Below is a transcript of the video.
Matt Angle: The brain is a super fascinating organ. We have about 85 billion neurons, each of which is a million times slower than a computer chip. However, the brain is capable of incredible things.
But this means that if you want data to flow in and out of the brain, you have to be able to talk to a lot of different neurons at the same time. That’s the whole point of building these high-speed, high-data-rate devices.
My name is Matt Angle, and I am the CEO and founder of Paradromics.
Paradromics’ mission is to transform otherwise untreatable health conditions in brain health into solvable technology problems. We are fundamentally building a medical device to address an unmet need.
What it does is allow us to connect to the brain and receive data from the brain. These medical devices are prescribed by doctors. They are implanted into the patient. Their costs are paid by private insurance companies.
I think a reasonable expectation for a device like this is about $100,000 per device.
The first patients to benefit from Paradromics’ technology will be patients who have lost the ability to communicate due to paralysis – patients with ALS and spinal cord injuries who are struggling to regain normal communication with their families.
But the same type of device can also read out information such as whether someone is depressed or whether someone is experiencing chronic pain. So we see the real clinical impact of BCI (brain-computer interface) is that it will become the first line of treatment for many people with neurological health problems.
Vikash Girja: My name is Vikash Girja. I’m the chief scientific officer of Paradromics. The reason we chose to focus on movement and speech is because these are widely used in our research community and the science exists. Paradromics can therefore leverage science and apply the right engineering techniques to move us from research to medical devices. The Paradromics system involves implanting an array of electrodes on the brain.
Such implanted devices generate data and require power. In this way, data is sent through this cable, and the leather module receives power through this cable.
This cable is then connected to an internal chest-based transceiver. Now, this internal transceiver is designed to be fully implantable, so there are no wires or ports from the body to the outside.
This is accomplished by wirelessly transmitting power to the device and high-throughput data from the device outside the body. The device does not require any charging.
One of the things you have to do as a user is go through a short calibration routine to understand the mapping from electrical signals to intent. But once you understand the mapping, you can use the system.
We know from existing research in this area that we can sustain this use for days or weeks.
Mr. Nakajima: My name is Mr. Nakajima. I work on developing the process or selecting the materials we want to use to build the cortical module, which is the brain-implanted part of our system.
This is the feedthrough – so this component will go into our neural implant package, which will protect the computer chip inside our implant. I’m looking for any foreign matter that may be present on the surface of the part.
This is a neural implant, and what we see is the packaging with a computer chip inside. On this side of the package, we have hundreds of electrodes that detect neural signals from the brain.
Each dot you see on the screen is an electrode connected to the packaging. One of the things we do in this inspection lab is make sure these electrodes adhere well to the packaging.
Angle: Our first human trial will be in 2025.
Product no earlier than 2029.
We see that the first people with access to brain-computer interfaces will be able to treat serious diseases.
I think there may be a different conversation 20 years from now, and there may be consumer applications for some of these devices as well. But at the same time, we’re really focused on building safe, reliable, powerful devices for people with physical and mental issues.
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