Brain-Computer Interfaces: Promises and Pitfalls

hi everybody uh Welcome to our collaboration with the government accountability office uh I'm Rick lover uh the program director of the science and Entertainment Exchange today's event is on brain machine interfaces uh if you don't know the National Academy of Sciences uh we are a private non-profit in Washington DC that exists outside of the federal government to give the gold standard of peer-reviewed scientific advice to the nation normally and Merchants here to tell you all about that today she couldn't join us so I'm flying solo um I run the science and Entertainment Exchange which is a program of the National Academy of Sciences and we've done over 3 500 consults uh uh where we are a bridge between uh the national academies and Hollywood uh and we consult on TV shows and video games and all sorts of documentaries and graphic novels um if you are a stem professional and you're interested in being a part of our community please do reach out and contact us we're always looking for new uh new people new voices new people to connect and Sachi has some info down there to give you a little more info on how to get in touch with us um there will be a recording of this show on the exchange's website you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel to see these events and the videos after the fact you can also sign up for our collider newsletter and get our little tidbits of science uh each week to uh that we think are interesting news stories um so this video you'll um we're gonna send out the link uh to everybody who RSVP for this event so you'll be able to find it uh after the fact I want to thank our sponsors Howard Hughes Medical Institute we also get a major funding from the Alfred P Sloan foundation and so many individuals just like you so many people donated today and we really appreciate it it goes right back into doing these events and also our live schedule of events that are restarting in Los Angeles this year so uh hopefully you'll be getting some invites from us very shortly um in a moment you're going to hear from a great speaker Karen Howard if you have a question at any time you can put it in the Q a we've disabled the chat we need it for a back-end apologies for that I know a lot of these events allow you to use the chat not our events um but you can ask a question and after Karen is done speaking I'm going to be coming back on screen and getting through as many questions as humanly possible hopefully we never have enough time for all of them but uh hopefully we'll have a little more time than usual to get to uh some of your questions this week so please do ask questions um I also should mention we have a few technical difficulties uh uh which is why we're slightly late starting today um and if we lose our speaker which is a possibility she will be rejoining us by phone so I will jump on and let you know that uh but just in case it happens please we appreciate your patience thank you for your patience um my rabbit hole this week the thing that as we were researching this event caught my attention more than anything else was a Stanford study that was for people who had trouble speaking mostly stroke victims I believe there's a new device out a brain machine interface device that allows people to speak almost conversationally although it is wrong apparently 20 of the time but if you're interested in that article I found that fascinating um so the National Academy of Sciences and the government accountability office work together all the time to bring reports to Congress that shape public policy uh this is the first time that the science and Entertainment Exchange and the government accountability office have collaborated and we're hoping that it's going to be the first of many because uh honestly this was a big learning curve for me personally understanding the breadth and depth of the uh government accountability offices work was unbelievable and we thought that Karen Howard's work in particular was a great place to start on human machine interfaces so hopefully you will enjoy this as much as we have right now I'd like to introduce you to Jessica Smith the director of operations and Communications for the Science and Tech Team at the government accountability office offices we've it's been a thrill to work with her thus far and Jessica I'm really excited to do more events like this with you thanks symmetric for having us it we're so excited also to be here and I just want to take a moment and thank everybody who is spending the hour with us now and just paying attention to this important work uh so I'm Jess Smith I'm from the U.S government accountability office or the GAO and here in DC we're known as the Congressional Watchdog for those of you who don't know of us um we're known that way because we explained how taxpayer dollars are spent and how government conducts its operations we advise lawmakers and agency heads on ways to make government work better and in a city full of partisan spin GAO is known for providing timely analysis that's non-partisan fair and balanced in 2019 we established our science technology assessment and analytics team and in our team we're focused on really the most pressing s t issues of our time that can be everything from artificial intelligence to infectious diseases it could be blockchain technology and to Quantum Computing and throughout these works arim is not just to issue reports on these complicated topics but really to help policy makers and the public just better understand the key questions that these Technologies raise both for government oversight and also for our society as a whole so we're a large team of scientists in the Congressional branch of government right now our team is about 150 people strong and we collectively hold at least 100 Advanced stem-related degrees just in our team and these include everything from biology to chemistry environmental science to engineering mathematics data science and so many more but we're here today to learn about brain computer interfaces from Dr Karen Howard so let me take a minute and introduce you to her Karen is the acting Chief scientist for our agency and she's a director within our team she earned her doctorate in environmental chemistry from the State University of New York and her master's degree is plural in analytical chemistry and education from Youngstown State University and Duquesne University respectively Karen earned her bachelor's degrees in biology and secondary education from Penn State University and if that wasn't enough before joining GAO she taught high school chemistry and biology for 12 years and so without further Ado let me pass the floor over to Karen thank you Jess and welcome everybody so as just mentioned we do our work for congress we try to provide them with a look at current Technologies emerging Technologies try to give them some foresight into where these Technologies may go in the near future in particular and try to help them understand what some of the policy implications might be for us as a nation and for them in particular as policy makers what they should be keeping an eye on what they might want to be aware of in that role we did produce recently a report on brain computer interfaces and as part of that we did also interact with innovators in this space and talk to them about the work and the kinds of of challenges they're facing and the promise they see in this field so that's what we're here to talk about today brain computer interfaces just as a brief definition are technologies that allow somebody to control an external device maybe a computer a smartphone a robotic limb maybe their own paralyzed limb using just their brain signals so it's a it's it's exactly what the name says it's an interface between your brain signals and the device that you're trying to control these devices have been explored and researched for decades the first uh device that would qualify under the current definition of a BCI or a brain computer interface appeared in the early 1970s so 50 years or so they've been working on these and they've continued to advance through that time and I can give you a little idea of the status as we move forward here they fall into two basic categories there are bcis that are wearable where basically the user is wearing a cap or a headset of some sort that is reading their brain signals from outside the skull very similar to an EEG an electroencephalogram that might put patches with wires electrodes on the brain in order to read those brain signals so a very similar system to that so those are the wearable bcis the second category are implanted bcis where they actually do surgery on the skull and they implant the the interface directly either on the surface or into the brain tissue itself they're also sometimes called invasive BCI so sometimes they divide them as non-invasive and invasive I've also seen invasive divided into two subcategories if if the probes or the electrodes go down into the brain tissue they're called fully invasive and if it lays on the surface of the brain they're called partially invasive so in either case those require brain surgery in order to apply them so something to know about the status the wearable ones the ones that that are accessed outside of the skull through a cap or a headset of some sort those do not require as we mentioned they don't require surgery they have some different challenges to them and those are available on the market for some purposes currently the implantable ones require obviously FDA Food and Drug Administration regulatory actions so those are medical devices anytime you're implanting something in somebody's brain clearly the Food and Drug Administration is going to be involved in approving those devices for safety and all of those devices at the current time are in clinical trials so they're being tested in real patients they're being implanted in real patients and tested to see how well they work how effective they are in treating the conditions they're intended to treat but those are not yet available on the market they are still in the clinical trial stage so I just wanted you to be aware of that distinction what kinds of things can a BCI be used for the original research on this was nearly all focused on medical applications so somebody had had a stroke they had lost control of of one of their limbs maybe or they had limited control and this was an attempt to try to help them control that paralyzed limb again perhaps they were retraining a different part of their brain using the brain computer interface perhaps they were controlling a external sort of a wraparound device that wraps around their arm and they can control that in order to move their arm so they almost all had medical applications in the early stages the applications continue in the medical area it's certainly a major area of research and a focus of a lot of the Innovative work that's going on in this field but there are also applications now outside the medical space where for example to give you a few governmental applications NASA is looking into brain computer interfaces as a way of using brain signals to determine when Pilots might be less attentive or might be more likely to make a mistake or air traffic controllers is another application that they're using it for so they're they're learning to interpret brain signals in order to know the status of the worker and and whether the air traffic controller or the pilot is getting tired getting more likely to make a mistake the the Federal Aviation Administration the FAA is also researching these devices as possible ways for a pilot someday to control an airplane so you can imagine for example a disabled pilot might use a brain computer interface to fly a plane instead of being able to manually control the levers or the pedals to make the plane operate the way a normally abled person would somebody could use a brain computer interface in order to fly that plane and so that's something the FAA is looking into if these devices were able at some point in the future to give that capability how would they as the FAA certify that the pilot was was using the device properly and was able to safely operate a plane using this device obviously agencies have to think ahead they have to think where might this technology go and what do we need to be ready to regulate so agencies are thinking in that direction the Department of Defense is also researching these devices brain computer interfaces some of the potential applications for example you might imagine the possibility of a soldier controlling a drone using a BCI where they're they're moving across a section of terrain with their group of soldiers they want to hold their weapon in their hands but they also want to control a drone that's out ahead of the group maybe Scouting For the group watching for danger a brain computer interface might be a way to control that drone hands-free so that they have their hands available to hold their weapon so those are some of the the ideas that we heard about as we were doing the research on this there are of course concerns with bcis and let me just cover those quickly before we move into the question and answer space naturally there are concerns about about privacy with people's brain data we we currently don't have any way to use somebody's brain data if we capture it but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be usable sometime in the future that we won't figure out a way to use that uh brain data so the privacy of people's brain data just like any other biological or Health Data your brain data is very personal and it's very private and so we need to make sure that we secure that data the the bcis that use wireless technology particularly to communicate between the BCI and the device they would be more prone to hacking than the ones that are directly wired between the device and the the cap or the headset that's being used so there are concerns about hacking could somebody hack into it if they hacked into it could they store the data until we developed the capability as a global Society to interpret or use that data in some way so that's a concern there are also concerns about the safety of implanted bcis in particular how safe is it to have something inserted into your brain tissue and left there there are other insertable brain devices so we do have some data medically on on how the brain responds to such things but we don't necessarily have a complete set of data so that's something that where there's some research underway to try to understand that better there are also concerns about what you do when the BCI doesn't give the right result so brain computer interfaces train on the data of the individual user and we each have very unique brain data if I tell my hand to reach out and grab a glass of water that's on the table the brain signals I use to tell my hand to do that are different than the signals you would use to tell your hand to do that we all have a unique way of thinking and a unique set of brain signals and brain neural Pathways that we use so the BCI is not just a Plug and Play device you can't just put one on and it automatically knows what your brain signals are trying to tell it to do there's a training period and particularly when you're trying to do something very complex maybe very fine motor skills or something that's uh that has a lot more steps involved to it there's going to be more training involved so that the BCI can learn through an artificial intelligence type mechanism it learns your brain signals and it learns what you mean by those so if you can imagine somebody who is is perhaps unable to speak and is trying to sign a contract or give consent for a medical procedure they might use a brain computer interface to indicate yes I approve or no I don't but what if the BCI gets it wrong and that that could happen certainly and and in some of the trials they've shown that it's not perfect technology particularly not in the early stages but even after it's well trained on a person's neurobiology it doesn't always get the right answer so how do we deal with that how do we deal with them making mistakes that could sometimes be very consequential so those are some of the concerns that we encountered as we did our work and so we wrote at the end of our of our short report some things that people could think about policymakers in particular could think about with these for medical applications how expensive are these going to be who's going to have access to them will insurance cover them will all patients regardless of of how affluent they are be able to access these if they need them so there's a lot of questions there and this is a very common question with medical Technologies as new medical advances are made it's not always quick to get insurance to agree to to pay for them because often they're they're viewed as experimental for quite some period of time even after they're on the market so insurance companies can be slow to pick up coverage for them and even once they do pick up coverage it's not always true that everybody gets Equitable coverage so that's one of the questions will there be inequities created well some people who have more money be able to afford this technology and other not be able to I mentioned the security and and privacy concerns there's also an ethical framework to think about so if you can imagine the being able to train your brain to control a device it's possible that you could not only regain control of your own limb after a stroke let's say but perhaps people would be thinking toward enhancing their physical capabilities beyond the normal human capability maybe giving yourself additional strength or additional speed through using your brain to control a mechanical device of some sort and some researchers are already working on that they're already thinking about those possibilities and where they might be able to take this technology is that ethical is it ethical to enhance the human body well beyond what it would typically be able to do and think about that perhaps in a war scenario a battle scenario what if an adversary was able to outfit an army with devices that made their their soldiers much faster much stronger less likely to get tired um perhaps the brain computer interface space in some cases they're bi-directional right it's not just a signal out from the brain to the device but you can have signals back to the brain from the device that can have very good uses for example when we reach out to grab that glass of water on the table part of the reason that we know to close our hand and pick it up is because not only can we see that our hand has reached the right place on the table but we can feel the glass and so that bi-directional allows the the sensation of touching the glass to come back to the brain so that the user knows to close the hand for example the mechanical hand in this case as we're imagining so so bi-directionality can be good but it can also be used to influence the brain so what if you could train a soldier not to have fear what if you could feed back and and short-circuit that fear mechanism so that they would go into any kind of dangerous situation without that normal human protective fear response or what if you could change the level of anger that they feel toward their adversary you can imagine how quickly this might spiral into some areas that have some real ethical concerns so those are some of the things we suggested that policy makers think about at the as these Technologies continue to advance and with that let me stop and send it back to Rick and I think we can start the Q a all right excellent Karen first I I just got to selfishly ask a question from myself which is what are a couple of scenarios you could see yourself knowing what you know getting a a brain computer interface both sort of medically and you know non-medical are there are there scenarios where you could see getting one for yourself that's a great question one of the easy yeses for me is in the in the case of a medical situation that caused a loss of control of your limbs for example a stroke one of the neat devices that recently got FDA approval one of the first medical devices actually that got FDA approval for marketing is a device that's designed it's a it's a sort of mechanical hand and arm almost an elbow length glove kind of mechanical device and it's connected to a brain computer interface and it's used to teach the other side of your brain to control your limb after a stroke so many of us are aware that if you have a stroke if the if the stroke happens on the left side of the brain for example then the right side of the body is likely to experience some level of paralysis in order to regain control of that limb once the brain tissue on the left side is no longer able to do it you can actually use a brain computer interface to teach the right side of your brain to control the right side of your body it takes time it takes some therapy some physical therapy and some working with this device or something like it but that's a situation where I could see using one in order to regain normal function for me personally I can't imagine using it to to take my physical capabilities beyond what they would normally be but that's perhaps my limited imagination so you're not running out for that Apple product that helps you with email I don't think so fair enough fair enough I love um Tom's question I'm going to lead with that uh Tom wants to know about uh and I think we've all had this experience where we've bought a product from a company and then found five years later that that product becomes unsupported by that company um do you are there are there people considering that concern for these things that are going to be actually implanted so we we have not heard that uh in in our research but generally speaking in the field of medical devices if devices are implanted the user is is granted or expected to be granted some level of follow-up right so if a device becomes unworkable uh they can get a replacement it can be removed depending on what the circumstance is that happens in in lawsuit cases for example where they discover that a device is causing harm that they didn't realize would occur until after devices are implanted so there is a regulatory control over medical devices long term that are implanted in the body things like pacemakers things along those lines for the wearables or the the non-medical applications that tends to be more of a buyer beware market right and and things do become Obsolete and I don't know that there's been a lot of thought given to that we did not hear much about that um so Gord asks about the actual implant itself actually along these lines and that uh concerns about the brain developing scar tissue or the interface not working after some period of time is that something that you um heard about so that I think that's always possible Right with a medical device we did not hear any specific cases where that was true but I suspect concerns on the part of the FDA over whether that might occur might be one reason that these devices are still in clinical trials for a lengthy period of time obviously if you're working in the brain that's a very sensitive part of the body we can't afford for things to go wrong there so I suspect the clinical trial process might be a little longer than they would be for an implanted device elsewhere in the body Uh Kevin has a great question it's pretty specific so I don't know if you've heard of this specifically but he asked about AI assisted BCI for therapy uh involving OCD where patients were reporting losing some sense of selfhood is something like that or or other studies that are similar where they're you know are there ethical issues presented with that with with patients losing other senses I guess so that's an interesting question and not a specific circumstance that we heard about or that I heard about at least as we were doing this work I I will note that you do sometimes and I'm not quite sure what direction the the questioner is heading with this but um there are some blurry lines between bcis and other Technologies so there's another set of Technologies called neuromodulation or sometimes it's called neurostimulation that is designed to affect the brain and the way we think through giving it feedback so for example I I met with an innovator at a conference who is working with a headset that looks you know very much like a VR headset that is trying to control PTSD through the the sounds and the light patterns that they send through the headset to the user that would not be considered a brain computer interface in the classical sense it's a device that's intending to affect the brain wave so so there is a connection there but the the control using the brain waves to control device is not quite as clearly there so this is a place where the lines get a little blurry and I'm not familiar with the OCD devices what which side of that line they fall on that's fair um so uh Lucas wants to know about Sir more broadly as this becomes commercialized in the near future uh do you think the Market's going to be really fragmented or do you think that big platforms are going to be um you know is it going to be like the App Store I guess Lucas forgive me if I just murdered your question that's another great question I suspect we know that currently the market for for wearable devices which are the only ones that are currently marketable is roughly two and a half billion dollars a year right now and increasing in the single high double low double digit percentages so 12 13 a year increasing so there is a significant market for this already it will probably continue to grow the wearable devices right now are largely used for non-medical purposes not entirely but largely so a lot of gaming some of those kinds of of uses of them in terms of whether the market will become fragmented I think that's more likely in the the wearable non-medical space than it is in the medical space I suspect in the medical space that the regulatory process is going to be such a heavy lift for companies to get through the clinical trial and approval process that that tends to consolidate the market rather than allowing it to expand so I mean do you think that there are going to be products when you talk about sort of like first movers um that are going to give some people you know a lot of this gets into a conversation about Equity I think an unfair advantage in certain areas over other people are what are some areas of concern there if indeed that is an area of concern my guess and nobody has a crystal ball right so I can't say exactly where the future will go on these but my guess is that in the early years potentially for a significant amount of time these are going to be rather expensive products that are going to be fairly Niche markets they're going to be like hoverboards when they came out right they were cool they were flashy everybody knew what they were but very few people actually bought one and and I think the same thing will happen here I think it will be a fairly small Market at first if at some point the applications become so compelling they improve our lives so much in some way and they aren't just a toy or a neat Jewish thing to play with then I could see the market broadening considerably and farm a far greater slice of the population becoming interested in them so Uma wants to know about the data and I mean you you touch from privacy a bit but she's worried in particular about like you know our insurance company is going to make decisions based on data about our thoughts or you know loan approval and employment she's just kind of wondering what your thoughts are on that it's a great question and I suspect eventually Regulators will Loop them in with other privacy laws that don't allow those kinds of data to be used so you can go to the doctor and be tested to see if you have the genes that predispose you to breast cancer for example and insurance companies cannot use those results to raise your premiums just because you might be more at risk because of your genetic profile that's written into law I suspect in those kinds of cases similar laws or addendums to laws would be written to prevent the use of that for those purposes yeah so Chris wants to know I think a logical extension of this quest of Loomis question is you know will they be able to really read and represent thoughts and then of course I go to when am I going to see movies in my dreams so in terms of mind reading we all go there right can they can they read my mind and tell everything I'm thinking at every moment the answer to that currently is is a clear and resounding no they absolutely cannot do that all they can do is try to interpret what mechanical motion for the most part you're you are trying to send what signal you are trying to send to move a device to to you know click on a virtual keyboard so that you can spell out words to do something like that it's not that they're reading everything you're thinking there's too much going on in the brain for that the probes have to be placed in a certain place they're normally placed in a place that will allow them to read the signals that that do something in particular like move your arm or move your leg or something along those lines they're not reading your whole brain and interpreting everything that's going on in your mind at any given time could we get there someday maybe but we're very very far from that now so um but on so Jay Craig's asking a question around keyboards and mice and accessing devices do you see it replacing potentially like point and click but maybe not like transcribing email with just thoughts or is is is is that where where do you see is like the low-hanging fruit versus the um you know the self-driving car we're all promised that's maybe far uh further out than we think another great question I I think most of the research that's underway right now and we don't have specific numbers on this right how many studies on each thing but the the bulk of the focus of the research seems to be dealing with paralysis and dealing with communication so people who can't speak or who are you know paralyzed and can't type or or you know otherwise access the normal communication devices that we all use there is a lot of research going into allowing bcis to let somebody text on a smartphone let somebody make a call on a smartphone uh as I said sending a a signal to a virtual keyboard so that you can click on you know the letters you want to spell something out there's a lot of work going on in that area and I think that will continue to be a focal area so Megan Megan's asking about why not as long as we're able to help you know uh you know differently abled people and enhance their capabilities and perhaps even give them abilities that um you know we without um those encumbrances uh may have like where's the line in your mind between okay now we're giving people superpowers and um now we're getting I mean is is it is it about allowing somebody uh who who isn't able to do certain normal what one might consider um you know an able-bodied person to easily be able to do um is is it about getting them to a Level Playing Field or are we really trying to to raise the bar and you know where's that line for you I think it I don't know where that I know where my line is right I think as a society though we've seen over and over that there is Broad societal acceptance to help people regain lost function or to bring them into the mainstream where they can function fully in society they can fully participate and not be excluded from anything I think when you start to cross that line though society as a whole starts to get really nervous and starts to pull back and just as an example to give you an example of that think about the Blade Runner right so people who are amputees who replaced their lower limbs with a prosthetic that's blade shaped and that allows them to run for example in the Olympics and we remember Oscar pretorius Pistorius right and and other and others Society is okay with that if it brings it up to a Level Playing Field but as soon as it starts to feel like it conveys an unfair Advantage particularly in a competitive Arena like sports people start to get very uncomfortable and pull back and I suspect as a society we just sort of have an internal regulatory mechanism that doesn't like that to happen and I think we have to think as a society though about people who have nefarious intent and who will not stop at those societal Comfort lines and who will try to push past them for reasons of Their Own and where do you think some of the obvious places that you know Lex Luthor is going to potentially want to get a BCI because you know Lex Luthor can then do x y z where are some of the things that you that for you are cause for concern I don't know as a scientist if I'm as imaginative as a lot of the people that are probably in this webinar and could think of a lot of areas where that might go I can think of a few though I can imagine somebody for example wanting to have let's say a bodyguard force a protective force on Army however larger scale we want to imagine that that has you know faster firing ability with their weapons that that is stronger doesn't doesn't get tired as fast that um maybe can be uh can can learn not to be afraid and not to have that initial hesitation I can see lots of areas in that realm where somebody might be thinking and working toward could we get to that stage because that would give me an advantage over my adversary I could definitely imagine that so we have a number of questions about Alzheimer's are you aware of um ways in which BCI May uh impact Alzheimer's research so we did not include any Alzheimer's examples in our report and I think one of the reasons and this is probably not the only reason but one reason is that we really still don't understand Alzheimer's very well we don't understand fully what causes it we don't understand how to treat it that's why we don't have a good treatment most of the treatments medically that have been geared toward Alzheimer's have been geared toward preventing the formation of the brain plaques that form in Alzheimer's or removing them after they have been formed and many of those treatments are not working well in clinical trials so that's an indicator that we probably don't really understand all of the complexity of what causes Alzheimer's until we know that until we understand the mechanism there's really it would be very difficult to Target a BCI toward addressing those concerns um so uh D grouped has a question I think is interesting uh so we addressed uh companies deciding not to support a medical product that has been implanted in your brain what if that company goes bankrupt does is this something that uh you know FDA or policy considers uh before people start getting these devices implanted so we did not look specifically at that as part of our work but but I would say I don't think in this case a BCI is any different than a pacemaker or any other implanted device where the company that implants it could go bankrupt particularly if it's found to have a flaw and they get sued by you know a million people who got that that device I think there's there's it's never a perfect risk-free world right but we did not look at any specific cases of liability so um DN is asking about neurolink which I think is Elon Musk famously funded and is probably the best known of these kinds of private companies um I may be wrong about that but I'm seeing you not so there you go um you know where like where are um what sort of they're asking specifically what's your opinion on neuralink but I I would broaden that question out a little bit to say you know there are a lot of private companies that are doing a lot of interesting things like what's your sort of state of State on where um you know broadly where some of these private companies are going what do you think is interesting right now so to the extent the the main gatekeeper that I want to keep emphasizing to the extent that that we're talking about implantable devices they've got to go through FDA they have to get FDA approval so they that's a very rigorous regulatory process it takes many years to get a device through clinical trials and and so you know it's one thing to say we're going to have a device implanted in somebody in six months which I believe I have read Elon Musk has said about neurolink uh that that requires approval just to put it into patients requires approval but even then getting from there to Market is often a many year process with with heavy regulatory steps along the way in terms of of what's promising I think there's a lot out there that's promising I think we have the potential to really make a difference in in the lives of people who right now are not able to fully participate in society one way or another whether it's movement whether it's communication whether it's activities that they would like to be able to do and cannot uh because of you know stroke or paralysis or a variety of other conditions that to me is the really exciting space I'm uh for for me I'm a scientist and so that's that's where I tend to think I'm less I just don't get as excited about the the gaming applications and the things along those lines they're fun they're useful there's going to be a market for those there's no doubt but to me that's not where the real promise lies the real promise isn't truly changing people's lives so we have a number of people who are asking the Classic Hollywood writers question um looking at you Chris uh asking about what about actually controlling somebody's brain with one of these things how how far away are you worried about that is I know you've talked about security um that uh that seems like that seems like that's the movie that writes itself right there so what are your thoughts on that as a concept it's certainly possible down the road right we're not anywhere near that point yet uh but when we have a bi-directional BCI where the signal can go both ways and as I said earlier there are some good benign valuable reasons to do that to have signals going back into the brain but once you can do that particularly for wireless devices they become hackable and at that point what signals could you send to somebody and that is a concern I think has it ever happened no we're not at that point yet right where somebody could send signals back and control somebody's brain or or their own movement right could you make them throw themselves off a cliff by sending signals back in the other direction we're nowhere near that point but I do think as a society we have to be aware of that and concerned about it and figure out how to put the guard rails in place as best we can to prevent those kinds of Harms um so I had to Google hydrocephalus are you familiar with this as a brain condition at all karen because uh there's a question involving bcis in that particular condition so I am I am very Loosely aware of what hydrocephalus is I am not aware of applications or bcis in that space okay um so sorry Sandra um so what about uh bcis as they work perhaps in concert I suppose with uh other movement controls like eye movements or blinks is this something are there people working on those kinds of devices so I think we already have devices in that realm right and again this is outside the scope of our work so I'm not going to be able to go very far with this answer but we we have devices that already interpret those things there are devices for example that sense that sends the tracking of your eye some of the devices in your car that tell you the driver needs to stop for coffee are tracking your eye movement right and they're they're figuring out that your eyes aren't where they're supposed to be or they're they're staying too long off to the side looking at you know the deer you just drove by or something like that so um some of that eye tracking already exists even in in spheres where we're not aware of it but in terms of the link between that and bcis that goes outside the work we did so uh Donna has a question that I'm not sure applies but I love the creativity of it and so I'm going to I'm going to ask it to you anyway Karen so forgive me in advance sorry Donna if uh and if I called you out here but so she's referencing an episode of Alias the TV show that was on maybe I don't know 15 years ago and she I guess in that episode they were using the unique signature of a person's brain waves to serve as a way of locating an individual um and she wants to know if there's any truth to this idea that there may be a unique signature to the way your brain waves are operating that could then be used as an identifier so in in Broad terms yes we all give off different brain signals in uh specifics for for trying to imagine how a device like that might work for tracking purposes it would have to have the data on your brain signals already to compare it to so we would have to know what set of brain signals it was looking for and it would have to have a way to read those from a distance because tracking would require being able to read it from a distance currently neither of those Technologies exists could it exist down the road possibly hmm uh that's I love I love plausible plausible but far um so um uh I'm so sorry uh D DM I'm not going to be able to pronounce your uh first name but I love your question they so we talked about Alzheimer's briefly what about other ways that this may um support a better lifestyle uh greater longevity greater ability for the elderly to do things like live in their own home ex you know just have a better quality of life what are some areas that excite you so I don't think we came across very many applications in that specific area in just normal aging right I think most of the applications that are currently being researched are more geared toward uh the stroke and paralysis realm for example uh but I could imagine the potential for it to be used in a for example I could imagine a BCI being helpful for helping somebody who was having balance issues right one of the issues with the elderly living in their own homes is that the older we get the worse our balance gets and the harder it is for us to not fall right Falls become more problem problematic and perhaps there would be a way to design a BCI that would allow you to control your your motion your walking motion and so on with more stability and more balance than you can naturally do on your own which might allow you to age in your own homework gracefully as I said I we did not come across any applications like that but I could imagine it being something like that being developed yeah I'd imagine for someone with like osteoporosis or something that preventing a fall in that way would be a huge difference yes it falls are the main reason people end up in nursing homes they fall and they can no longer function then in their own environment um um so uh Matson wants to know it's hard he said uh it's hard to verify claims that commercial companies are making about non-invasive pro products that are on the market currently is there a sense of whether or how the government will regulate regulate or standardize uh the the way we validate these project products that are coming on the market and you know the veracity of the claims that is a really interesting question I could imagine Regulatory Agencies getting involved if they think there's a public safety angle so it wouldn't necessarily have to be a medical application but if they think that there's a reason that false claims would lead to public safety concerns I could see them getting involved with that uh Dave has an interesting question uh so we've talked about how these bcis can interact with uh motor skills and but what about other systems and uh specifically Dave references the endocrine system so I don't I know for sure we don't talk about that in our report and I'm not aware that we came across any information on that on on the brain controlling hormonal function I now I will say that said there there are already devices that control for example insulin pumps right automated insulin pumps that that type 1 diabetics can wear to keep their insulin under control those have to be adjusted periodically they have to be calibrated periodically there could be a way for those to be integrated with a BCI or something that delivers some other endocrine component to be integrated with a BCI but as I said we didn't come across anything like that in our research okay um let's see sorry I'm now I'm now on in a bit of catch-up um oh uh well I've got two two low-hanging fruit questions here Susan wants to know which SUNY campus did you go to and Norbert would like to know uh who's your favorite sci-fi Rider wow so I went to SUNY environmental science and Forestry which is in Syracuse it is attached to and affiliated with Syracuse University but it is a SUNY campus my PhD is in environmental chemistry so that was a very logical campus for me to go to and my favorite sci-fi writer I I know this is not the right thing to say to this crowd but I actually don't read much sci-fi so I don't have a good answer for you there I like Jules Verne although I realize not a modern writer solid um so um so are you familiar with neuromodulation Loosely yes but not in great detail so David would like to know why neural modulation and bcis are being been separately and perhaps for those Among Us guilty right here don't know what it is if you could maybe say your loose definition sure so there there have been separately by some people let me uh be clear that the definitions are different depending on who you talk to so uh in in our report we separated those to to a significant degree bcis as we Define them are the brain controlling a device and sometimes with a bi-directional feedback back into the brain like like the touch that we talked about before neuromodulation is actually designed the other direction it's designed to influence the brain so you you send signals that that affect the brain patterns the the neurological processes that are going on in the brain I mentioned one earlier one of the innovators I encountered at a conference is doing that uh using neuromodulation through a VR headset to help control pts PTSD so it's uh in my mind they're different because the intention is different a brain computer interface is intended to control something out predominantly and neuromodulation is intended to control in that that's the only distinction I have for it but there are other lots of other definitions that are perfectly valid okay I think an extension of that Kiran and Jack have similar questions uh Karen wants to know about the um the clinical uh applications for BCI and Jack specifically wants to know about addiction is it is it being used uh to help with uh fighting addiction the addiction question is fascinating my husband was actually an addiction counselor for 25 years I did I had not thought of it in that angle I don't believe we came across studies on that I know for sure they're not in our report as and I don't think we came across them either but I could easily see it being used for that purpose right more perhaps in the neuromodulation sense the affecting the way our brains think and operate than in the outward direction that we're thinking of with a BCI but yes I I could imagine it being used in that space and I lost your other question so it was it was more generally clinically and I think we could also we've got Patrick asking about bipolar disorder so I don't know much and we didn't research much about psychological applications again I think those would be more in the neuromodulation space than in the BCI space as as I'm defining them you know the the outwardly directing versus inwardly trying to affect the way the brain is functioning clinical applications of BCI is the way we're describing them currently have been predominantly focused on dealing with paralysis uh recovery from stroke things along those lines the paralysis may or may not be stroke related so there are other reasons of course that people become paralyzed uh and and stroke recovery a lot of the clinical trial type of work that's underway now is in that area not all of it necessarily but a lot of it so Nicole's asking about um accessibility and economics and you know Equity basically and I know we I know really touched on this but is there something to underline or expound upon when it comes to the differentiation between the ultra Rich having access to a medical device and the ultra-rich having access to a device that might give them an edge in let's say Law School so you're asking if there are different Equity concerns between those two categories of of inequity basically yeah I don't think we touched on that I think we may have touched on the equity question more generally but yeah it's an interesting question based on our historical record in the U.S and where the regulatory process tends to go I would think there would be more likely to be governmental intervention to make sure that people who need medical care get it right regardless of their ability to pay so whether that comes in the form of requiring insurance companies to cover something or making sure that public Insurance programs such as Medicare Medicaid and so on cover these devices there's usually a way for the government to intervene in the market and drive insurance companies toward coverage for something that that has a proven medical Effectiveness when you're talking about something more like giving me an advantage for getting into law school then you start to fall into the category of like SAT prep right or MCAT prep or and and the government typically does not intervene in those types of situations it's much more likely to be you know who the marketplace is out there it functions on its own some can afford it some can't uh and there's less I've seen historically less governmental intervention in that space um PK is wondering where the public can have a look at the GAO report which I don't know if we've actually provided a link that's a great question the GAO report is publicly available and If you just do a Google search on GAO brain computer interface I suspect it'll pop up I don't know if if there's a place that the actual link could be added to the Q a box or something else that the audience can see but it is certainly publicly available there you go there's a link right there thank you Jessica um let's see we have just a couple more questions yet um I guess I should ask you the obligatory was there something we didn't get to in this that you wanted to discuss before I just get to a few more questions you've been very efficient by the way answering these questions well thank you uh I don't think you missed anything it was a very thorough discussion the one thing that really intrigues me as I look forward and this is because it comes up in a lot of our work is the concept of potentially hacking brain signals hacking these devices right to collect brain signals and storing them in case they might be useful someday and just to give a real world analysis uh analogy of this I guess we know for example that we have adversary Nations China as one that have hacked a lot of our data encrypted data and storing it they have no way to get into it right now because the encryption is too strong but this is a whole other topic but quantum computers will eventually get us to the point that a lot of the cryptographic methods we use now will become breakable and the the thinking is that China and other adversaries are storing those data until the day that the technology gets to the point that they can be decrypted same kind of idea could easily happen with brain data right people once we get the ability to hack it and store it then you just hold on to it until the technology gets us to the point where we can use it for something so it's an interesting question and and it intrigues me wow um that is also terrifying yes um Harris asks uh what is the frequency range currently used by bcis do you know I do not know um and we have a couple people asking about tinnitus or tinnitus depending on your politics on how that's pronounced do you know if there's anything around tinnitus and uh and bcis I do not okay um okay let's go I'm just trying to get to the last couple ones we've only got a minute left uh by the way great questions everybody uh so uh Genevieve you're gonna get the last question do you see the market for bcis oh no being more in the sorry though my screen jumped being more in the private sector or the public sector and if they are a private sector um are you concerned about regulating I think the market meaning the who who buys them and how will be more in the private sector and I think that's typically true even for the medical market right it's typically private sector driven however if it's medical it will be regulated and in many cases applications in other fields will also be regulated for example the use of bcis to fly a plane just to give one example those are going to be regulated just like any other pilot certification would be so uh the market mostly private the regulation though definitely being involved in certain spheres well Karen thank you for the work that you're doing at the government accountability office I'm um also just so thrilled to be connected to you I thought this was fascinating well I noticed we've kept almost the entire audience so I think they found it fascinating as well I look forward to doing more events with you with you and maybe our next one will be on quantum computers now sounds great thank you for inviting us we've really enjoyed it thanks and Jessica did you have anything you wanted to add no this all sounds great thank you so much for having us Rick all right thanks to everybody we'll see you real soon

2023-02-25 07:55

Other news