Neuralink rival Precision Neuroscience is testing human brain implants | Wilnesh News

When the lights dimmed in the operating room at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, Dr. Joshua Bederson prepared to make history.

Bederson, system chair of neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Health System, is no stranger to long hours in the operating room. The former competitive gymnast, who has performed more than 6,500 moves in his career, said he visualizes the steps of each move as if he were rehearsing a routine.

On this particular morning in April, Bederson was preparing for surgery to remove a meningioma, which means he would be removing a benign brain tumor. Bederson said his main focus is always taking care of patients, but in some cases he can also help advance science.

This program is one such example.

A small crowd gathered as Bederson took his seat in the operating room, his silhouette glowing as bright white light shone down on the patient in front of him. Medical staff, scientists and CNBC all leaned forward, some through the windows to watch Bederson place Precision Neuroscience’s four electrode arrays on the surface of a patient’s brain for the first time.

An electrode is a small sensor that can detect and carry electrical signals, and an array is a grid of electrodes. Neurosurgeons use electrodes during certain surgeries to help monitor and avoid important parts of the brain, such as areas that control speech and movement.

Precision is a three-year-old startup dedicated to developing brain-computer interfaces (BCI). BCI is a system that decodes neural signals and converts them into external technological commands. Perhaps the most well-known company in the field is Neuralink, which is owned by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk.

Other companies, such as Synchron and Paradromics, have also developed BCI systems, although their goals and designs vary. According to its website, the first application of the Precision system will be to help severely paralyzed patients regain functions such as speech and movement.

Precision’s flagship BCI is called the Layer 7 Cortical Interface. It is an array of microelectrodes that are thinner than a human hair and resemble a piece of yellow Scotch tape. Each array is made up of 1,024 electrodes, and Precision says it can conform to the surface of the brain without damaging any tissue.

According to Precision, when Bederson used four of the company’s arrays during surgery in April, he set a record for the most electrodes placed on the brain in real time. But perhaps more importantly, these arrays can detect signals from each of a patient’s fingers, capturing far more detail than standard electrodes.

Ignacio Saez, associate professor of neuroscience, neurosurgery and neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said using Precision’s electrode array is like converting a pixelated, low-resolution image into a 4K image. Saez and his team oversee Precision’s collaboration with Mount Sinai.

“Instead of giving me 10 electrodes, you gave me 1,000 electrodes,” Saez told CNBC. “The depth, resolution and detail you’re going to get are completely different, even though they reflect to some extent the same underlying neural activity.”

Knowing this level of detail could help doctors be more cautious in future surgeries and other interventions, Bederson said. For Precision, the ability to record and decode signals from individual fingers is critical as the company works to ultimately help patients regain fine motor control.

These numbers mark a milestone for Precision, but there’s still a long way to go before it can achieve some of its more lofty goals. The company is still working to gain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and has yet to implant a more permanent version of its technology into patients.

“I think these are just small steps toward the ultimate goal of brain-computer interfaces,” Bederson told CNBC.

Inside the operating room

Bederson’s surgery in April wasn’t Precision’s first rodeo. In fact, this marks the 14th time the company has placed its arrays on the brains of human patients.

Precision has been working with academic medical centers and health systems on a series of first-in-human clinical studies. The goals of each study vary, and the company announced its collaboration with Mount Sinai in March.

At Mount Sinai, Precision is exploring different applications for its array in clinical settings, such as how it can be used to help monitor the brain during surgery. During these surgeries, surgeons like Bederson temporarily place Precision’s arrays on patients who are undergoing brain surgery for medical reasons.

Patients gave prior consent to participate.

In this type of surgery, neurosurgeons typically use electrodes to map signals in the brain. Bederson said currently accepted practice is to use anywhere from four to nearly 100 electrodes, a far cry from the 4,096 electrodes he planned to test.

Precision’s arrays are used in only a fraction of these surgeries, so CNBC joined the operating room once the surgeries began in April.

The patient, who asked to remain anonymous, was sleeping at the time. Bederson’s team has removed part of their skulls, leaving an opening the size of a credit card. Four of Precision’s arrays are carefully placed on a nearby table.

After the patient’s condition stabilized, Precision employees began to enter the operating room. They help secure the array in an arc around the patient’s head opening and connect the long blue bundle of wires at the other end to a cart filled with equipment and monitors.

Dr. Benjamin Rapoport, Precision’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, watched quietly. Every major surgery carries some risks, but the soft-spoken neurosurgeon’s calm demeanor never wavered. He told CNBC that each new case is as exciting as the last, especially because the company is still learning.

As Precision’s preparations came to an end, Bederson entered the operating room. He helped make some final adjustments to the equipment and the overhead lights in the operating room were turned off.

The constant chatter turned to hushed whispers. Bederson is ready to go.

He first carefully pulled back a layer of fibrous membrane called the dura mater to expose the surface of the brain. He placed standard electrode strips on tissue for a few minutes, and then he could test Precision’s technology.

Bederson began placing all four of the Precision’s electrode arrays onto the patient’s brain using yellow forceps called long bayonet forceps. He positioned the first two arrays with ease, but the last two were slightly more challenging.

Bederson was studying a small section of brain tissue, which meant the array needed to be angled just right to lay flat. For reference, imagine lining up the ends of four separate tape measures in a surface area approximately the size of a rubber band. It took some reconfiguration, but within minutes, Bederson had achieved it.

A real-time rendering of the patient’s brain activity sweeps across Precision’s monitor in the operating room. All four arrays are working.

Bederson said in an interview after the surgery that placing all four arrays at the same time was “complicated” and “a little awkward.” From a design perspective, he said two arrays with twice the number of contact points, or longer arrays with greater spacing would help.

Bederson likens arrays to spaghetti, which is an apt description. From where you watch CNBC, it’s hard to tell where one event stops and the next begins.

Once all the arrays are in place and actively detecting signals, Precision’s Rapoport stands at the monitors with his team to help oversee data collection. He said the study was the product of a true team effort between the company, the health system and patients, who often don’t see the benefits of the technology at this stage.

“It takes a village to get something like this going,” Rapoport said.

CNBC left the operating room as Bederson began removing the tumor, but he said the case was going well. The patient woke up with some weakness in his foot because the surgery was performed on that part of the brain, but Bederson said he expects the foot to recover in about three to four weeks.

Rapoport attended this particular surgery because of his role at Precision, but he is very familiar with Mount Sinai’s operating rooms.

Rapoport is a practicing surgeon and serves as an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Rapoport reported to Bedford, and Bedson said the two had known each other since Rapoport was an intern at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Thomas Oxley is the CEO of BCI competitor Synchron and a faculty member under Bederson. Synchron makes a stent-like BCI that is inserted into a patient’s blood vessel. As of early February, the company had implanted its system in 10 human patients. It is also working toward FDA approval.

Bederson owns equity in Synchron, but he told CNBC he didn’t realize the extent to which that would prevent him from participating in the Synchron team’s research. He has no monetary investment in Precision.

“I really don’t want to have any financial stake in Precision because I think it has an equally promising future and want to advance the science as quickly as possible,” Bederson said.

Rapoport also helped co-found Musk’s Neuralink in 2017, but he left the company the following year. Neuralink is building a brain-computer interface designed to be inserted directly into brain tissue, and the company recently received approval to implant it in a second human patient. wall street journal on Monday.

Bederson said that as the brain-computer interface industry heats up, the amount of knowledge scientists have about the brain will “explode” in the next few years. Companies like Precision are just getting started.

“I really feel like the future is an exciting place to be,” Bederson said.

Rapoport said Precision hopes to gain FDA approval for a wired version of its system “within a few months.” He said the version seen by CNBC in the operating room could be used in a hospital setting or in a monitored care unit for up to 30 days at a time.

Precision’s permanent implants will transmit signals wirelessly and will undergo a separate FDA approval process.

Rapoport said Precision hopes to implant a wired version of its technology in “dozens” of patients by the end of the year. He said the data collection will give the company confidence in its ability to decode motion and speech signals in real time.

“Within a few years, we will have a more advanced version of the technology,” Rapoport said.