Could technology improve our brains?

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1:26I'm already struggling. I want to say bread, but I feel like I'm literally making it up. Hello and welcome to Crowd Science from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Lathbridge and you just heard me testing producer Emily's memory, all because of a question from one of our listeners. My name is Mariana Garcia Corral. I come from Monterrey, Mexico. And my question is, what is the future of the human brain? I'd say it's been the question I'd been having for a crazy amount of years since I was little. Could brain technology enhance our brains, improve our memory, or help eliminate mental health concerns?

2:14Like, could technology improve our brains in later life. I think if I had the opportunity, I'd probably want to like tinker around with my brain and all the technology and stuff. What about you? Would you be that kind of person? I would say I'm very lucky to be very happy with my brain right now. But definitely as I age, depending on the diseases could arise. I do have some family history and it's really hard heartbreaking to see that family member and all my family members are really struggling on seeing them lose themselves so I think if it were to get to that point I would definitely opt for that.

3:02Improving memory or helping anxiety or depression could be life-changing for those with conditions like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's which can affect the brain often in older people leading to changes in behavior, mood, memory and movement. Mariana wants to know whether technology could help us solve this problem. The other part of her question is whether technology might be able to improve or enhance a healthy human brain. Frustration with our limited human brains isn't just a modern problem and neither is our desire to expand or improve them. The need for brains has grown more and more as we move into an information society.

3:45But already in the ancient times of Greece, people realised that if I want to memorise that epic verse, I need to find better ways of remembering it. Anders Sandberg is a researcher at the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm. I spoke with him a couple of weeks ago for our episode on capturing energy from the stars. and I had a feeling that he'd be the perfect person to ask about this. So people develop these memory arts, tricks to take big pieces of information and memorize them, like the names of important guests at a meeting or entire books. But these are kind of software methods. People have also been wondering, couldn't I just take some herb to think better with more clarity?

4:31And obviously people have been trying that with coffee and other drugs and in some cases it has worked pretty well. Okay, so no coffee for producer Emily, but let's try a memory trick, all right? We'll try and do a mnemonic, all right? How do you remember north, east, south, west, the different parts of the compass? How do you remember? Never eat shredded wheat. Really? Yeah, what do you do? Never ever support Wimbledon. a football rivalry across parts of south london yeah that's very specific to you it's personal yeah i'm sure there's lots of different ways of doing it in different parts of the world crowd science listeners please email in with the way you remember the different parts of the compass so these sorts of memory tricks like mnemonics they're the type of technique that anders described as software, practicing or trying different methods to use your existing brain a bit more efficiently.

5:35But what listener Mariana is interested in is the hardware. So how might technology help there? There are also ways of electrically affecting the brain. So the idea with the brain computer interface is to take information from the brain and transfer it to a computer or vice versa. And the traditional way this has been done is that you have small electrodes that you literally put inside the brain that can feel the electrical signals from nerve cells, amplify them and send them to a computer. And then the computer can send signals back and tickle the nerve cells to fire. So even though we're talking about software, hardware and electrical signals being sent between computers and nerve cells, it's worth remembering that the brain isn't exactly the same as a digital computer.

6:29The brain doesn't have a desktop folder where your memories are saved and communication isn't quite as perfect as little ones and zeros. It's a lot fuzzier than that. When one neuron sends an electrical signal to another neuron, it's all down to neurotransmitters being passed on like a biochemical baton in a relay race. Depending on the location in the brain, one neuron might be sending signals to lots of different neurons. It's a complex neurochemical network that scientists are continuously mapping out. So brain-computer interfaces, where surgically implanted electrodes can be used to record or stimulate different parts of the brain, aren't being trialled in healthy individuals to improve their memory or make them focus better at work.

7:17But in hospitals around the world, this kind of technology has been used to help people with neurological conditions for quite some time. I am Francesca Morgante. I am a professor of neurology at City St. George's University of London and a consultant neurologist at St George's University Hospital. Deep brain stimulation is a treatment of Parkinson's disease that is considered for those persons whose medication are not able to control the symptom during the day efficiently. Parkinson's is a progressive neurological condition, meaning that it causes problems in the brain and gets worse over time.

8:01cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine die off meaning that people with parkinson's find it harder to control how they move with symptoms like slow walking tremors and more and this treatment essentially consists in inserting two electrical wires in the brain and these electrical wires that we call leads they deliver stimulation the leads are connected to a pulse generator and the pulse generator is implanted under the collarbone. Everything is under the skin and is not visible. Parkinson's isn't an infectious disease. It's down to a combination of factors including genetics, age and environment.

8:49Even though there's no cure for Parkinson's, experts like Professor Morgante have been using deep brain stimulation to help improve symptoms since the early 2000s. The brain stimulation has the biggest impact in improving the life of a person with Parkinson's. We have the example of many young people that have Parkinson's disease that have to leave their job because of their disease and then after the brain stimulation they were able to live another life, functioning again, socialising and sometimes even going back to work. I feel like this is magic. Very briefly, explain how deep brain stimulation works.

9:31Yeah, this is a brain pacemaker. So you know, there are heart pacemakers that are used for people that have heart condition, and they give a signal to the heart. With deep brain stimulation, we provide a signal to the brain. And the rationale for the brain stimulation is to improve the communication in the brain. The brain of people with Parkinson's does not communicate so these different brain areas that control movement, sensation, emotion are hyper connected so they cannot be selected when it's time to control one particular aspect of the brain. With the brain stimulation we are able to revert this abnormal signal.

10:15So by placing wires in the regions of the brain that get dysregulated in someone with Parkinson's, electrical stimulation can help restore normal brain signaling. And by doing that, the symptoms that people with Parkinson's have to deal with, like movement issues, can be lessened. But the symptoms associated with Parkinson's aren't only physical, they're psychological too. Hello, my name is Lucia Ricciardi. I'm a neurologist and a senior lecturer in neurology. at City St George's University. Fortunately for us, Dr. Lucia Ricciardi works in the same team as Francesca and her research focuses on the often forgotten psychological symptoms associated with Parkinson's.

11:02There are many more symptoms than just shaking and problem with mobility. So things like depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, problem with memory, sleep issues. So we know that what we call non-motor symptoms are equally or even more bothersome for our patients. When it comes to those psychological issues, could deep brain stimulation help there as well? The quick answer is yes. However, there is lots of research ongoing, so this is a very novel topic. Until a few years ago, we didn't really understand what was the effect of deep brain stimulation on these symptoms. There is research now that tells us that some of the symptoms are improved from the brain stimulation, some are not.

11:50But things like depression, anxiety, impulsivity, these are often improved, not only by the surgery itself, but also by the fact that we succeed in decreasing the oral medication after surgery. Implanting the electrodes isn't the last step. The stimulation has to be calibrated to the individual. Lucia took me to the lab where this neurocomputational fine-tuning takes place. Okay, I don't know whether it's too broken. Are we broken in? There are lots of other stuff here that you can see. For example, this is a system that help us record from inside the brain. By using brain imaging and the signals that the implanted electrodes themselves record from the brain, experts can work out the best way of calibrating the device.

12:48And both the images or the neural signal can guide us in choosing which specific area of the electrode to stimulate because the electrode has different stimulating points, up to 16 stimulating points and also different direction. So this decision of which one to activate and with which parameter in terms of frequency, amplitude, pulse, there are many things that we need to consider. So this is where things get, to use the correct scientific terminology, very cool. Although deep brain stimulation targets the parts of the brain linked with Parkinson's symptoms, everyone's brain is different. To get round that, the wires that they use for deep brain stimulation have multiple independent segments that they can control.

13:37So think of the wire as a long train made up of lots of different carriages, all resting against different neurons. So during that fine-tuning process, the experts work out which of the segments need to be stimulated to have the most impact on a patient's symptoms. And this calibration process is getting better and better and better. This is a process that takes ages because it has been done by trial and error. Now it's guided by the anatomy and is helped by artificial intelligence that is suggesting what is the best combination. Still there is a big role for the neurologist to orientate and change the distribution of this electricity based on the clinical response.

14:28So technology like deep brain stimulation is already helping those with Parkinson's manage their motor symptoms. It can be fine-tuned and adapted for each individual and with enough research could one day help with anxiety and other psychological symptoms associated with the condition. But are we close to having technology which could help with other important functions of the brain, like memory? Well, that's what we'll be looking at next. Prep for a busy week with Whole Foods Market. Start your day with fully cooked breakfast sausages from Amy Liu, 365 brand frozen waffles with no bleached flours, and of course Whole Foods Market eggs, which are all cage-free or better.

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15:57You're listening to CrowdScience from the BBC World Service, the show that takes your science questions and searches the depths of expert minds to find the answer. This week, we're investigating a question from listener Mariana from Mexico about how technology could improve our brains in the future. Mariana mentioned her fear of losing her sense of self and memories as she ages, something that lots of people worry about. So could something as complex as memory be improved or treated using brain technology? Hi, I'm Robert Hampson. I am a professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the United States, where I am looking at problems of human memory.

16:45All right, let's start at the basics. What is memory? Well, there's a circuit, and a lot of us in the neurosciences tend to think of memory starting in the hippocampus. Hippocampus is in the temporal lobe, and that's the part of the brain that receives all of the different information from other parts of the brain that goes into what would be a template or a snapshot of memory. What is the smell? What is the sound? What is the sight? All of this information is incorporated, and the hippocampus has to take all of the information and turn it into a code. Then there is a conversation that goes back and forth between hippocampus and prefrontal cortex that then shapes the memory into something that can be stored for either a short or long period of time.

17:40As the hippocampus is part of the brain that's vital for storing and encoding memories, researchers saw this as an opportunity. Quite a few years ago, we noticed in some laboratory animals that were doing a memory task that we would see patterns that showed up before the animal would make the choice for what they were supposed to be doing in their memory task. If the lab rat is going to turn left I get a pattern that I call left and if the rat is going to turn right there's a pattern that I call right. That led to digging in a little more and trying to find out what patterns might exist for certain memories.

18:24But it was a little bit more than that we found that there are patterns associated with whether memory is working correctly versus when memory is about to fail. So once we started seeing that there were electrical patterns, then the questions start being asked, well can we influence them? That's what led us to the situation we're in right now, where we see the possibility for a device that would fix memory when it's broken. And this device is called a hippocampal neural prosthesis, but it's not trying to replace a part of the brain. Similar to the deep brain stimulation that's used to help people with Parkinson's, this prosthesis is made up of a lot of surgically implanted electrodes, but targeting the hippocampus.

19:20And this technology isn't as developed as deep brain stimulation. So right now, those electrodes are hooked up to a large external computer which can send and receive signals from the brain. We call this a memory prosthetic or prosthesis, but it's much more like a crutch or a cast. We are attempting to restore function when that function is weak or lost. Robert thinks that this novel technology could one day help those with Alzheimer's, which, like Parkinson's, is a progressive neurological disorder. People with Alzheimer's can experience confusion, memory loss, mood swings and depression, and it's characterised by the loss of neurons in regions of the brain associated with memory, like the hippocampus.

20:10We have identified that there are certain fundamental rhythms to brain signals that underlie the communication between hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain. In Alzheimer's disease, we also know that that rhythm is weaker and sometimes desynchronized. So one of the first ways we might see this created as a treatment for persons with a memory disorder would be simply a pacemaker for memory. In that way, it works a lot like deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease. And so with this, have you tested it in human beings? Yes, we have. Now, we can't just choose a human and say, hey, would you like to have electrodes?

21:06That's a strong opening to any. Usually, I like to go with, hey, hi, how are you? Not, hey, hello, would you like some electrodes? We refer to it as put a thingy in your brainy. Somehow that's worse. Yes, exactly. We are working with patients who are in the epilepsy unit of the hospital. electrodes have to be put in to map their seizures when standard medication and therapies don't work very well. So these patients have electrodes in hippocampus and other parts of the brain that allow us to come in with their permission and their consent and say, hey, would you do this memory task on a computer for us while we record the signals from your brain?

21:55Then we take the information that we record during their memory task, run it through some mathematical modeling and come up with a pattern, go back at a later point and say, hey, we would like you to do this memory task again, but this time on some of the trials, we are going to add a little bit of stimulation and see if it improves. And we have found that there are patterns that improve memory. That's wild that something so simple, you know, applying electrical impulses to the brain can help strengthen memory. Did these results surprise you? It did not surprise us that it worked. It surprised us that it worked so well.

22:40We were able to see a 25 to a 35 % improvement in the ability to retain information this long. From about an hour to 24 hours. Now, I will clarify to say that that was in the subjects that had the most problems with memory going into the test, that we would see this degree of improvement. As we see that there is a deficit in memory, this type of a prosthetic could be an improvement. It could be a game changer. Is this something that I'm going to be able to see in my lifetime? I know that there are groups that are working on prosthetics now, and I think we will see some clinical testing in the next five years.

23:30And so looking forward, what are the ethical implications? Because I imagine it's something that you think about a lot. The ethical implications of any time you put something in a brain are profound. In the very first case, we have to make sure we're not doing any damage, which means that we're not leading to infections and we're not making a condition worse. It boils down to the principle of first do no harm. Like any kind of brain surgery, this process carries a risk and patient safety is a priority. But when dealing with memory, there are even more factors that have to be considered. Memory is the essence that makes us who we are.

24:20And the one thing we don't want to do is change that. So my work has been concentrated on fixing the broken aspects of memory, not so much replacing it, but restoring it. As listener Mariana said, seeing a loved one go through memory loss is a painful experience. She wanted to know if technology could be used to improve our brains in later life. Well, for people with some neurological conditions like Parkinson's, there are specific brain technologies that can be life-changing for some people. Deep brain simulation is already helping patients regain their ability to walk smoothly and could, in future, be used to ease psychological symptoms like anxiety as well.

25:11And similar methods could one day help to mitigate memory impairments in people with Alzheimer's. But Mariana also wanted to know if technology could help improve anyone's brain. And seeing as hippocampal prosthesis can help people with impaired memory, could this technology enhance anyone's memory? One of the difficulties we have when we talk about enhancing normal memory function is that there's so much more we have to learn. Why do some people have very good, excellent, even superlative memory naturally when so many of us don't? When we look at the function of a neuroprosthetic to restore normal function, we don't necessarily have enough information to say, can we make this better than normal?

26:06So some of this technology is still pretty far in the future. But the research being done into these devices to help people with various neurological conditions is paving the way. I spoke with Anders Sandberg at the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm once again to find out if there's anything that we should prepare for if this technology starts to become more widespread. I think we definitely should try preparing for having brain enhancement be a part of life. I think we're going to see more and more of this. But that means that we need to not just regulate them, but also figure out the proper norms about it.

26:46And this isn't a hypothetical problem. We're already seeing some of these issues today. There was an interesting case recently in America where a manufacturer of retinal implants to help blind people see decided to stop supporting these implants. So people couldn't get their software updates. They couldn't repair them. And this feels rather bad. After all, that implant is in some sense part of them. It feels like I should have a right to repair. If I have a microchip and the manufacturer don't want to support it, is that not wanting to support a part of my body or mind? So we might need kind of rules for this or ownership of our own bodies, even the mechanical and electronic parts of them.

27:37even though right now technologies to improve our brains might only be in their early stages now is a good a time as any to have conversations about them and how we can work together to make sure these technologies can help as many people as possible but until someone invents a brain enhancement that lets you know exactly when a crowd science episode ends and who made it. Here's Mariana with the credits. That's it for this edition of CrowdScience from the BBC World Service. The question came from me, Mariana, from Mexico. It was presented by Alex Laffbridge and produced by Emily Bird. If you have a question you'd like the team to answer, send it to crowdscience at bbc.co.uk.

28:26Thanks for listening.

28:37Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott.

29:11So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.