the the the good thing
Speaker 1: is that people are very are very good at adapting
Speaker 1: to this, and that we are getting better and better
Speaker 1: at building the hardware and software that can act as
Speaker 1: the other half of this system. Right. And I saw
Speaker 1: an interesting, uh exoskeleton thing which I thought was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It actually used an e G cap, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't it was noninvasive, you know. The person This
Speaker 1: was for people who who could not walk for themselves.
Speaker 1: They would get into this exoskeleton and the cap would
Speaker 1: go on top of their heads. It was called a
Speaker 1: mind walker, and then they would by by concentrating. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't you know, I hope not from one
Speaker 1: of those lost years. It's not sleepwalkers. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: that's terrible, terrible movie. Don't tell my dad it's like
Speaker 1: his favorite movie. Wow. Okay, I have no response to that.
Speaker 1: The uh. But at any rate, So there are other
Speaker 1: applications as well. But but the main focus has really
Speaker 1: been on giving people who otherwise would have difficulty interacting
Speaker 1: with their environments more ability to do so through these interfaces. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you were alluding earlier, Joe, to the idea of
Speaker 1: the wireless approach, because one of the big drawbacks to
Speaker 1: this was the fact that you would be tethered to
Speaker 1: a machine, and so you had even more limited mobility
Speaker 1: because of that. But um, yeah, there looks like, um,
Speaker 1: there were resear cheers at Brown University who they came
Speaker 1: up with a you just close it off. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a wireless neural implant. So it's it's doing the
Speaker 1: same job that these other ones we've talked about, where
Speaker 1: um that you know, it's reading the electrical impulses in
Speaker 1: the brain and it's sending a signal, except this one
Speaker 1: is sending it wirelessly. It's got a wireless transmitter, lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries, rechargeable. It's its own little unit and it
Speaker 1: transmits wirelessly to the computer that controls UM that controls
Speaker 1: the the operate the device right right, whether it's a
Speaker 1: computer or whether it's a robotic arm. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: uh it can I think according to what I was reading,
Speaker 1: it sounds like right now it has very limited operating
Speaker 1: range about a meter away. So you're still that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's still way better than having a court. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: And and uh, right now, no humans have had this
Speaker 1: implant uh implanted in their heads. They don't know. It's
Speaker 1: only been uh used on test animals monkeys and pigs
Speaker 1: so far, so no humans have had this procedure done.
Speaker 1: And uh, I don't know when that might happen, if
Speaker 1: when that might change, but it it's an interesting advance
Speaker 1: in the field. So uh, speaking of monkeys, I mean,
Speaker 1: there have been some really amazing studies done with monkeys
Speaker 1: and these neural implants, and uh, when I was reading
Speaker 1: about it, showed that, uh, with some software tweaks, UM
Speaker 1: engineers had gotten it to where monkeys could and and
Speaker 1: keep in mind, these are monkeys, you know, they're not
Speaker 1: people who can understand complex instructions given by researchers and
Speaker 1: can really respond to training like this. The monkeys figured
Speaker 1: out how to move a computer cursor into a target
Speaker 1: zone with I can't remember exactly the percentage now, it
Speaker 1: was a significant percentage of what they could do with
Speaker 1: their arms, you know, just moving it by hand. Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's also idoya. Did you hear about idea? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the runner. Yeah yeah, So we're talking about a twelve
Speaker 1: pound in monkey that, through thought alone, caused a two
Speaker 1: hundred pound, five foot tall humanoid robot to walk on
Speaker 1: a treadmill. That's awesome. And the monkey was in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: The robot was in Japan. Wow. So so cyborg monkey
Speaker 1: armies storming the walls of our cities. Excellent, remotely controlled,
Speaker 1: remotely controlled by their by their true monkey overlords in
Speaker 1: the you know, far away so power chambers. In the future,
Speaker 1: there will be monkeys. Yeah. Well, I mean so we've
Speaker 1: been talking about how these in the near future, neural
Speaker 1: implants and other brand computer interfaces UM could be very
Speaker 1: helpful to people who suffer from, say, quadriplegia, or any
Speaker 1: condition that that's debilitating physically. You could create a robotic
Speaker 1: arm or you could you know, mess with the computer
Speaker 1: without being able to move your arms to move a mouse,
Speaker 1: right you could communicate in ways that you might not
Speaker 1: have been able to before. What happens when these things
Speaker 1: get good enough that, as we've talked about before, you
Speaker 1: might want them even if you don't need them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see. I mean, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that unless unless the state of the art is so
Speaker 1: amazing for the invasive forms, I can't imagine those ever
Speaker 1: really taking off, at least in the foreseeable future. Depends
Speaker 1: on what they can do. It would take. I'm to
Speaker 1: talk a lot about it. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: hear all the racket about what is it a homo cyberneticus,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, I'm thinking, oh, you're talking about like
Speaker 1: a species. Yeah, homo space cyber cyberneticus. Yeah, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So I think I think that we're at
Speaker 1: least fifty years away from that personally, I mean, the
Speaker 1: it's I think that's pretty safe. It's good number. It's
Speaker 1: a good numb at least from but but I mean, honestly, like,
Speaker 1: I can't to me, it's hard for now. I say that.
Speaker 1: But then as a kid, I never would have imagined
Speaker 1: that I could carry something that would have access to
Speaker 1: pretty much the sum total of all human knowledge in
Speaker 1: my pocket. I didn't think that was gonna happen either,
Speaker 1: and it totally did, So I could be wrong about this.
Speaker 1: I think it's more likely that we will see and
Speaker 1: we already have seen things that are that are essentially
Speaker 1: using the e G method to to act as some
Speaker 1: sort of control device or um. You know, a toy
Speaker 1: like I've seen the toys that you wear. It has
Speaker 1: a little helmet that you wear, and through concentration, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to control the uh, the path
Speaker 1: of an object on a board. There's there's one I
Speaker 1: saw at CS a few years ago, and the way
Speaker 1: it worked was it had a a little a little
Speaker 1: air vent that blew air straight up and you put
Speaker 1: a ping pong ball and it would suspend in the
Speaker 1: airflow right and that by concentrating, you could either increase
Speaker 1: the airflow and make the ping pong fly higher or
Speaker 1: decrease and make it fly lower, and a rotating obstacle
Speaker 1: course would go around and you would have to try
Speaker 1: and maneuver the ping pong ball so it could fit
Speaker 1: through hoops or pathways or whatever. So um, you're introducing
Speaker 1: the possibility of telepathic gaming, telekinetic game. That's the idea.
Speaker 1: I don't know how well these things really were well
Speaker 1: right now right now? Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying that
Speaker 1: we already are seeing this sort of stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're still doing research about more, um, you know, noninvasive
Speaker 1: ways to figure this kind of thing out and speech
Speaker 1: recognition technology. NASA way back in two four actually was
Speaker 1: was doing a program that they were attaching sensors under
Speaker 1: the chin into the throat because they found out that
Speaker 1: when you just think about talking your your muscles still
Speaker 1: have some kind of electrical activity that can be picked up.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, stuff like that I think holds
Speaker 1: some amount of promise. So could what you're saying that
Speaker 1: by thinking a word, sensors on the muscles in your
Speaker 1: throat could could follow commands even without your speaking. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, there are other alternatives that
Speaker 1: that might uh take some of the load off of
Speaker 1: the brain computer interface UM train, I guess because you
Speaker 1: could you could look at things like eye tracking software, uh,
Speaker 1: and a lot of eye tracking software out there is
Speaker 1: getting pretty sophisticated to the point where, um, if you
Speaker 1: are capable of moving your eyes, not everyone is. There's
Speaker 1: some people that you know locked in syndrome who are
Speaker 1: incapable of really making any sort of motion. Um, But
Speaker 1: if you're able to move your eyes, then you're able
Speaker 1: to control elements on a computer screen. And I've seen
Speaker 1: some pretty cool implementations of that, and it all it's
Speaker 1: really just using cameras to track your eye movements and
Speaker 1: and plot where you are looking on a screen, and
Speaker 1: then interpreting the a as a command. So there are
Speaker 1: other interfaces out there that we're seeing big advances in
Speaker 1: that could either compliment or in some cases, depending upon
Speaker 1: the use case scenario replace brain computer interfaces. All depends
Speaker 1: on what it's being used for, and you know what
Speaker 1: you want the outcome to be. Obviously, it wouldn't work
Speaker 1: for every implementation. So can you imagine any situation in
Speaker 1: which brain computer interface would be really useful to a
Speaker 1: person who has otherwise full control of their body? Spies?
Speaker 1: Spies immediately, spies, are you kidding me? A spy? Because
Speaker 1: you if you are able to interact with a computer
Speaker 1: system without any overt sign that you are doing so,
Speaker 1: I would say that it would be very useful for
Speaker 1: a spy. So if you want to like start start
Speaker 1: your tape recorder, without touching it, or say, or you're
Speaker 1: sending a message saying all right, I'm about to I'm
Speaker 1: about to be eradicated, so you might want to burn
Speaker 1: my apartment, that kind of thing. I mean, I watched
Speaker 1: a lot of born identity, you know, even in our
Speaker 1: own industry. You know, if, if, if our producer Noel
Speaker 1: could send us a text message just by thinking about it,
Speaker 1: without having to make the noise of typing on keys
Speaker 1: or you know, wave his arms wildly or however else
Speaker 1: he gets messages across to us, it would be filthy.
Speaker 1: Maybe a filthy message. Noel's just smirking at me right
Speaker 1: now and saluting me. You're not getting them. I choose
Speaker 1: to ignore them. Well anyway, that that's kind of wraps
Speaker 1: up our our discussion about brain computer interfaces. It's a
Speaker 1: really interesting field and I'm curious to see how that
Speaker 1: develops over time. Uh and guys, if you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics we should cover and forward thinking, please
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. Our email address is FW
Speaker 1: thinking at discovery dot com. Please go to the fw
Speaker 1: thinking dot com website because that's where we have all
Speaker 1: our videos, are blogs, the podcasts, all our social media stuff.
Speaker 1: Is there if we look forward to hearing from you,
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again really soon. Please
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