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

This podcast's purpose is to bring together the field of neuroprosthetics / brain machine interfaces / brain implants in an understandable conversation about the current topics and breakthroughs. We hope to complement scientific papers on new neural research in an easy, digestable way. Innovators and professionals can share thoughts or ideas to facilitate 'idea sex' to make the field of brain implants a smaller and more personal space.

Anuj Bhardwaj on the noninvasive ultrasound therapy for treating inflammation and pain from SecondWave Systems 06/20/2022

Giovanni Lauricella how Neurotech Companies should find investments for their startups 06/13/2022

Dr. Talya Miron-Shatz on designing better neural devices using psychology and user interfaces 06/06/2022

Dr Josh Siegle on large-scale electrophysiology and his Open Ephys Platform 05/30/2022

Dr Josh Siegle on large-scale electrophysiology and his Open Ephys Platform is a senior scientist working at the Allen Institute working on large-scale electrophysiology using tools like the Neuropixels probe. He is also heavily involved in the design and distribution of which is an open-source electrophysiology tool. ***This podcast is sponsored by Ripple Neuro, check out their Neuroscience Research Tools Top three takeaways: "The dark matter problem is where the number of cells that we record is almost always less than the number of cells that we actually know to be in the tissue around the electrodes. This could be because there are neurons near the electrodes that just don't fire action potentials, their action potentials look very similar to other nearby neurons, or maybe the listening radius of our electrodes is not quite as large as we would expect it to be." "A big advantage of working at the Allen Institute is that we have very generous internal funding from Paul Allen. And so although we do apply for grants when it makes sense, for most people at the Allen Institute, getting grant funding is not an existential threat to their research." Open Ephys has recently started offering virtual 1-on-1 training sessions to help people get up and running with their tools. This is aligned with their goal of making open-source tools even more accessible throughout the neuroscience community. 0:45 Ladan introduces the episode and the guest, Dr. Josh Siegle 4:00 "What is the Neuropixels probe and how does it work? Why is it important?" 8:00 What capabilities does working with IMEC bring? 11:15 How exactly were you working with IMEC? 12:30 Sponsorship by 13:15 How does the pitch of the Neuropixels probe compare to biology? 16:45 What is the Allen Institute like? 20:15 What kind of mix of people work at the Allen Institute? 21:15 "What's the stated aims of the Institute again?" 22:00 What is the Open Ephys project you had worked on before? 27:45 What is the Open Ephys training like? 29:30 Do companies love or hate Open Ehpys? 31:00 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?" /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/23146643

Andy Cornwell on the Cleveland Neuro Design Entrepreneurs Workshop 05/23/2022

Andy Cornwell on the Cleveland Neuro Design Entrepreneurs Workshop is a return guest on the show and he is the Associate Director of the Case-Coulter Translational Research Partnership (CCTRP) in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. He is currently putting together the second The deadline to submit is June 30th. ***This podcast is sponsored by Iris Biomedical, check out their Neurotech Startup Services Top 3 Takeaways: "The application deadline is June 30th and applications are open now. The workshop itself is September 22nd to 25th in-person here in Cleveland and the workshop is free to students. We provide you with all of the lodging and meals while you're here. We ask you to cover travel costs, but if that's a burden and you could not attend because of that, we have some limited support for travel as well" "Ripple hired five people that they met at the workshop. They provided a lot of expertise and mentorship to the teams and through that process, we were able to basically conduct a three-day-long live action interview and made some offers to candidates. I think they ended up hiring five people out of that program. And some of our other sponsors also made hires out of the program as well." "Innovation is not a Eureka moment. It's not something that just happens to people. It's a discipline that can be learned. And the discipline of innovation is what the workshop is about." 0:45 Do you want to talk about the ? 2:30 "How's the second one gonna be different?" 4:45 "Were there any companies formed?" 5:30 Iris Biomedical ad sponsorship 6:15 "Who should sign up?" 8:15 Did headhunters come to hire any participants? 9:30 "What's the intention of this workshop?" 12:30 Is this workshop something that can help even those not looking to found a company? 15:30 "What's the main thing that people should learn, even if they don't take go to the workshop?" 17:00 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?" /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/23146943

Evan Coopersmith on how software is just as important as hardware in neurotech machine learning 05/16/2022

Kirill Korotaev on accessible eye tracking for neuroscience research- Purple Gaze 05/09/2022

E.J. Chichilnisky on what it takes to reproduce the neural code of the retina 05/02/2022

E.J. Chichilnisky on what it takes to reproduce the neural code of the retina is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Ophthalmology at Stanford University. His research has focused on understanding the spatiotemporal patterns of electrical activity in the retina that convey visual information to the brain, and their origins in retinal circuitry, using large-scale multi-electrode recordings. His ongoing work now focuses on using basic science knowledge along with electrical stimulation to develop a novel high-fidelity artificial retina for treating incurable blindness. ***This podcast is sponsored by Ripple Neuro, check out their Neuroscience Research Tools Top 3 Takeaways: "The basic 3 steps of the device are to 1) read the spontaneous activity that's there and use that to identify the different cells and different cell types; 2) pass current through each of the many electrodes (a thousand electrodes in the first device) to figure out which electrodes activate which cells and how much; and 3) finally translate that according to the “scores" we have for the different cell types into patterns of activity. This is way more complicated than any neural interface that's been designed." "Plasticity in the brain is not there just because the brain wants to be plastic. It's there because it's evolutionarily valuable to have a plastic circuit. If you think about it from an electronics point of view, a plastic circuit is costly." "Our understanding of the retina is 30 years ahead of our understanding of the brain. That's not because retina neuroscientists are smarter – it's because the retina is more accessible and easier to understand. So our understanding in the retina always precedes our understanding of the cortex." 0:45 "Do you do you wanna introduce yourself?" 1:30 "So how did you get into this?" 3:45 "What is your proposal versus how things were being done before?" 9:45 What are the 20 types of retinal cells? 14:30 "What's is this a specific design of the device? And then what's your role in this as well?" 17:30 "Are you guys working with other companies in the field too?" 19:30 Sponsorship by 20:00 Are cortical implants more or less sensitive to your 'orchestra' approach? 26:15 "What are some of the biggest challenges in this or if you had unlimited funding, what would you throw that funding at first" 35:00 "How are you interfacing with these different cell types?" 38:30 " That all sounds very tedious. And especially if you're talking about thousands of electrodes, is this done by hand, or is this the poor graduate student that has to do this? Or is there a way to automate it?" 43:15 "What are some timelines that we can expect with this technology?" 44:30 "What's the difference between you and Dr. Palanker?" 46:15 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?" /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/22821341

Duane Mancini on the Project Medtech and Medtech Money Podcasts 03/21/2022

Jack Gelman and Brock Lindsey on targeted muscle reinnervation for amputees 03/14/2022

Neuralink's animal abuse, what you need to know 03/07/2022

Karandeep Singh Badwal on building quality and regulatory at the start of your neurotech idea 02/28/2022

Radhika Gupta and Adam Sefler on Neurotech Consulting from NeurotechX Services 02/14/2022

Radhika Gupta and Adam Sefler on Neurotech Consulting from NeurotechX Services Adam Sefler and Radhika Gupta head up which is a distinct for-profit entity affiliated with the non-profit NeuroTechX. They offer consulting and recruitment services with the vision to aid in the commercialization of neurotechnology at a global scale. Top 3 Takeaways: "Our projects range from [client] projects coming right out of labs, to setting up a whole new division for a larger company, to describing and setting the marketing strategy for an [international] startup, to doing C-level executive search[es] on the recruiting side, but […], that's by no means a complete list of projects we are working on" "Consultants are not always known or an obvious choice [for startups and scaleups]. But when you explain the extent of what can be done (and how it would be done), there's very often an appreciation for a fast solution that can be deployed without necessarily hiring a lot of different people, which is not [always] a possibility for a smaller company.” "[…] We bring the same quality and professionalism, that you'll find at a top tier consulting firm while knowing that, for example, the top management consulting firms can charge in the six-figures for one week of work. We know that a, a dollar spent on a service support is something that has to yield something in [both] the long term and the short term [...]" 0:45 "Do you want to describe yourselves a little bit and what you do?" 4:30 "Radhika, do you want to introduce yourself?" 5:15 "So basically you guys met Yannick and then you really liked what he was doing and had all these unmet needs. Is that kind of how that happened?" 9:30 "Do you want to; do you guys want to talk about exactly what services and what exactly people can expect from you guys?" 16:45 "Do you want to share some case studies as well?" 22:15 How has the investment landscape changed recently? 25:00 "And this upcoming report, is this something that you guys internally generated?" 33:45 " Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?" /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/21806729

Mark Domyahn on marketing, regulatory, and reimbursement strategies for neurotech companies 02/07/2022

Mark Domyahn on marketing, regulatory, and reimbursement strategies for neurotech companies Mark Domyahn is a partner at JD Lymon where they help companies develop healthcare strategies. They help companies understand their unique value proposition and optimize their market potential. Top 3 Takeaways: "the FDA writes zero checks. They give you a license to hunt, but they don't guarantee you kill anything" "What I'm hearing more and more is the first question out of investor's mouth isn't what's your FDA pathway, it's what's your reimbursement strategy. Because FDA is at least a somewhat known entity. And they're the last entity that will tell you as a company "if you do this study, if you do this. We will get you to market. We will give you the clearance or the approval." Payers will never tell you that I've never had a payer say that if you do this randomized controlled study, or if you do this post-market registry, I will pay for your device at the price you want it. That doesn't happen. So you're guessing a little bit." "The three things is: Marketing is what do I want to be able to say about my product? Regulatory is what can I say without going to jail? And then reimbursement is who's going to pay. Those three things, in my opinion should be dictating what your clinical strategy is. Not one, not two, but all three of those things." 0:30 "Do you want to introduce yourself?" 1:45 "What are some costs and benefits of all of those different options- VA, insurance, private payers?" 3:15 "What's the process of getting reimbursement approved?" 5:45 "What are some common timelines timeframes that we're looking at?" 9:30 "There are lots of insurance companies out there. So basically if you're able to get one code you got them all, or do you have to individually go after them?" 15:15 "What are some big issues that you see going on or things that, people I guess are messing up or are doing incorrectly either be it on the company side or the insurance?" 24:45 What is your role? 31:45 "So what are some big successes or failures that you've seen companies go through and maybe one of each?" 36:00 "How did you get into this field and what's been your path, your career path?" 38:15 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?" [email protected] /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/21805073

Tim Marjenin on helping neurotech companies do better storytelling for the FDA 01/31/2022

Tim Marjenin on helping neurotech companies do better storytelling for the FDA is the Vice President of Neurology Regulatory Affairs at MCRA where he helps neurotech companies get through the challenges of being approved by the FDA. Tim has had over 16 years in the regulatory side of things before now advising the companies. Top 3 Takeaways: "A big part of what I'm doing right now. It's trying to help them figure out, okay. What are you trying to do? How can I help you put that in FDA's language and language that FDA is going to understand?" "I think probably the biggest success is that Applied VR got their Denovo granted just a few weeks ago. We supported them in their de novo, but we helped them quite a bit with with writing the de novo and interacting with FDA throughout that process." "Probably the biggest tip that I always have is. Try and put yourself in FDA shoes. One of the examples: say you're in an engineering class and you're turning in some homework or you're turning in a test. Is a professor really just interested in the answer? No, he wants to know how you got to the answer. FDA is going to be the same. If they don't understand how you got from a to B, they're going to have a lot of questions about that." 0:45 "Do you wanna describe yourself a little bit? " 2:45 "What does the day-to-day look like in the FDA?" 5:30 "So for those that don't know, what is the FDA review process look like? How many people are reviewing it, what's the timeline?" 7:45 "How many people are involved in this whole process, is the weight of millions of people's lives resting on one person's shoulders, or is it more like a committee? 9:30 "What do you do at MCRA?" 10:45 "How has your job changed?" 13:45 "You wanted to share some successes that maker has had, do you want to talk about these?" 15:30 "What does it mean to get a de novo status?" 19:00 "What's timeline from start to finish for your guys' work?" 20:30 "What are some things that people do that they shouldn't do?" 23:00 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention? " /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/21803174

The $9.8 Million Neuromod Prize and why its not great with Arun Sridhar 01/27/2022

The $9.8 Million Neuromod Prize and why its not great with Arun Sridhar is a cohost of the which talks about some of the behind-the-scenes stories in science and technology. JoJo Platt is the other cohost and she has been on the show before as well. Today, Arun and I are talking about the recently unveiled $9.8M Neuromod Prize which aims to reward those that are able to come up with a precisely controllable neuromodulation treatment. Arun thinks the prize could've been made better and I (Ladan) think that it is nice to see other forms of grant money. Here is the Here is the from 2014 that Arun had worked on Top 3 Takeaways: "The truth of the story is that none of the solutions was deemed to be good enough to warrant a phase two of the study, simply because those were all efforts that were already ongoing and the initial phase one did not result in an appreciable kind of jump in the technology. So people were basically taking the phase one money, they were retooling, rejigging it in a small way, resubmitting a proposal, five months down the line to actually get the bigger pot of money." "When you're always running against a clock that is an inefficient way to develop a therapy. Because when you're developing a therapy, you should be focusing on the right things. And therefore, because you are always on a race against the clock I'm not saying that people are going to cut corners, but just that it's actually an inefficient way, because just because somebody is getting their first, it doesn't necessarily mean that's the best solution" "How is somebody going to come up with a proposal to put in for a neuromod prize to develop a therapy focused on a novel neuro target that controls more than one function with the ability to selectively modulate it and to take that into the clinic? It just seems like very wishful thinking. 0:30 "How are you doing?" 2:30 This could be a more efficient way to distribute money, what do you think? 10:15 "I always believe in actually copying right and copying left" 14:45 "It sounds like a lot of money. But then when it comes down to it, it's actually not that much." 20:00 "If somebody loses a million dollars of their own money by not winning a prize, that's on them. So what's the harm in that? " 26:30 "What would you recommend? What would be another system?" 36:15 "if they don't meet the criteria, you don't have to give that money. You could just keep repeating that prize, potentially every two years, every four years and save that money" 38:00 "When do you think it would make more sense to do something like this?" 38:45 "Do you want to talk about your podcast?" 42:30 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?" /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/21899762

Scott Burwell on quantifying physiological responses to substance abuse with NeuromarkR 01/24/2022

Jeremy Greenberg on Data Flows and Privacy Risks of Brain-Computer Interfaces 01/17/2022

Tim Jorgensen on the history of bioelectronics over the centuries up to today 01/10/2022

Paul Grand about bringing the world's best ecosystem to the world's best companies with Medtech Innovator 01/04/2022

Yannick Roy on creating a neurotech community with over 18,000 members 12/13/2021

Marc Russo on running clinical trials in Australia and the INS 12/06/2021

Marc Russo on running clinical trials in Australia and the INS is the president of the which is a nonprofit group of clinicians, scientists and engineers dedicated to the scientific development and awareness of neuromodulation. Dr Russo runs a large multidisciplinary pain clinic in Australia. He has conducted a number of first-in-man studies of novel neuromodulation implants as well as designing unique leads and waveforms in spinal cord stimulation (SCS). Top 3 Takeaways: "Over more than a 20 year journey now we understand that these patients are best treated early rather than later. The best traded with as close to zero levels of opioids. And that doses higher than 40 milligrams per day, actually worsen outcomes for spinal cord stimulation," "High dose exogenous opioid prescription can actually induce epigenetic change in the genome of a patient so that even if you remove something such as opioids after five years, the body doesn't return to its former expression of proteins and then maybe actually permanent changes that may have worse outcome." "What's in a book is not sacrosanct and that you need to not just blindly apply something that you read in a book and think that it was, descended from the tablets of Moses. You actually need to think of what are you doing and does that apply to this particular patient?" 0:45 "And do you want to introduce yourself?" 1:45 "What changes have you seen?" 3:45 "In bioelectronic medicine it's beneficial to have a combination of drugs and stimulation, but you're saying that's the opposite in pain? Is it something like a numbing effect or what's the justification that you found for this?" 5:45 "Is opioid something that lingers?" 7:30 "What are some other trends that you've noticed along your 20 years of working in the field?" 10:00 "So the stimulation is not something that's there forever that they're going to have to manage forever?" 11:30 What's it like running a clinical trials unit? 13:30 "What's the pain clinic, like what's the makeup of this and do hospitals send people to you or how does it work?" 15:15 "What would be the advantage of doing a clinical trial in Australia?" 16:30 "What's that process like, a clinical trial, and how long, how many patients are involved?" 19:00 "What would be a good clinical trial versus a bad clinical trial?" 24:00 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?" /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/21032435

Gautam Sadarangani on the importance of measuring and gamifying physical therapy exercises 11/29/2021

John Doucet on helping companies get FDA approval at MCRA 11/22/2021

Ni-Ka Ford on the importance of medical illustration 11/15/2021

Dr Paul Tubig and Dr Darcy McCusker on neuroethics workshops 11/08/2021

Dr Paul Tubig and Dr Darcy McCusker on neuroethics workshops and are graduates from the University of Washington. Dr Tubig now works at at Georgia Southern University teaching neuroethics and is teaching social and political philosophy, bioethics, neuroethics, and philosophy of disability. Top 3 Takeaways: "There have been reports and testimonies of users who have experienced a sense of depersonalization, a sense of alienation and a sense that they are no longer themselves [after using implanted neurotechnology]." "It turns out that when you have an ethicist in the room, you end up asking really different kinds of questions of your participants." "We do these workshops for an hour and a half and the hope really is, that it's going to spark conversations when people go back to their labs and they'll bring it up at their next lab meeting" 0:45 "Why neuroethics, why is it important?" 3:00 "You guys conduct a lot of interviews both in terms of the implantees, researchers and talk about your outreach. Do you want to talk a little bit about this? And should I be scared about my position as a podcast host?" 4:15 "What are some ethical issues that are faced with neuro ethics that's not faced in normal day-to-day ethics? Trolley problem, for example?" 8:00 "You guys have done lots of implants or neurotech users interviews. So what's the takeaways from some of these interviews?" 9:30 "How many people that are there that are affected by this kind of thing? Is it still a very rare thing?Can you count all these patients on one hand? Or are there millions and we just don't know about it?" 14:45 "Why Neuroethics? Why is it interesting to you? Why do you think it's important?" 19:45 "When you mentioned that you make a neurotechnology sound a lot like drugs and alcohol, that you basically have this like happiness lever. And so basically couldn't we just transfer everything we know about the ethics of drugs and alcohol into neurotechnology?" 21:00 "You guys are a part of a neuro ethics round table project. What is this about, what is the goal, what has been some of the outcomes?" 24:45 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you guys wanted to mention?" /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/21030434

Seth Hays pairing VNS with rehab for better patient outomes 11/01/2021

Francois Ladouceur on a new paradigm for action potential sensing through optics 10/25/2021

Sergey Young on lifespan and health span extension through his Longevity Fund 10/18/2021

Miguel Nicolelis on Neuralink and performing in front of a billion people at the 2014 World Cup 10/11/2021

Miguel Nicolelis on Neuralink and performing in front of a billion people at the 2014 World Cup Although the is best known for pioneering studies in neuronal population coding, Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) and neuroprosthetics in human patients and non-human primates, they have also developed an integrative approach to studying neurological and psychiatric disorders including Parkinsons disease and epilepsy. Top 3 Takeaways: "Every Brazilian kid dreams to play for the Brazilian national team in a world cup game, I didn't quite fulfill the dream, but I got as close as a scientist can get. And we had about 65,000 people in the stadium that day in about 1.2 billion people watching the kickoff." "Every time one of my students complain about the programming job, I said, are you kidding me? You have one megabyte of Ram. We had 64 K. No complaining anymore." Instead of selling a device they will be opening neuro rehab centers in under developed areas of the world to give better treatment than what could be possible at the largest hospitals 2:15 "Do you want to introduce yourself a little bit beyond [doing the FIFA 2014 kickoff]?" 6:00 "So what's the advantage of monkey versus rat versus pig. All these different animal models versus human?" 8:45 Why did the monkey implants last longer? 10:30 "I want to go into this hardware that you've used, you made your own, it sounds like you made your own probes and then I'm imagining, computers from the late nineties too. So were you limited by that?" 15:45 "Is it easier now with more RAM, better computation? We have a million times more, but is it a million times easier or how does that translate?" 18:30 "Neuralink had this really interesting presentation with the monkey playing pong, but probably for you that wasn't nearly as innovative. Do you want to talk about this a little bit?" 23:15 "You were going to choose to become an Ameritas at Duke and that you're sitting, setting up an Institute in Brazil. Do you want to talk about both of these?" 28:45 "Obviously you have ties to Brazil, but is there any other advantages to having it in Brazil versus Europe or us or Australia?" 29:30 "What's the next place? Where should we be looking forward to these hubs?" 33:00 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?" /episode/index/show/neuralimplant/id/20689313

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

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