AI Empowers Paralyzed Movement: Groundbreaking Neuralink FDA Approval

0:00On the show today, we are going to break down some advancements in neural connectivity and AI. And the big headline is that some Swiss scientists recently helped rebuild a spinal cord with AI and help someone walk again. This is incredible, especially with companies like Neuralink working on that. And on that note, Neuralink also has some news. The fact that they just got the FDA green light to continue their first inhuman clinical study. So we're going to break down the controversy around all of this, the incredible news, the wins, and what is happening in AI, science, and neural connectivity today.

0:36So the first big thing, like I said, is that sirentists in Switzerland recently helped a man by the name of Gert Jean Oskum, who he's been paralyzed from the waist down for over 10 years. And they've helped him to regain control over the lower half of his body with AI. And if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you have probably inevitably heard me talk about mind reading AI that has come out a while ago, right? Essentially, they put your head, they put you under an fMRI scanner. They scan your brain while you're thinking thoughts. They use those thoughts. They send them through a neural network to help decode them.

1:14And then it learns how your brain fires and it can essentially read your mind. Now, of course, we've talked a lot about the dystopian. you know, the Chinese Communist Party can use this to read minds or anyone can use it to read the minds of someone that may not like their mind to be read. But we have not talked about some of the incredible use cases for this. And the first one right here is the is the fact that they were able to help someone walk again using this exact same technology. So Askem, he's been paralyzed from the waist down since 2011. He had a motorcycle accident. And so the scientists what they what they found a way to do is actually to create a digital bridge between his brain and his spinal cord so essentially they're bypassing an injured section of his spine which is now allowing him to walk again as you know for people that have spinal injuries oftentimes they will go they won't have they won't be able to move their legs or anything below their waist and that is due to damage in the spinal vertebrae so the researchers essentially they captured his thoughts and using the same kind of AI thought decoder that I've talked about in the past, they were able to translate his thoughts into spinal cord stimulation, and they were able to reestablish voluntary movement.

2:26And I think what's even better than just that is the fact that he's also shown signs of neurological recovery. So pretty much being able to walk on crutches with the implants turned off. I think, you know, being able to do this, it's helping to stimulate different parts of his brain and helping to retrain his body in a way that was never possible before. I think this is really amazing and I'll break down exactly how this device works. So essentially the first thing they do is they have an implant implanted into your brain over the semi-motor cortex and it collects the signals for the movement, right?

3:00So he's thinking I would like to move this leg, I would like to move that leg, he's imagining walking. So they're collecting those signals. There's then an antenna which is attached to the top of his head, not like a giant, you know, antenna but a piece of metal attached to the top of his head that transmits a signal and of course this whole thing is not you know talk it's not on the cloud it's not internet of things isn't talking to a server so he actually has to wear a backpack and in the backpack he has it's essentially a portable base station and processing unit for all of this AI it's running right there and so the antenna transmits to the brain spying interface and it converts the signals into stimulation commands.

3:41So the AI is essentially reading his mind and it's sending the commands are then transmitted to an implant pulse generator. So the implant pulse generator is attached to his spine and it's a, it's an implanted 16 electrode paddle, which essentially just generates targeted epidural electrical stimulation. So it's, you know, I don't know if, I don't know if this is a hundred accurate but in my mind how this works if you've ever used those like electrode they're like little gel things that you stick on your like muscles your arms and then it electrocutes it and it like your arms essentially involuntarily like move um i'm assuming it's something similar to this where it's a paddle attached directly to your spine it has electrical pulses um and that helps you to actually move the muscles on your your body and what's incredible is that uh this is literally coming straight from his mind.

4:39So his mind says, you know, move my right foot forward, the pulses hit the right place that moves his right foot forward. So this is absolutely incredible. I think more incredible is the fact that even without this, it's like re it's like fixing things in his body so that he's actually able to do this even without the unit on all the time. And of course, a lot of people have said a lot of dystopian things. But reading, you know, reading people's reactions to this, there was someone that I don't know, I thought it was pretty interesting. He said, my quadriplegic friend died recently. He was coming home from a high school graduation party when a car hit him and broke his back.

5:13He's lived in a wheelchair for his life. Nothing else below his neck worked. He was super funny. I always remember him, right? um you know reading a story like this really just makes me think of the fact that like there are so many people that this technology is going to incredibly improve their life so many people have lived their lives um you know with these injuries and had no hope no solution and i think this is a really really incredible technology seeing this has honestly made me more more bullish on projects like neuralink than anything else um in the past you know i've called neuralink and all these mind reading technologies very creepy um i'm you know all for AI, but I feel like sometimes it crosses the line.

5:53But when you see a use case like this, you can't help but think, you know, like, what an incredible advancement in technology. So on that note, we do have some big news out of Neuralink. And that is a fact they just tweeted today. They said, we're excited to share that we have received the FDA's approval to launch our first inhuman clinical study. This is a result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA. And it represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial will announce more information on this soon.

6:29So as you know, I don't know if you if you follow this too closely, but there's a lot of I guess, negative sentiment around Neuralink. It's kind of one of the first ones where people like I don't want to implant in my brain. All of the obvious reasons, you know, people responding to their tweet are like posting pictures of people's heads with like USB ports in them and they're saying like USB B or USB C, you know, like, so people are making fun of it. And it's, it's, to be honest, I would say it's pretty overwhelmingly negative. People are saying like, you know, memes about people trying to sleep and then like their brains starts playing a bunch of ads and stuff like that.

7:04And in addition, there was another new story, which I'm not sure how accurate it is. Someone shared, but allegedly Neuralink has killed about 1500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys following experiments since 2018. So, you know, a lot of people are talking about the fact that since they have been testing this, you know, animal, like, animals have died in their testing and whatnot. What I would say is, like, there's a reason, there's a reason they started with animals. And of course, it's sad if 1500 animals died, but, Like, and normally I think it'd be quite easy to be pessimistic about the whole Neuralink and the whole project and everything around that.

7:45But after seeing what just happened in Switzerland with that research team, I honestly have a hard time being pessimistic. Like, it's incredibly inspiring. It's one of the most incredible use cases and advancements in AI. And so I'm switching my opinion from being pessimistic about Neuralink to, you know, as long as it's used for medical reasons to help people with disabilities. these quite, quite optimistic, to be honest. Yes, it is sad that there has been, you know, 1500 animals have died. I would say the reason that they did these experiments on animals is because they knew that they were risky, they're implanting something into your brain, and they had to get it right.

8:22There's a lot of different, there's a lot of different things that had to go into that. Now, I will say that there is, there would appear to be two separate ways to go about this problem. And I've listened to other companies as well that are talking about this. One of them is a little bit more intrusive. It's Neuralink where they're literally implanting something into your brain, meaning there are wires going into your brain, little bits of, almost like, essentially almost like acupuncture, really, really fine needles going into your brain to measure pulses. That would appear to be quite intrusive.

8:55Now, for things like an MRI, fMRI scanner that can literally just sit on your head, which I'm assuming Apple, when it releases its headset, inevitably they're going to start having fMRI scanners in the Apple headsets. Meta has all but said that they will do that eventually. They said they would like to start getting fMRI data to be incorporated into VR. So I mean, that's just how they're going to do it. So that is a less intrusive way of doing this, right? You can just have a scanner scanning your brain. And I've also heard of other companies that have something more like Saran Wrap that just lays on top of your brain that can be pulled off.

9:32So there are a lot less intrusive ways to do this than the implant, which it would appear Neuralink is doing. So I'll be interested to see what technology and company finds the most success because inevitably I feel like if someone could wear maybe like a headset, a VR headset, for example, and use that in connection with the Swiss scientist technique so you're able to walk just using that. I think a lot of people would opt for that versus a surgery that goes into your brain. But I do think still some people potentially would want an implant that's less obvious. You could just like theoretically live a normal life where you don't have any visible gear eventually, aside from perhaps your computer, although those will all eventually get smaller.

10:12So it'll be interesting to see how this evolves. But I would say I'm incredibly optimistic. This is incredible news. People are able to walk again that previously had spinal injuries. It has already been done. But I will say that the company that the Swiss company has said that it's going to be quite a while before this is actually readily available for anyone and so um it's not like this is going to be just right out of the gate ready for mass production but this is something coming down the line and i think this is going to change a lot of lives so a very interesting area will continue to follow