Brain Scientist On AI: You Aren’t Ready For What’s About To Happen | Dr. Alysson Muotri

29:30they are more looking for acceptance and inclusion. And these are not the people that we are focusing. We're focusing more on the level three. So these are people that if they left unattended, they will eventually die, right? So we need like full attention to these kids and they need the magical treatment. And what we are learning is that there are molecular pathways that are common among different subtypes of autism. And that's good news because it means that if we find the medicine that can help one of them, it might be able to help many of them. And when you say molecular patterns, what does that mean physiologically, or what does that look like?

30:08What's a molecular? Yeah. So it means, for example, there are certain metabolism that they process in a different way than neurotypical normal people would do it. And this could be like too much of a certain thing or too little of certain thing. And if we can adjust these molecules in their brains, they might be able to recover whatever intellectual disability or epilepsy that they might have. It's what we call the balance. The brain needs to be in a homeostasis level to work properly. And autistic individuals might have unbalance on certain metabolites. And that's the things that we are discovering.

30:53And so according to the CDC, now about 1 in 31 children are diagnosed with autism. But the data show most kids are diagnosed after the age of two. So is your research able to show earlier signs of autism in development? Or, I mean, what are you seeing in the lab that doctors don't see until the age of two? Yeah, yeah, that's a great point, because why we need to wait for two years of age to finish the diagnostic or at least to have like a better certain about the diagnostic is because in the first two years, the person is developing. And there is variability in people. Some people, I mean, start walking and talking very early on.

31:40Other people take a little bit more time. So autism sometimes might be in that mix. And if the person doesn't talk in two years, well, they might talk six months after that. And that will not be like a sign of autism. But the tools that we have might help doctors to claim that diagnostic very early on, as early as several months of age. Again, I mean, we need to prove that this is the case. and the only way to prove it is a prospective science. So we need to create brain organoids from, let's say, a thousand people. And if the ratio of autism is like 1%, we should have like a hundredth of these organoids created from people behaving in a very different way.

32:28So that will give us the power to actually conclude that the tool as a diagnostic is real. We haven't done that experiment because it's very hard to find funds for this type of predicted medicine. But theoretically, I guess the earlier that you could put that diagnosis on, the better. So there could be a world where maybe close to birth, you're able to see that if you're able to do those experiments and model it out. Yeah. That's why I think as soon as you are born, we should be collecting cells and doing, again, the genetic testing as well as the modeling, the brain modeling test. And at your talk I attended in Austin, you stated that we used to think autism couldn't be reversed, but the science is now showing that's not true.

33:15So have you been able to reverse autism in your lab in the brain cells? Yes, yes. Actually, for all the different subtypes that we tested so far, they are all reversible. So all these alterations that I mentioned to you, either on the metabolism level or the number of synapses or the circuitry, if we understand what's causing, it could be like a genetic mutation. And if we fix that, it's all gone. So the autism could literally be reversible. That's correct, yeah. And so where does the research need to go? I mean, I'm sure that anybody listening to this that hears this is wondering, why doesn't this research have more funding?

33:55Why isn't this the priority? Exactly. That's my question, too. I mean, I think we should add more funds to that. There is one thing in academia that we call the valley of death. And it is in between the scientific discovery and the translation of that discovery to people. So because you need to run clinical trials. So we find pharmacological interventions, gene therapy ideas that can reverse autism in the lab. But then, I mean, we need to do the clinical trials in people to see if they will actually work. And there are reasons for them not to work. And then we go back again and try something else.

34:37But we need to start testing them. So we have lots of ideas to be tested. But clinical trials takes time and costs a lot. And usually the NIH or the most funding agents here in the U.S. doesn't support that part. So we depend on pharmaceutics or industry to kind of jump in that and start supporting these clinical trials, again, because the cost is super high. So that's what we call the valley of death. It's usually where the discovery could not be translated back into people. It's all funding issue. And so is it a gene therapy that you work with the brain cells on to reverse autism? Is that what you're actually doing or is it almost like a genetic surgery?

35:24Yeah, so we are agnostic about the treatment, right? Sometimes it's just a chemical. It's a medicine. It's a pill that we would take and revert that. Sometimes it's a gene therapy. So you know exactly the genetic causes, and you go there, and either you fix the mutation or you just replace the gene by the correct version. The mutated gene you just replace by the correct version. All the tests that we perform in the lab shows that this is enough for the neurons to start firing in a neurotypical way. And do you know where the mutation comes from at this point? So you're probably born with it, so it's something that could maybe be tested?

36:04Yeah. Most of the autistic individuals are born with those mutations. So it happens during the embryogenesis or before. And embryogenesis is the formation of the embryo. Right, right. Or it comes, and remember that, I mean, each person carries the DNA from mom and dad, right? And sometimes these mutations might not do anything for mom, but in a combination with the genome from the dad or vice versa, it creates the problem, right? It affects how the cells behave. We can figure this out by sequencing the genome of the person. And in some cases, we do find the mutation. We know, oh, that's the gene that's mutated.

36:43Let's fix it. And in some cases, we don't, either because we don't fully understand the genetics of autism or because it's what we call a multifactorial. There are different genetic variants and we cannot pinpoint just one. What about with Alzheimer's? Because if you're taking brain cells, for example, to the International Space Station, you're able to accelerate aging. What does the research show about being able to reverse some of those states, if that's possible? So the research is now in a point where we are convincing ourselves that we can model Alzheimer's with these two. And by sending the organoids to the International Space Station and bring them back, we are seeing signs of deterioration, signs that are normally seen in dementia.

37:35And this includes like inflammation, neurodegeneration. So all those factors that are associated with Alzheimer's, dementia, late onset diseases, we are seeing the organoids returning from the space station. The next step, it is either a neuroprotection. Can we protect those brain cells before they go there? Or can we treat them after they come back? And that's my Amazon project. So I'm testing molecules from the plants of the Amazonian biodiversity to see if one of these molecules can do one of those or both. Can be a neuroprotector or can be curative. And I know you're from Brazil, but what was the instinct that the Amazon may have a potential cure for Alzheimer's?

38:25Yeah, so I start interacting with different tribes in the Amazon. These are regional tribes that have very few contact with the external world. They live in there. They have their lifestyle in there. And they are now, I mean, having more and more contact with people from outside. And one of my colleagues who are from the University of Manaus, who is in the middle of the Amazon, introduced me to some of these shamans. and these are the old people over there who has the knowledge of the medicine of the forest. And during my interactions, I always ask, so what do you do when people, I mean, have a seizure?

39:10Or what do you do when people start forgetting things? And it's incredible that they have an answer for every single of these questions. And when I ask about Alzheimer's, of course, they have no idea what is Alzheimer's because most of their population lives up to 100 and they don't show any signs of dementia. And I found that amazing. How come? And they said, yeah, if people start showing like they are forgetting things, there is this plant that we combine with this other one and we create like a tea or a brew and they start incorporating that into the diet. And then I start asking, what are those plants?

39:47Can you point it to me? And they point, oh, it's this one and that one. and I start realizing that we never studied them. So the modern science completely ignore this ancient knowledge. And I said, no, this cannot be true. I mean, people must have studied those plants, but no, there's no track record. And in the Amazon, we have about 200 ,000 species in there and we probably are aware of 1%. All the rest is completely ignored, but those tribes understand them. So I start recreating those plans and trying to understand what are the molecules that might be neuroprotectant. And we have like a few of them that are good candidates that we want to test into the International Space Station, either again as a neuroprotectant or a treatment for Alzheimer's and dementias and perhaps any other neurodegeneration.

40:43So not only could we potentially build an Alzheimer-proof society, but we could maybe reverse it. And this cure might already just be grown in a plant in nature. It is fascinating, yes. And it's here the whole time, just to the left of us. And so I imagine you're not going to the Amazon to take all the plants. You're going to recreate those molecules in the lab so the plants stay preserved in the Amazon. And then what happens to the tribe? Do they kind of share in the research? Do they share in the... Yeah, we reach an agreement where all eventual royalties of a future product, if there is a future product, because science has a risk, it might be that we could not reproduce any of those, right?

41:27But let's suppose that, yeah, we do find something that is neuroprotective. And if these ever become like a commercial product, the royalties of those will go back to the protection of those tribes. So there is a percentage of the royalties that belongs to them. And maybe it's incentive for people to not keep burning and attacking Amazon. Yeah. Because all of the cures in the future could be right within those trees. And they understand that very clearly. It is us that are not aware of that. And so I must ask, with the human brain, I mean, we are an incredibly complex species compared to others, not superior, just different and more complex.

42:14And that's why I think we play piano, we go to space, we contemplate the origins of the universe. But is there an evolutionary downside to the complexities of our human brain? Are we paying some evolutionary cost to be this cognitively superior in some ways? Yeah, so that's another question of the lab. That's actually how I started my lab, asking those questions. So I was way more interested on the evolution of the human brain than on treating diseases. It was my son who actually changed my directions. But part of my lab continues to study evolution. And we have those questions. I mean, what makes the human brain so unique?

42:54Why we as any species are so different from the other ones? why we change the environment while other species just enjoy them. And I initially started comparing the human brain with a chimpanzee because the chimpanzee is the closest evolutionary relative that is alive compared to us. But soon I realized that we are so different from a chimpanzee that it's not worth it because any of this discovery cannot really tell me exactly how the human brain evolved. And then I thought, okay, I need to compare the modern human brain with extinct humans that are no longer here. Neanderthals? Such as the Neanderthals.

43:40And so we start looking at the genome of the Neanderthals because we cannot have cells from the Neanderthals to reprogram and create their mini brains, their organoids. There is no way to do that. But we have the genomic information. And then, I mean, we did like a very simple experiment. So we try to contrast the genetic information, the genome sequence from the Neanderthals with the human population, the modern human population. And we try to incorporate as much diversity as possible. And then we align them and they are incredibly similar, right? Very similar. But then we ask the question, is there any genes in there that are different between them and us?

44:24and what is unique about us that they don't have. And by the way, no other species will have, just us. And we end up with a list of 61 genes. These are genes that we all have, the Neanderthals have, all the other species have. But there are sequences that are unique to modern humans. And one of them calls my attention because it's a master regulator of neurodevelopment. And again, looking into the brain as a tool to understand the complexity of cognition, I decided to swap the Neanderthal version of the gene for the modern human in one of our brain organoids. And what happens was amazing because I thought that, well, I might not see anything because it might be multifactorial.

45:16But that single mutation in that gene, just the Neanderthal version in that gene, make the brain organoid mature 10 times faster than normal. So it will take, let me explain that. It will take a couple of weeks for the neurons to mature and start firing, as I pointed out, in the early stages of neurodevelopment. Now, if I have identical neurons, except for the Neanderthal version, those neurons will mature way faster. Because they're more simple or not as complex? No, because that gene, the master regulator, changes how the maturation of the brain behaves. So it's not regarding the complexity, but it's the timing.

46:05And initially, when we had that data, it sounds like counterintuitive, but thinking more, what we are figuring out is that the Neanderthal brain develops much more closer to a chimpanzee than us. Because the chimpanzee also develop faster. That was one of the problems that I had. They could never match the development of neurons from the chimpanzee and modern humans. And the Neanderthals are clustering with the chimpanzees, so they are developing faster. And actually, if you observe a baby chimp, it's way smarter than a human being. I was about to say, does that mean that if the brain develops faster for a Neanderthal or a chimpanzee, they're smarter earlier?

46:52Yeah. So why didn't they go off to then build the Eiffel Tower? Right, right, because it plateaus. So they develop early because the brain is wired for survival. So they have to go into the wild and figure out how to survive, right? So they develop quite early, but then they plateau in terms of complexity. But the modern human brain, it takes a while to develop. So look at that. I mean, we are born after nine months of incubation. And even after that, we cannot leave our babies in the wild. So we still need to feed them for like several years until they become independent. So the developmental time is much slower in humans.

47:36And that single mutation is helping us to develop slower to achieve a higher complexity later in life. But that higher complexity, there's a cost. And that's the evolutionary tradeoff. We don't see autism in chimpanzee. We don't see Alzheimer's in chimpanzee. So the slow development and the complexity of the human brain make us susceptible to these neurological conditions that are human-specific. And what if the brain was bigger? So if we could have bigger brains, would we not have to trade as much complexity for size? Could we have more complex brains, but maybe not as many downsides with neurological disorders?

48:22Is it because that everything's so dense? It could be. We don't know. That's an interesting hypothesis. We'll have to test that. But remember that sometimes it's not linear. Sometimes bigger brains, I mean, whales have bigger brains than us. So it doesn't translate exactly into behavior complexity. Okay. And then my final question before we jump fully to the future, to my world of foresight. Regenerative medicine, it does point to a future where we'll be able to potentially regrow organs or parts of damaged organs in the lab and maybe even in the body eventually. So for somebody who is diagnosed with something like ALS or a spinal cord injury, is there a future where we could regrow and repair their own cells in the lab or maybe even in their own bodies and perhaps reverse some of those conditions or cure them entirely?

49:16Yeah, I think the answer is yes. And I'll give you like an example that it's a research that we published a couple years ago So we did the experiment in mice because we cannot do it in humans, right? So we remove in a surgery the visual cortex of the animal. So for you to see something, your eyes, your retina with all the photoreceptors need to capture the information through light, passes through the thalamus, which is a region that connects the brain to the eye, and goes to the cortex where you store your memories, right? So that's how we see things. So if you remove the visual cortex from your brain, you stop seeing.

49:58Even though your eyes are normal, it's just you don't finish the circuitry because you don't have a visual cortex to process that information. So we remove the visual cortex from the animal, from the mice, and the mice stop seeing. And then we replace that with a brain organoid. After a while, we put the brain organoid from humans in there, And we let the organoids to kind of accommodate into the brain. And surprisingly enough, they start making connections with the circuitry of the animal. And they become the visual cortex of the mice. So those animals now start seeing again, but they are using the human neurons to visualize things.

50:41So it's a chimera, a mouse with some human brain cells that allow them to see again. Yes, yes. So this idea of regenerative medicine, you could extrapolate that, for example, take Parkinson's disease, where you have like a region deep in your brain called the striatum that produces dopaminergic neurons. So these neurons respond to dopamine, and in Parkinson's, these neurons degenerate. So you could eventually recreate from that same person the striatum in the lab and transplant it back and restore the movement of the person with Parkinson's. You could cure Parkinson's by doing this kind of a transplantation.

51:23And how far away, I know it's impossible to predict the future in terms of timelines, but curing something like Parkinson's and that the model exists, the theory is there. How far away do you think we could go from lab to human trials? Yeah, so unfortunately, science goes very slow. And as I mentioned to you, the valley of that, so this funding, so someone, a company or industry or a hospital must be interested on that to perform the clinical trials. There are clinical trials for Parkinson's just transplanting dopaminergic neurons. But this was before we had the technology to create two-dimensional tissues.

52:00So now we have to redo these experiments with a more powerful technology. But it's coming once we have proof of principle. And that's why we still use animals for research. We have to show proof of principle in an animal. And then we can reproduce that in humans. It's a slow transition between the preclinical through the clinical side. And so in some ways, we're moving out of the chemical era where we would treat or cure or at least maintain and stabilize conditions using chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and into the biological era where we go back to what evolution gave us, tinker it a little bit, and cure with the body's own tools.

52:39That's correct. Yeah. If we can do that, it usually is better. Because for us to fully understand how, again, the disease works, the process, and to find the right chemical, the right pharmaceutical, to actually correct the defect or the molecular pathway that it's affected, it takes time. But the cells know how to do that. So if you can just transplant the cells back, let them do the magic. Okay, so now I want to jump a little bit into the world of foresight and to see where things could potentially be going. When we look at the field of artificial intelligence and the AI systems we have today, they're really impressive, but they still aren't as flexible or as reliable even as the brain of a cat or a dog, right?

53:25And that's because evolution has billions of years on AI. But scientists are exploring what happens if we do merge evolution with artificial intelligence. And even if you look at AI, I mean, the amount of power and water that it uses. And so what happens if we power AI systems with brain cells? So you get the benefits of biology and we're super efficient, but the superpowers of AI. So the field is organoid intelligence, and your work places you at the forefront. Where is the science today, and where is it going? Yeah. So we are on the initial phases of that, trying to understand what is, for example, the computational power of an organoid.

54:08And we start by asking very simple questions. Can an organoid learn something? Can an organoid memorize something? Can it retrieve the memory? Basically, we're asking, can it have the cognition of a human, even if it's not as complex? And we do that by stimulating the organoids with electrical impulses, for example. And we give them different impulses and see if they remember one of them. And how would you show that a brain cell in a lab remembered something? Yeah, so the experiment is like that. So you choose a specific impulse. Let's say certain frequency and certain intensity. And then you train the organoids to respond to that.

54:52So you give that every minute and you see what kind of responses it has. And we can map that. We can map these networks, right? And then you start giving like random sequence to see if they would respond in the same way. And guess what? They do not. So they have a specific response for specific impulses, which is how we respond to impulses as well. The way I hold like a rose and a hammer is very different because I treat them in different ways. And the organoid does the same. Different impulses, they respond in different ways. So then we let the organoid rest, rest for 24 hours. And then we start giving random impulses again, and they will have like their noise in there.

55:39And then in the middle of that, we add the writing pulses that we know how they responded. And guess what? They remember. And you don't need to even give all the complete impulses. You just started there. I know it's coming. Yeah. And they responded in the same way. So that's how we prove that they have memory. So we can prove that they have memory. So does that mean that they can remember the same way you could train an AI system? So how are you training AI and powering it on these brain cells? What does that even entail? Yeah, so that's another thing that we are beginning to explore, which is this concept of generalization, right?

56:20I mean, to train an AI, you need lots of training. But the human brain doesn't need lots of training, right? A human baby will figure out that this is a wall. And all the time when it sees a wall, it never would be the wall again because you're already figured out. So it generalizes. So how the human brain does that, it's a mystery. We don't know. And we are asking if the organoids can do the same. And the way we are doing it is by creating like an interface with a robotic machine. This is a robot that has like four legs. And we are using the electrical activity of that organoid to make the robot move.

56:55And when you say the electrical activity, that's when the brain cell is wiring and firing, it produces some activity. That's correct. And that is going to power the robot. That's correct. Yes. Yes. And then we did one step further, which is to add the sensor information into the robot. So the sensor in the robot that we have is a kind of an infrared that will detect when it's getting closer to a wall. And by getting closer to a wall, when it's about 10 centimeters before it hits the wall, it stimulates the organoid with that impulses, specific frequencies that we determine, predetermine. And the organoid responded to that because, I mean, it's already known that they had to respond to that.

57:38Then we use that response to turn the robot to left or right. OK, so that's the training. And now we are exposing this robotic platform to a maze and seeing if the organoid is able to make the robot navigate that maze with different configurations just with one training. And apparently it does. So a robot powered by human brain cells is able to navigate a maze, even though the cells aren't actually seen it. Yes. So there is a potential future where AI is powered by human brain cells. Yeah. And that means that the water crisis, the energy crisis that AI currently occupies are dissolved in an instant.

58:21That's correct. We could solve the major AI problems by getting inspiration from the organic intelligence that already exists. That again, evolution took like millions of years to build that. Compared to an organoid, any artificial intelligence algorithm, any artificial network is an insult. Right? I mean, we're not even close to what nature can do. and that's what the kind of power that we want to leverage and most likely this will happen in two waves. The first wave would be using the organoid as a black box. We don't understand but we know it has the power to compute. That's what we are doing right now.

59:05But the next step is when we learn exactly how to recreate, reconstruct the circuitries that do that, something that we don't know. And once we were able to do that, Maybe we can create novel algorithms that mimics that. So we don't longer need the organoids. We can just use organic-inspired algorithms. Right, because I was going to ask. I mean, I know we don't understand consciousness enough to prove, disprove it. So people sometimes say we can't disprove or prove that current AI systems are conscious. I don't really entertain that as much. I'm not as concerned about a silicone chip being conscious.

59:44But an AI system powered on human brain cells, that's slightly different. And we're potentially giving it memories, giving it all of this data. And that is a conversation I do have. So is there a future where these cells could become very sophisticated because they are trained on the same data that AI is? And we see some awareness in AI because it is powered on biology? I share with you, I'm not worried about current AI reaching a consciousness level. But if we start using the algorithms coming from the organic cells, I think it's going to be inevitable because the brain... Wait, so you just said it will be inevitable that these AI systems will be conscious.

1:00:25That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. That's what the brain is wired for. The brain is wired to become conscious. And if we start using them to power AI, they will inevitably become conscious. okay um and should we cut

1:00:51um okay if the brain evolved to regulate the body and we're going to be building these potentially complex conscious ai systems and then we would give them and or embody them in robotics than if we technically have walking, talking, conscious robots. Yeah. Yeah. That's correct. Yeah. We are moving to a cyborg or a replicant, like just to quote a Blade Runner, right? Yeah. So we are getting to that stage. Yeah. And what are the ethical and moral lines the science community has kind of drawn? Because I feel like there's the tech community that thinks maybe we're building consciousness in these silicone chips.

1:01:35And then there's the science community that's like, ha ha, jokes on you. We are actually potentially building conscious, could build conscious AI systems in the lab. So what is kind of the self-policing, if any, or is it kind of just mutually understood? Let's maybe not do this yet until we understand it a bit better. That's usually that's a good idea. Yeah. And remember that I mentioned that there is two phases. Yes. The first phase is really the biology. And I'm not to worry about that phase, creating like an organoid that's conscious. I don't care because, I mean, we are conscious. And you can always build like a way to destroy the system.

1:02:15But once we pass to the next phase, which is the algorithm, so then there is no way back. So we will have to decide that if we are moving to the next stage. and yeah we have to as humanity to think if that's what we want to do building actual things that feel and think yeah and experience yes yeah um but then the question is how do we do it safely and how do we do it ethically because the precedent also is i mean even ivf we were so close to not having it right because of all of the moral panic that it caused and now millions and millions of babies have been born via IVF. A lot of people go through the egg freezing process.

1:02:58And that was something that almost didn't happen because we didn't understand the ethical lines. We didn't understand, you know, the idea of creating and tampering with life in new places is something that we immediately jumped to as out of our hands. But I guess technology, it does change our ethics over time. And for the most part, it's been a good thing. And so I guess the question becomes, how do we see some of these potentially great areas, creating conscious sentient systems being a huge one? And how do we bound that? What decisions do we want to make about it? And I think what's also fascinating about this research and knowing that we are probably going here is we have time, right?

1:03:45And that's why a lot of people, we end up panicking about the future. But the reality is the future, it doesn't happen suddenly. We see it in the labs. We know we can see it in the data. And so the question is, how do we do things ahead of time properly with more voices weighing in so it doesn't feel like we suddenly wake up to the future and have to panic about it? And I think that this is one of those moments where if the scientists are saying, potentially building conscious machines is going to be possible, then this is where the humanity steps in and says, what boundaries do we want to put around that?

1:04:22And I think it's the combination of the two that allows us to get it right. And we've done that historically, from IVF to editing to gene therapy treatments came from historically more controversial science experiments. So perhaps this is one of those moments. And even simple things like blood transfusion, which was weird in the beginning. But now, I mean, yeah, normal. Most people would accept that. Organ transplantation was another one. Seems like controversial in the beginning. Oh, I'm going to have like a heart from somebody else. But now, yes, if you don't do that, you die. So maybe this, if you don't do that, you die might be the answer.

1:05:02But I like your point that we have time. I don't know how much. But we do have some time to start raising awareness that this new technology might come. And it might take like up to, I don't know, 30, 50 years, but will eventually come. Yeah. Yeah. Tools have always been extensions of us, right? So fire changed how the brain developed. And wasn't fire responsible for us becoming much more sophisticated as a species because we could process our nutrients better and we could move energy to the brain versus digestion? And so our smartphones in some ways are also an extension of us, right? I think Google Maps is kind of your hippocampus and it's doing the navigation and then you have your visual memories.

1:05:43And then the next step is AI. So you'll have your personal AI assistant that has a fiduciary duty to you and it works on your behalf. And it doesn't just write your emails for you, but it's maybe solving scientific problems in a startup that you want to bring to life. Is there a world in which your personal AI system is maybe also powered by your personal brain cells? And so it's really a second brain? Yeah, yeah. I think so. That's this idea that you can, first of all, you can create an organoid from a person. And we discuss a lot about disease, right? Try to figure out disease. But it might become, yeah, your new person, your new brain.

1:06:23And the part that I like the most is that these organoids, these brain cells will be created in wire, dictated by your genetics. True. But the input to create memories, experiences, it's all about you. So it's not like a clone of you, a clone of your brain, but it's something that has your genetics. My mind responds in a different way. So yeah, I think it's a nice use of the technology. Okay, so that one's possible. Yeah. And I'm optimistic. I think it might be like a good thing. Yeah, yeah. And so my final question for you, is your research doesn't just explore how the brain is built and to try to understand it and to reconstruct it.

1:07:09But what would a world look like if we could build better brains? So what does that mean? More senses, better memory? How could we build a better brain? I avoid using the term better. Okay. Right? So we are already there. We are creating different brains. Different brains. Yeah. And I'll give you an example of one of the projects that we have. the human brain cannot sense magnetism. But we used to. We used to. We lost that during evolution. And by magnetism, you mean how whales and sharks steer of your magnet, they understand the magnetic waves of the world. If you look back into our genome, the genes that gives the whale the ability to sense magnetism is in our genome.

1:07:55But because we never used, or whatever reason, evolution mutated that so it's no longer functional. Okay? So we are going back and reconstructing those genes, make those genes work back again. So then we're going to have like an organoid that's able to sense magnetism. And what benefit would that give us? If we were humans that could then also sense magnetism? We don't need Google Maps? We can just... That's correct. Yes, yes. So in that experiment was done with blind people. So they put like blind people in a forest to see if they will figure out a way to get out. They couldn't, again, because we don't have magnetism.

1:08:33But if our brain now has the sense of magnetism, yes. I was more thinking, I mean, the reason for this work is to better create sonars, right? I was not thinking about augmentation of the human brain, but that's definitely a possibility. I'll give you like another example. This is our work with NASA. Since we figured out that the astronaut brains are susceptible to the damage coming from the space environment, we are wondering if this is caused by cosmic radiation. And most likely, there is a contribution for cosmic radiation. Can we create a human brain that is protected by cosmic radiation? So what we did was to clone a gene that's coming from the tardigrade.

1:09:19I don't know if you... Kind of the organism? Yeah. Okay, so for somebody, again, who missed that biology class... If you list the biology class, tardigrades are microscopic pairs or entities that is everywhere. And they are incredibly resistant, resistant to fire, to cold. So that's why they dominate the planet. They are everywhere. And we end up contaminating even the space station and even the moon. So there are now tardigrades in the moon because we took them there. So we are actually responsible for all the alien conspiracy theories. we are actually sending them outwards. We are already containing the universe, yes.

1:09:59So in the outside of the space station, there are tardigrades. So the question is, how do you survive the cosmic radiation? So we now know there is a gene in their genome called D-SOOP that suppresses the mutation caused by cosmic radiation. So what we did was to clone that gene inside the genome of a human and create an organoid that now is resistant to radiation. So we are doing tests at the space station to see if that organoid will work in the same way as the tardigrade, will be resistant to cosmic radiation. So if it's positive, well, we might think about engineer the human genome for future astronauts that will go in missions, interplanetary missions.

1:10:49So that might be like something to consider. Especially as space becomes the next frontier, we need to make sure we're resilient to some of the adversarial effects of it. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, yeah. The combination of genetics and stem cells are really powerful. Makes you dream. Makes you dream and brings it to life. Well, it has been an absolute pleasure. This has been so fascinating and I can't wait to do it again. Super. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming. Thanks for joining us for this episode of I've Got Questions. If you've got questions about AI and emerging technologies, send us a message or a voice note on our website.

1:11:23And if you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe and share with someone you think might be interested. We'll see you next time.