Neuralink & Technologies to Enhance Human Brains | Dr. Matthew MacDougall

1. 0:00 – 4:05

   Dr. Matthew MacDougall

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Dr. Matthew McDougall. Dr. Matthew McDougall is the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink. Neuralink is a company whose goal is to develop technologies to overcome specific clinical challenges of the brain and nervous system, as well as to improve upon brain design, that is, to improve the way that brains currently function by augmenting memory, by augmenting cognition, and by improving communication between humans and between machines and humans. These are all, of course, tremendous goals, and Neuralink is uniquely poised to accomplish these goals because they are approaching these challenges by combining both existing knowledge of brain function from the fields of neuroscience and neurosurgery with robotics, machine learning, computer science, and the development of novel devices in order to change the ways that human brains work for the better. Today's conversation with Dr. Matthew McDougall is a truly special one because I and many others in science and medicine consider neurosurgeons the astronauts of neuroscience and the brain, that is, they go where others have simply not gone before and are in a position to discover incredibly novel things about how the human brain works because they are literally in there probing, and cutting, stimulating, et cetera, and able to monitor how people's cognition, and behavior, and speech changes as the brain itself is changed structurally and functionally. Today's discussion with Dr. McDougall will teach you how the brain works through the lens of a neurosurgeon. It will also teach you about Neuralink-specific perspective about which challenges of brain function and disease are immediately tractable, which ones they are working on now, that is, as well as where they see the future of augmenting brain function for sake of treating disease and for simply making brains work better. Today's discussion also gets into the realm of devicing the peripheral nervous system. In fact, one thing that you'll learn is that Dr. McDougall has a radio receiver implanted in the periphery of his own body. He did this not to overcome any specific clinical challenge, but to overcome a number of daily everyday life challenges and in some ways to demonstrate the powerful utility of combining novel machines, novel devices with what we call our nervous system and different objects and technologies within the world. I know that might sound a little bit mysterious, but you'll soon learn exactly what I'm referring to, and by the way, he also implanted his family members with similar devices. So while all of this might sound a little bit like science fiction, this is truly science reality. These experiments, both the implantation of specific devices and the attempt to overcome specific movement disorders such as Parkinson's and other disorders of deep brain function, as well as to augment the human brain and make it work far better than it ever has in the course of human evolution, are experiments and things that are happening now at Neuralink. Dr. McDougall also generously takes us under the hood, so to speak, of what's happening at Neuralink, explaining exactly the sorts of experiments that they are doing and have planned, how they are approaching those experiments. We get into an extensive conversation about the utility of animal versus human research in probing brain function, and in devicing and improving the human brain, and in overcoming disease in terms of neurosurgery and Neuralink's goals. By the end of today's episode you will have a much clearer understanding of how human brains work and how they can be improved by robotics and engineering, and you'll have a very clear picture of what Neuralink is doing toward these goals. Dr. McDougall did his medical training at the University of California San Diego and at Stanford University School of Medicine, and of course is now at Neuralink. So he is in a unique stance to teach us about human brain function and dysfunction and to explain to us what the past, present, and future of brain augmentation is really all about.

2. 4:05 – 7:38

   Sponsors: HVMN, Levels, Thesis

   1. AHAndrew Huberman4:05

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is HVMN Ketone IQ. HVMN Ketone IQ increases blood ketones, and I want to be very clear that I, like most people, have heard of the ketogenic diet, but I, like most people, do not follow a ketogenic diet, that is, I'm not in ketosis. However, most people don't realize that you can still benefit from increasing your blood ketones, which is what HVMN Ketone IQ does. I take Ketone IQ prior to doing really focused cognitive work, so I take it once in the afternoon any time I'm going to prepare for a podcast or do a podcast or if I'm going to, uh, do some research or focus on a grant, anything that requires a high level of cognitive demand, and that's because ketones are the brain's preferred use of fuel even if you're not following a ketogenic diet. If you'd like to try Ketone IQ, you can go to HVMN.com/huberman to save 20% off your order. Again, that's HVMN.com/huberman to save 20%. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods and activities affect your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. Nowadays, there's a lot of excitement about continuous glucose monitors, and Levels allows you to assess how what you eat and what combinations of foods you eat, and exercise, and sleep, and things like alcohol, should you indulge in alcohol and things of that sort, how those impact your blood glucose. Now, it's very important that the cells of your body, and in particular, the cells of your nervous system, not experience levels of blood glucose that are too high or too low, so-called hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia. What Levels allows its users to do is to understand how their specific routines, food intake patterns, exercise, et cetera, impact their blood sugar levels. I, like most people who use Levels, find that there's a lot to learn and a lot to be gained by understanding these blood glucose patterns. If you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a continuous glucose monitor yourself, you can go to levels.link/huberman. Right now, Levels is offering an additional two free months of membership. Again, that's levels.link, L-I-N-K, /huberman to get two free months of membership. Today's episode is also brought to us by Thesis. Thesis makes custom nootropics, and as many of you have perhaps heard me say before, I am not a fan of the word "nootropics" because it literally means smart drugs, and the brain has neural circuits for focus, it has neural circuits for creativity, it has neural circuits for task switching, it does not have neural circuits for, quote-unquote, "smart drugs."... being smart. Thesis understands this and has designed custom nootropics, each of which is designed to place your brain and body into a specific state ideal for a particular type of work or physical effort such as creativity, or focus, or clarity. If you'd like to try Thesis Nootropics, you simply go to their website, you fill out a brief quiz and they will design a custom starter pack so that you can assess which things work for you more or less well. And then they'll iterate with you over the course of the next few weeks or months to come up with the ideal nootropic kit for your needs. To get your own personalized nootropic starter kit go online to takethesis.com/huberman. You can take that three-minute quiz and they'll send you four different formulas to try in your first month. Again, that's takethesis.com/huberman and use the code Huberman at checkout to get 10% off your first box. And now for my discussion with Dr. Matthew McDougall.

3. 7:38 – 13:52

   Brain Function & Injury; Brain Tumor Treatment

   1. AHAndrew Huberman7:38

      Dr. McDougall, welcome.

   2. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall7:40

      Good to be here.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman7:41

      Great.

   4. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall7:41

      Nice to see you, Andrew.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman7:42

      Great to see you again. Uh, we'll get into our history a little bit later but just to kick things off, as a neurosurgeon and as a neuroscientist could you share with us your vision of the brain as an organ as it relates to what's possible there.

   6. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall8:00

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman8:00

      I mean, I think most everyone understands that the brain is along with the body, the seat of our cognition, feelings, our ability to move, etc. And that damage there can limit our ability to feel the way we want to feel or move the way we want to move. But surgeons tend to view the world a little bit differently than most because as the not so funny joke goes, you know, they like to cut and they like to fix and they like to mend and they, in your case have the potential to add things into the brain that don't exist there already. So, how do you think about and conceptualize the brain as an organ and what do you think is really possible with the brain that most of us don't already probably think about?

   8. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall8:42

      Yeah, that's a great question. Thinking about the brain as this three pound lump of meat trapped in a prison of the skull, um, it seems almost magical that it could create a, uh, you know, human, a human set of behaviors and a life, um, merely from electrical impulses. Uh, when you start to see patients and see say a small tumor eating away at a little part of the brain, uh, and see a very discrete function of that brain go down in isolation, uh, you start to realize that the brain really is a collection of functional modules pinned together, duct taped together, um, in this, in this bone box attached to your head. Um, and, uh, sometimes you see very interesting failure modes. So, one of the most, uh, memorable patients I ever had was very early on in my training. I was down at UC San Diego and saw, um, a very young guy who had just been in a car accident. We had operated on him and, you know, as is so often the case in neurosurgery, we had saved his life potentially at the cost of quality of life. Um, when he woke from surgery with bilateral frontal lobe damage, he had essentially no impulse control left. And so, uh, you know, we rounded on him after surgery, saw that he was doing okay to our, you know, first guess a- at his health and we continued on to see our other patients. And we were called back by his, you know, 80-year-old recovery room nurse saying, "You've got to come see your patient right away. Something's wrong." And we walk in to see him and he points at his elderly nurse and says, "She won't have sex with me." Uh, and, you know, it was apparent at that moment his frontal lobes were gone and that person is never going to have reasonable human behavior again. Um, and, uh, that's, you know, it's one of the most tragic ways to have a brain malfunction. But, uh, you know, anything a brain does, anything from control of hormone levels in your body to vision, to sensation, to, you know, the most obvious thing which is m- muscle movement of any kind from eye movement to moving your bicep. Uh, all that comes out of the brain. All of it can go wrong. Uh, any of it, any part of it or all of it. Um, so, yeah, working with the brain is, uh, the substance of the brain as a surgeon very high stakes. Uh, but, you know, once in a while you get a chance to really help, you get a chance to fix something that seems unfixable and you have, you know, Lazarus like miracles not, not too uncommonly. Uh, so it' extremely satisfying as a career.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman11:45

      Could you share with us one of the more satisfying experiences?

   10. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall11:48

       Sure.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman11:49

       Um, or perhaps, uh, the top contour of what, um, qualifies as satisfying in, in neurosurgery?

   12. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall11:56

       Yeah. Um, you know, one of the relatively newer techniques that we do is, you know, if someone comes in with a, a reasonably small tumor somewhere deep in the brain that's hard to get to, the traditional approach to taking that out would involve cutting through a lot of good normal brain and disrupting a lot of neurons, a lot of white matter that, you know, kind of the wires connecting neurons. Um, then the modern approach involves a two millimeter drill hole in the skull down which you can pass a little fiber optic, uh, cannula and, and, uh, attach it to a laser and just heat the tumor up deep inside the brain under direct MRI visualization in real time. So, you're, this person is in the MRI scanner, you're taking pictures every second or so. As the tumor heats up you can monitor the temperature, uh, and get it exactly where you want it, where it's gonna kill all those tumor cells but not hurt hardly any of the brains surrounding it. And so not uncommon nowadays we have someone come in with a tumor that previously would have been catastrophic to operate on and we can eliminate that tumor with-... you know, leaving a poke hole in their skin, uh, with, uh, almost no visual, uh, after-effects.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman13:15

       So that procedure that you just described translates into better clinical outcomes, meaning fewer, let's call them side effects or collateral damage?

   14. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall13:26

       Exactly right, yeah. Uh, we don't, y- you know, even in cases that previously would have considered totally inoperable, say a tumor, uh, in the brainstem or a tumor in a primary motor cortex or primary, um, verbal areas, Broca's area, uh, where we would have expected to either not operate or do catastrophic damage, those people s- sometimes now are coming out unscathed.

4. 13:52 – 19:00

   Frontal Lobe Filter; Sleep Deprivation

   1. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall13:52

   2. AHAndrew Huberman13:52

      I'm very curious about the sorts of basic information about brain function that can be gleaned from these clinical approaches of-

   3. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall14:01

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman14:01

      ... lesions and, um, strokes and, um-

   5. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall14:04

      Yeah.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman14:04

      ... maybe even stimulation.

   7. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall14:06

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman14:06

      Uh, so for instance, in your example of this patient that had bilateral frontal damage, what do you think his lack of regulation reveals about the normal functioning of the frontal lobes? Because I think the obvious answer to most people is going to be, "Well, the frontal lobes are normally, um, limiting impulsivity."

   9. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall14:24

      Right.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman14:24

       But as we both know, because the brain has excitatory and inhibitory neurons, so sort of accelerators and brakes on communication-

   11. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall14:31

       Right.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman14:32

       ... th- that isn't necessarily the straightforward answer. Um, it could be, for instance, that the frontal lobes are, um, acting as conductors-

   13. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall14:41

       Right.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman14:41

       ... or, and are kind of, um, important but not the immediate players in determining impulsivity. So, um, two questions really. What do you think the frontal lobes are doing? Because I'm very intrigued by this, uh, human-expanded real estate.

   15. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall14:58

       Yeah.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman14:58

       We have a lot of it compared to other animals. And, um, more generally, uh, what do you think damage of a given neural tissue, um, means in terms of understanding the basic function of that tissue?

   17. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall15:10

       Yeah. It, it varies, I think f- from tissue to tissue. Um, but, uh, with respect to the frontal lobes, I think they act as sort of a, a filter. They selectively are saying, "Shh," backward to the rest of the brain behind them. Um, when part of your brain says, "That looks very attractive, I wanna go grab it and take it, uh, you know, out of the jewelry display case," or, you know, whatever, um, the frontal lobes are saying, "You can if you go pay for it first." Right? They're filtering the behavior. They're, they're letting the impulse through maybe, uh, but in a controlled way.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman15:46

       Mm-hmm.

   19. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall15:47

       Um, this is very high level, very broad, uh, uh, thinking about how the frontal lobes work. And that that patient I mentioned earlier is a great example of when they go wrong. You know, he had this impulse, this sort of strange impulse to, uh, be attracted to his nurse, uh, that normally it would be easy for our frontal lobes to say, "This is completely inappropriate. Wrong setting, wrong, uh, person, wrong time. Uh, shh." Uh, in his case, he had nothing there. And so even the slightest inclination to, uh, to want something came right up to the surface. Uh, so, um, yeah, a, a, a filter calming the rest of the brain down from acting on every possible impulse.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman16:35

       When I was a graduate student, I was, um, running what are called, you know these, uh, uh, what these are, but just to inform people, what are called acutes, which are, um, neurophysiological experiments that last several days because at the end you, uh, you terminate the animal.

   21. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall16:48

       Right.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman16:48

       This is, uh, uh, my apologies to those that, um, are made uncomfortable by animal research. I now work on humans, uh, so a different type of animal. But at the time, we were running these acutes that would start one day and, and maybe end two or three days la- later. And so you get a lot of data. The animal's anesthetized and doesn't feel any pain the entire time of the surgery. But the, um, one consequence of these experiments is that the experimenter, me and another individual, are awake for several days with-

   23. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall17:14

       Mm-hmm.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman17:14

       ... an hour of sleep here or an hour of sleep there, but you're basically awake for two, three days. Something that really I could only do in my teens and 20s. (laughs) Uh, I was in my 20s at the time. And I recall, um, going to eat at a diner after one of these experiments and I was very hungry. And the waitress walking by with a tray full of food for another table, and it took every bit of self-control to not get up and take the food off the tray, something that, of course, is totally inappropriate-

   25. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall17:42

       Right.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman17:42

       ... and I would never do. And it must have been, based on what you just said, that my forebrain was e- essentially going offline or offline from the sleep deprivation.

   27. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall17:51

       Right.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman17:51

       Because, uh, there was a moment there where I thought I might reach up and grab-

   29. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall17:55

       (laughs)

   30. AHAndrew Huberman17:55

       ... a plate of food pas- passing by simply because I wanted it.
5. 19:00 – 22:10

   Neuroplasticity, Pharmacology & Machines

   1. AHAndrew Huberman19:00

      So we've been talking about damage to the brain and inferring function from damage. Uh, maybe we could talk a little bit about...... what I consider really the holy grail of the nervous system, which is neuroplasticity-

   2. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall19:12

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman19:12

      ... this incredible capacity of the nervous system to change its wiring-

   4. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall19:17

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman19:17

      ... strengthen connections, weaken connections, maybe new neurons, but probably more strengthening and weakening of connections.

   6. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall19:22

      Right.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman19:23

      Nowadays, we hear a lot of excitement about so-called classical psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin, which do seem to, quote unquote, "open plasticity." They do a bunch of other things too, but, um, through the release of neuromodulators like serotonin and so forth. How do you think about neuroplasticity, and more specifically, what do you think the potential for neuroplasticity is in the adult, so let's say older than 25-year-old brain, with or without machines being involved?

   8. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall19:55

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman19:55

      'Cause, um, in your role at Neuralink and as a neurosurgeon in other clinical settings, um, surely you are using machines and surely you've seen plasticity in the positive and negative direction.

   10. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall20:07

       Right.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman20:08

       Uh, what do you think about plasticity? What's possible there without machines? What's possible with machines?

   12. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall20:15

       So, uh, as you mentioned or alluded to, the plasticity definitely goes down in older brains. Um, uh, it, it is harder for older people to learn new things, to make radical changes in their behavior, uh, to, you know, kick habits that they've had for years. Um, machines aren't the obvious answer, so implanted electrodes and computers aren't the obvious answer to increase plasticity necessarily compared to, uh, drugs. We already know that there are pharmacologics, some of the ones you mentioned, psychedelics, that have a broad impact on plasticity. Yeah, it, it's hard to know which area of the brain would be most potent, uh, as a stimulation target for an electrode, uh, to broadly juice plasticity, uh, compared to, uh, you know, pharmacologic agents that we already know about. Um, I think with plasticity, you're talking... in general, you're talking about the entire brain. You're talking about altering, you know, a trillion synapses all in a similar way, uh, in their tendency to be re-wirable, to, their tendency to be up or down weighted. Uh, and an electrical stimulation target in the brain necessarily has to be focused. You know, with a device like potentially Neuralink's, there might be a more broad ability to steer current, uh, to multiple targets, um, with some degree of control, but you're never going to get that broad, um, targetability with, uh, any electrodes that I can see coming in our lifetimes. S- say that would be coating the entire surface and depth of the brain the way that a drug can. And so I think plasticity research will bear the most fruit when it focuses on pharmacologic agents.

6. 22:10 – 31:05

   Neuralink, Neural Implants & Injury, Robotics & Surgery

   1. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall22:10

   2. AHAndrew Huberman22:10

      I wasn't expecting that answer given that you're at Neuralink. And, um, and then again, I think that all of us, me included, need to, um, take a step back and realize that while we may think we know what is going on at Neuralink in terms of the specific goals and the general goals, and I certainly have in mind, I think most people have in mind a chip implanted in the brain or maybe even the peripheral nervous system that can give people super memories or some other augmented capacity. We really don't know what you all are doing there.

   3. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall22:44

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman22:44

      Uh, for all we know, um, you guys are taking or administering psilocybin and combining that with stimulation. I mean, we really don't know. And I say this, um, with a, with a tone of excitement because, um, I think that one of the things that's so exciting about the different endeavors that Elon has really spearheaded, um, SpaceX, Tesla, et cetera, is that early on there's, there's a lot of mystique.

   5. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall23:08

      Right.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman23:08

      You know, mystique is a quality that, um, is not often talked about, but, um, it's, I think, a very exciting time in which, um, engineers are starting to, uh, toss up big problems and go for it. And, and obviously Elon is certainly among the best, if not the best, in terms of going really big. I mean, Mars seems pretty far to me.

   7. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall23:30

      Right.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman23:31

      Electric cars are all over the road nowadays. They're very different than the picture a few years ago-

   9. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall23:35

      Right.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman23:35

       ... uh, when you didn't see so many of them, rockets and so forth, and now the brain. So to the extent that you are allowed, um, could you share with us what your vision for the missions at Neuralink are and what the general scope of missions are? And then, um, if possible, uh, share with us some of the more specific goals. I can imagine basic goals of-

   11. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall24:00

       Yeah.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman24:00

       ... trying to understand the brain and augment the brain. I could imagine clinical goals of trying to repair things in, um, humans that are suffering in some way-

   13. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall24:07

       Yeah.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman24:07

       ... or animals for that matter.

   15. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall24:09

       Yeah, it's, it's funny what, what you mentioned. Uh, Neuralink and I think Tesla and SpaceX before it, uh, end up being these blank canvases that people project their hopes and fears onto. And so we, uh, we experience a lot of upside in this. People, you know, assume that we have superpowers, uh, in our ability to alter the way brains work, and people have terrifying fears of the horrible things we're gonna do. Uh, for the most part, those extremes are not true. Uh, you know, we are making a neural implant. We have a robotic insertion device that helps place tiny electrodes the size, uh, smaller than the size of a human hair, uh, all throughout a small region of the brain. Uh, in, in the first indication that we're aiming at, we are hoping to implant a series of these electrodes into the brains of people that have had a bad spinal cord injury, so people that are essentially quadriplegic. They have perfect brains, but they can't move, use them to move their body. They can't move their arms or legs-

   16. AHAndrew Huberman25:17

       Because of some high level spinal cord damage.

   17. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall25:20

       Exactly right. And so this...... you know, pristine motor cortex up in their brain is completely capable of operating a human body. It's just not wired properly any longer to a human's arms or legs. And so our goal is to, uh, place this implant, uh, into a motor cortex and have that person be able to then control, uh, a computer, so a mouse and a keyboard, uh, as if they had their hands on a mouse and a keyboard, even though they aren't moving their hands. Their motor intentions are coming directly out of the brain into the device. Uh, and so they're able to regain their digital freedom, uh, and connect with the world through the internet.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman26:04

       Why use robotics to insert these chips? And the reason I ask that is that, sure, I can imagine that a robot could be, um, more precise or less precise, but i- in theory more precise than the human hand. No tremor, for instance.

   19. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall26:20

       Right.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman26:20

       Um, uh, more precision in terms of, uh, maybe even a little, um, micro detection device on the, uh, the tip of the blade or, um, or something that could detect a, a capillary that you would want to avoid and swerve around that-

   21. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall26:37

       Exactly.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman26:37

       ... um, the human eye couldn't detect. And you and I both know, however, that no two brains nor are the two sides of the same brain identical.

   23. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall26:47

       Right.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman26:47

       So, navigating through the brain is perhaps best carried out by a human. However, and here I'm going to interrupt myself again and say 10 years ago, face recognition was very clearly performed better by humans than machines. And I think now machines do it better.

   25. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall27:10

       Right.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman27:10

       So is this the idea that eventually, or maybe even now, robots are better surgeons than humans are?

   27. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall27:17

       In, in this limited case, yes. Uh, these electrodes are so tiny and the blood vessels on the surface of the brain so numerous and so densely packed that a human physically can't do this. A f- a human hand is not steady enough to grab this, you know, m- couple micron width loop, uh, at the end of our electrode thread and place it accurately, uh, blindly, by the way, into the cortical surface, uh, accurately enough at the right depth to get through all the cortical layers that we want to reach. Um, and, uh, I would love if human surgeons were, you know, essential to this process. Um, but very soon, humans run out of motor skills sufficient to do this job. And so we are required, in this case, to lean on robots to do this incredibly precise, uh, incredibly fast, incredibly numerous placement of electrodes into the right area of the brain.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman28:19

       So in some ways, Neuralink is pioneering the development of robotic surgeons as much as it's pioneering the exploration and augmentation and treatment of human brain conditions.

   29. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall28:29

       Right. A- and as the device exists currently, uh, as we're submitting it to the FDA, it is only for the placement of the electrodes, uh, the, the robot as part of the surgery. Uh, I or, or another neurosurgeon still needs to do the m- you know, the more crude part of opening the skin and skull and presenting the robot a pristine brain surf- surface to sew electrodes into.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman28:53

       Well, surely getting quadriplegics to be able to move again or maybe even to walk again is a, um, heroic goal and one that I think everyone would agree would be wonderful to accomplish. Is that the first goal because it's hard but doable-
7. 31:05 – 32:20

   Sponsor: AG1 (Athletic Greens)

   1. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall31:06

   2. AHAndrew Huberman31:06

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called AG1, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012. So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or usually twice a day is that it gets me the probiotics that I need for gut health.Our gut is very important. It's populated by, uh, gut microbiota that communicate with the brain, the immune system, and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediate and long-term health. And those probiotics in Athletic Greens are optimal and vital for microbiotic health. In addition, Athletic Greens contains a number of adaptogens, vitamins, and minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met, and it tastes great. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and they'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, et cetera, and they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to get the five free travel packs and the year's supply of vitamin D3 K2.

8. 32:20 – 36:45

   Neocortex vs. Deep Brain

   1. AHAndrew Huberman32:20

      So for those listening, the, um, outer portions of the brain are, um, filled with, or consist of rather, uh, neocortex. So the, the bumpy stuff, um, that looks like, uh, sea coral. Um, some forms of sea coral, uh, look like brains or brains look like them. Um, and then underneath, uh, reside a lot of the brain structures that control, um, what Matt just referred to. Um, things controlling mood, hormone output, um, how awake or asleep the brain is. Um, and would you agree that those deeper regions of the brain have in some ways more predictable functions? I mean, that lesions there or stimulation there lead to more predictable outcomes in terms of deficits or, um, improvements in function?

   2. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall33:05

      Yeah. I- in some way, yes. I mean, the, the deeper parts of the brain tend to be more stereotyped, as in more similar between species than the, the outer surface of the brain. Uh, they're kind of the firmware or the, the housekeeping functions to some degree. Body temperature, blood pressure, sex motivation, um, hunger. Things that you don't really need to vary dramatically between a fox and a human being. Um, whereas the, the outer more reasoning functions, uh, of, problem solving functions, uh, between a fox and a human are vastly different. And so the physical requirements of, uh, those brain outputs are different.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman33:46

      I think I heard Elon describe it as, uh, the human brain is, um, essentially a monkey brain with a supercomputer placed on the outside. Uh, which, um, sparks some interesting ideas about what neocortex is doing. We have all this brain real estate on top of all that more stereotyped function type stuff in the deeper brain. Uh, and it's still unclear what neocortex is doing. In the case of frontal cortex, as you mentioned earlier, it's clear that it's, um, providing some shh, quieting of, of impulses. Um, some context setting, rule setting, context switching. Um, all of that, uh, makes good sense. But then there are a lot of cortical areas that, sure, are involved in vision or touch or hearing, but then there's also a lot of real estate that just feels un- unexplored.

   4. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall34:32

      Right.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman34:32

      So I'm curious whether or not in your clinical work or work with Neuralink, um, or both, whether or not you have ever encountered neurons that do something that's really peculiar and intriguing. Um, and here I'm referring to examples that could be anywhere in the brain.

   6. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall34:52

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman34:52

      Like where you go, "Wow, like, these neurons when I stimulate them or when they're taken away, leads to something kind of bizarre but interesting."

   8. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall35:01

      Yeah. Yeah. There, there's, um ... The one that comes immediately to mind is unfortunately in a, a terrible case in kids that have a, a tumor in the hypothalamus that lead to, uh, what we call gelastic seizures, which is sort of a f- an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Uh, there's been cases in the literature where this laughter is so uncontrollable, uh, and so pervasive that people suffocate, uh, from f- failing to breathe or they laugh until they pass out. Um, and so, you know, you don't normally think of a deep structure in the brain like the hypothalamus is being involved in the, you know, a function like, uh, humor. And, and certainly when we think about this kind of laughter in, in th- these kids with tumors, it's, um ... Mirthless laughter is the, the kind of textbook phrase. Um, humorless laughter. Uh, it's just a reflexive, um, almost zombie-like behavior, uh, and it comes from a very small population of neurons deep in the brain. Uh, this is one of the other sort of strange, uh, loss of functions you might say is, you know, it's, it's nice that you and I can sit here and not have constant, uh, disruptive fits of laughter coming out of our bodies. Um, but that, that's a neuronal function. That's, you know, thank goodness, due to neurons properly wired and properly functioning. And any neurons that do anything like this can be broken. Uh, and so we see this in horrifying cases like that from time to time.

9. 36:45 – 42:08

   Decoding Brain Signals

   1. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall36:45

   2. AHAndrew Huberman36:45

      So I'm starting to sense that there are two broad bins of approaches to augmenting the brain, either to treat disease or for sake of increasing memory, creating super brains, et cetera. One category you alluded to earlier, which is pharmacology.

   3. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall37:02

      Right.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman37:02

      And you specifically mentioned the, the tremendous power that pharmacology holds.

   5. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall37:07

      Right.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman37:07

      Whether or not it's through psychedelics or through prescription drug or, you know, some other compound. The other approach are these little microelectrodes that are extremely strategically placed-

   7. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall37:20

      Right.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman37:21

      ... into multiple regions in order to play essentially a concert of electricity that is exactly right to get a quadriplegic moving. Um, that sparks two questions. First of all-Is there a role for, and is Neuralink interested in combining pharmacology with stimulation?

   9. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall37:41

      So, n- not immediately. Right now, we're solely focused on the extremely hard, some might say the hardest problem facing humans right now, of decoding the brain through electrical stimulation and recording. Uh, that's- that's enough for us for now.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman37:56

       So, um, to just, uh, give us a bit fuller picture of this, you were talking about a patient who can't move their limbs because they've ha- have spinal cord damage.

   11. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall38:03

       Right.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman38:04

       Um, the motor cortex that controls movement is, in theory, fine.

   13. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall38:09

       Right.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman38:09

       You make a small hole in the skull, and through that hole, a robot is going to place electrodes obviously in motor cortex, but then where? How? Is the idea that you're going to play a concert from different locations, you're going to hit all the keys on the piano in different combinations and then figure out what can move the limbs? Um, what I'm alluding to here is, I still don't understand how the signals are going to get out of motor cortex past the lesion and into, um, and out to the limbs because the lesion hasn't been dealt with at all in this scenario.

   15. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall38:38

       So just to c- clarify there, I- I, um, should emphasize, we're not, in the immediate future, talking about reconnecting the brain to the patient's own limbs. That's on the roadmap, but it's way down th- the roadmap a few years. Um, what we're talking about in the immediate future is having the person be able to control electronic devices around them with their motor intentions alone, right? So-

   16. AHAndrew Huberman39:01

       Prosthetic hand and arm or just mouse and- and keys on a-

   17. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall39:05

       Mouse and keys on a keyboard for starters. So you wouldn't see anything in the world move. Uh, as they have an intention, the patient might imagine, say, flexing their fist or moving their wrist. And what would happen on the screen is the mouse would move down and left and click on an icon and bring up their word processor and then a keyboard at the bottom of the screen would, uh, allow them to, you know, select letters in sequence and they could type. Uh, this is w- the easy place to start, uh, "easy" in quotes. (laughs)

   18. AHAndrew Huberman39:37

       I would say because, um, the transformation of electrical signals from motor cortex through the brainstem into the spinal cord and out to the muscles is somewhat known-

   19. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall39:48

       Right.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman39:48

       ... thr- through 100 years or more of incredible laboratory research.

   21. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall39:52

       Right.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman39:52

       But the transformation, meaning how to take the electrical signals out of motor cortex and put it into a- a mouse or a robot arm, uh, that's not a trivial problem.

   23. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall40:02

       Right.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman40:02

       I mean, th- that's a whole other set of problems, in fact.

   25. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall40:05

       Well, w- we're take, we're unloading some of that difficulty from, uh, from the brain itself, from the brain of the patient, and putting some of that, uh, into software. So we're using smarter, uh, algorithms to decode the motor intentions out of the brain. We have been able to do this in monkeys really well, so we have, uh, you know, a small army of monkeys playing video games for, uh, you know, smoothie rewards. Um, and they do really well. We- we actually have the world record of, uh, bit rate of information coming out of a monkey's brain to, you know, intelligently control a cursor on a screen. Uh, we're doing that better than anyone else. Um, and, you know, again, thanks in no small part due to Krishna Shenoy and his, you know, his lab and the people that have worked for him that have been helping Neuralink. Um, but what you can't do with that monkey is ask him what- what he's thinking. You can't ask him-

   26. AHAndrew Huberman41:04

       Well, you can ask him, but he- you won't get a very interesting answer. (laughs)

   27. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall41:09

       (laughs) Yeah. Y- you can't tell him to try something different. You can't tell him to, "Hey, you know, try the shoulder on this, or try the other hand and see if there's some cross-body, uh, neuronal firing that- that gives you a useful signal." Once we get to people, uh, we expect to see what they've seen when they've done similar work in academic labs, which is the- the human can work with you to vastly accelerate this process and get much more interesting results. So one of the things, uh, out of- out of Stanford recently is, uh, there was a lab that, uh, with Krishna and Jamie Henderson and- and other people decode speech out of the hand movement area in the brain. So, uh, what we know is that there are, you know, multitudes of useful signals in each area of the brain that we've looked at so far. They just tend to be highly expressed for, say, hand movement in the hand area, but that doesn't mean only hand movement in the hand area.

10. 42:08 – 51:33

    “Confidence Test” & Electrical Stimulation; RFID Implants

    1. AHAndrew Huberman42:08

       Okay, so here's the confidence test. Uh, there's a long history, uh, dating back really prior to the 1950s of scientists doing experiments on themselves.

    2. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall42:19

       Sure.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman42:20

       Um, not because they are reckless, but because they want the exact sorts of information that you're talking about-

    4. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall42:26

       Right.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman42:26

       ... the ability to really understand how intention and awareness of goals can shape outcomes in biology. If that is vague to people listening, what I mean here is that for many, probably hundreds of years if not longer, scientists have taken the drugs they've studied or stimulated their own brain or done things to really try and get a sense of what the animals they work on or the patients they work on might be experiencing. Psychiatrists are sort of famous for this, by the way.

    6. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall42:54

       Right.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman42:55

       (laughs) Um, not pointing fingers at anybody, but psychiatrists are known to try the drugs that they administer.

    8. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall42:59

       Right.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman42:59

       And some people would probably imagine that's a good thing, um, just so that the clinicians could have empathy for the sorts of side effects and not-so-great effects of some of these drugs that they administer to- to patients. But the confidence test I present you is, would you be willing or are you willing, if allowed, to have these electrodes implanted into your motor cortex?

    10. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall43:27

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman43:27

        You're not a quadriplegic.

    12. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall43:28

        Right.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman43:29

        You can move your limbs-

    14. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall43:30

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman43:30

        ... but given the state of the technology at Neuralink now...... would you do that? Or maybe in the next couple of years, if you were allowed, would you be willing to do that?

    16. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall43:41

        Yeah, absolutely.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman43:41

        And be the person to say, "Hey, turn up the stimulation over there. I feel like I want to reach for the cup-"

    18. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall43:47

        Right.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman43:47

        "... with that robotic arm, but I'm, I'm feeling kind of some resistance." Because it's exactly that kind of experiment done on a, a person who can move their limbs and who deeply understands the technology and the goals of the experiment that I would argue actually stands to advance the technology fastest-

    20. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall44:05

        Sure.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman44:05

        ... as opposed to putting the electrodes first into somebody who, um, is impaired at a number of levels and then trying to think about why things aren't working.

    22. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall44:14

        Right.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman44:14

        Right? And again, you know, this is all with the, the goal of, of reversing paralysis in mind, um, but would you implant yourself with these microelectrodes?

    24. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall44:24

        Yeah, absolutely. I, I would be excited to do that. I think for the first iteration of the device, it probably wouldn't be very meaningful, it wouldn't be very useful because I can still move my limbs and our first outputs from this are things that I can do just as easily with my hands, right? Moving a mouse, typing on a keyboard. Um, we are necessarily making this device as a medical device for starters, for people with bad medical problems and no good options. Um, it wouldn't really make sense for an able-bodied person to get one in the near term. It, uh, a- as the technology develops and we make devices specifically designed to perform functions that can't be done even by an able-bodied person, uh, say eventually refine the technique to get to the point where you can type faster, uh, with your mind and one of these devices than you can with text-to-speech, uh, uh, or speech-to-text and your fingers, that's a use case that makes sense for someone like me to get it. It doesn't really make sense for me to, you know, get one when it allows me to, you know, use a mouse slightly worse than I can with my hand currently. Um, that said, the safety of the device, I would absolutely vouch for, uh, from, you know, the hundreds of surgeries that I've personally done with this, uh, I, I think it's much safer than many of the industry standard FDA approved, uh, surgeries that I routinely do, um, on, on patients that, you know, are, are... no one even thinks twice about their standard of care. Uh, Neuralink has already reached, in my mind, uh, a safety threshold that is far beyond, uh, a commonly accepted safety, uh, threshold.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman46:12

        Along the lines of augmenting one's biological function or functions in the world, I think now's the appropriate time to talk about, um, the small lump, uh-

    26. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall46:22

        (laughs) .

    27. AHAndrew Huberman46:22

        ... present in the top of your hand. For those listening, not watching, there's a... it looks like a, a small lump between, um, Dr. McDougall's, um, forefinger and thumb, or index finger and thumb, um, placed, uh, on skin bel- on the top of his hand. Um, you've had this for some years now because we've known-

    28. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall46:42

        Yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman46:42

        ... each other for, gosh, probably seven years now or so.

    30. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall46:45

        Yeah.
11. 51:33 – 57:43

    Bluetooth Headphones & Electromagnetic Fields; Heat

    1. AHAndrew Huberman51:33

       I can't help but ask this question even though it might seem a little bit off-topic. As long as we're talking about implantable devices and, um, Bluetooth and, uh, RFID chips in the body, I get asked a lot about, um, the safety or lack thereof of, uh, Bluetooth headphones.

    2. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall51:48

       Mm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman51:48

       Um, you work on the brain, you're a brain surgeon.

    4. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall51:50

       Sure.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman51:51

       Um, that's valuable real estate in there.

    6. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall51:53

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman51:53

       And, um, you understand about electromagnetic fields. And-

    8. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall51:56

       Sure.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman51:57

       ... um, any discussion about EMFs immediately puts us in the category of, "Uh-oh."

    10. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall52:00

        (laughs) .

    11. AHAndrew Huberman52:00

        Like, "Get their tinfoil hats." And yet I've been researching EMFs for a future episode of the podcast.

    12. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall52:06

        Sure.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman52:06

        And EMFs are a real thing. That's not a, a valuable statement, everything's a real thing at some level, even an idea. But there does seem to be some evidence that electromagnetic fields of s- sufficient strength can alter the function of, maybe the health of, but the function of neural tissue given that neural tissue is electrically signaling am- among itself (laughs) .

    14. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall52:31

        Sure.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman52:31

        So, um, I'll just ask this in a very straightforward way. Do you use Bluetooth headphones or wired headphones?

    16. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall52:35

        Sure. Yeah, Bluetooth.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman52:36

        And you're not, uh, worried about any kind of, uh, EMF fields across the skull?

    18. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall52:40

        No. I mean, I, I think the energy levels involved are so tiny that, uh, you know, ionizing radiation aside, we're, we're way out of the realm of ionizing radiation that people would worry about, um, you know, tumor-causing EMF fields. Um, uh, even just the electromagnetic field itself, uh, as is very well-described in a Bluetooth, um, frequency range, it, the power levels are tiny, uh, in these devices. And so, you know, we are awash in these signals whether you use Bluetooth headphones or not. Uh, for that matter, you're, you're getting bombarded with ionizing radiation in a very tiny amount no matter where you live, uh, on Earth unless you live under huge amounts of water. Um, it's unavoidable, uh, and so I think you just have to trust that your body, uh, has the DNA repair mechanisms that it needs to deal with the constant bath of ionizing radiation that you're in, uh, as a result of being in the universe and exposed to cosmic rays. Um, in terms of electromagnetic fields, they're, it's just, it's, uh, uh, you know, the energy levels are way, way out of the range where I would be worried about this.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman53:58

        What about heat? Um, you know, I don't use the earbuds any longer, uh, for a couple of reasons. One is, as you know, I take a lot of supplements and I reached into my left pocket once and swallowed a handful-

    20. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall54:08

        (laughs) .

    21. AHAndrew Huberman54:08

        ... of supplements that included a bl- a Bluetooth-

    22. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall54:11

        No (laughs) .

    23. AHAndrew Huberman54:11

        ... uh, a AirPod Pro. Um, I knew it, I swallowed it the moment after I gulped it down. By the way, folks, please don't do this. It, it was not a good idea. It was, well, it wasn't an idea, it was a mistake. And, but I could see it on my phone as registering there. Never saw it again, so I'm assuming it's no longer in my body, but, um, uh, anyway there's a bad joke there, uh, to be sure.

    24. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall54:32

        (laughs) .

    25. AHAndrew Huberman54:32

        Um, but i- in any event, I, I tend to lose them (laughs) or misplace them, so that's the main reason. But I did notice when I used them that there's some heat generated there.

    26. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall54:42

        Mm-hmm.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman54:42

        Um, I also am not convinced that plugging your ears all day long is, you know, there's some ventilation through the, through the sinus systems that include-

    28. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall54:49

        Sure.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman54:50

        ... the ears. So, uh, it sounds to me like you're not concerned about the use of, of, um, earbuds. But, um, what about heat near the brain? I mean, there's the, the cochlea, the, the auditory mechanisms that sit pretty close to the surface there. Um, heat and neural tissue are not friends.

    30. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall55:07

        Sure.
12. 57:43 – 1:00:51

    Brain Augmentation & Paralysis

    1. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall57:43

    2. AHAndrew Huberman57:43

       I'd like to go back to brain augmentation. Um, you've made very clear that one of the first goals for Neuralink is to get quadriplegics walking again. And again, what a marvelous goal that is, and I certainly hope you guys succeed.

    3. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall57:59

       Well, again, just, just to be very clear, the first step is we, we aren't reconnecting the patient's own muscle system-

    4. AHAndrew Huberman58:06

       Right. Right.

    5. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall58:06

       ... to their motor cortex.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman58:07

       A- allowing them, um, excuse me, uh, agency over the movement of things in the world.

    7. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall58:12

       Yes. Uh, and-

    8. AHAndrew Huberman58:13

       And, and eventually their body.

    9. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall58:14

       And you're exactly right. Yeah, eventually their body. We would, we would love to do that, and we've done a lot of work on, uh, developing a system for stimulating the spinal cord itself. Uh, and so that gets to the question that you, uh, that you asked a few minutes ago of, how do you reconnect the motor cortex to the rest of the body? Well, if you can bypass the damaged area of the spinal cord and have an implant in the spinal cord itself connected to an implant in the brain and have them talking to each other, you can take the perfectly intact motor signals out of the, the motor cortex and send them to the spinal cord, which most of the wiring should be intact in the spinal cord below the level of, say, the, the injury caused by a car accident or motorcycle accident or gunshot wound or whatever. And, uh, it should be possible to reconnect the brain to the body in that way.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman59:02

        Mm-hmm.

    11. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall59:02

        So, not out of the realm of possibility that, you know, i- in some small number of years that, uh, Neuralink will be able to reconnect somebody's own body to their brain.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman59:13

        And here, I just want to, uh, flag the, um, 100 years or more of incredible work by basic scientists. Um, the names that I learned about in my textbooks as a graduate student were like, Georgopoulos and, um, that won't mean anything to anyone unless you're a neuroscientist, but Georgopoulos, um, performed some of the first, uh, sophisticated recordings out of motor cortex, just simply asking like, what sorts of electrical patterns are present in motor cortex as an animal or human moves a limb?

    13. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall59:40

        Right.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman59:40

        Um, Krishna Shenoy being another, um, major pioneer in this area, a- and many others.

    15. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall59:45

        Right.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman59:45

        And just really highlighting the fact that basic research where, uh, a exploration of neural tissue is carried out at the level of anatomy and physiology really sets down the pavement on the runway to do those sorts of, um, big clinical, uh, expeditions that you all at Neuralink are doing.

    17. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:00:03

        Yeah. It c- it can't be said enough that, you know, we, broadly speaking, the industry sometimes are and sometimes stand on the shoulders of academic giants. They were the real pioneers that th- they were involved in the grind for years in an unglorious, uh, unglamorous way.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:22

        No stock options. (laughs)

    19. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:00:23

        (laughs) No stock options. Uh, a- and, you know, the reward, uh, for all the hard work is a paper at the end of the day that is read by, you know, dozens of people. And so, you know, they were selfless, uh, academic researchers that, that made all this possible. And we all, humanity and Neuralink, uh, owe them a massive debt of gratitude for all the hard work that they've done and continue to do.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:50

        I agree.

13. 1:00:51 – 1:02:09

    Sponsor: InsideTracker

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:51

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14. 1:02:09 – 1:12:44

    Brain Implants & Peripheral Devices

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:10

       Along the lines of augmentation, early on in some of the public discussions about Neuralink that I overheard between Elon and various podcast hosts, et cetera, uh, there were some, um, lofty ideas set out that I think are still very much, um, in play in people's minds. Things like, for instance, electrical stimulation of the hippocampus, that you so appropriately have worn on your shirt today.

    2. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:02:33

       (laughs)

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:33

       Uh, so for those... Yeah, beautiful. Um, looks like either a... It looks like a Golgi or a Cajal rendition of the hippocampus.

    4. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:02:40

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:40

       Um, uh, translates to seahorse, and it's an area of the brain that's involved in learning and memory, um, um, among other things. There was this idea thrown out that a chip or chips could be implanted in the hippocampus that would, um, allow, um, greater than normal memory abilities perhaps.

    6. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:02:58

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:58

       That's one idea.

    8. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:02:59

       Sure.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:00

       Another idea that, uh, heard about in these discussions was, uh, for instance, that you would have some chips in your brain and I would have some chips in my brain, and you and I could just sit here, look at e- looking at each other or not, nodding or shaking our heads, and essentially hear each other's thoughts.

    10. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:03:16

        Sure.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:17

        Which sounds outrageous, but of course, why not? Wh- why should we constrain ourselves, um, to, uh, as our good friend Eddie Chang and, uh, who's a neurosurgeon who was already on this podcast once before said, "Speech is just the shaping of breath as it exits our lungs."

    12. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:03:32

        Right.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:32

        Incredible really when you think about it, but we don't necessarily need speech to hear and understand each other's thoughts because the neural signals that produce that shaping of the lungs come from some intention. You know, I have some idea, although it might not seem like it, about what I'm going to say next. So is that possible that we could sit here and just hear each other's thoughts and, um-

    14. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:03:54

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:54

        ... and also how would we restrict what the other person could hear? (laughs)

    16. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:03:57

        Yeah. Well, so absolutely. I mean, th- think about the fact that we could do this right now. If you pulled out your phone and started texting me on my phone and I looked down and started texting you, we would be communicating without looking at each other or talking. Uh, shifting that function from a phone to an implanted device, it requires no m- magic, uh, advance, no leap forward. It's technology we already know how to do, uh, if we say put a device in that allows you to control a keyboard and a mouse, which is our stated intention for our first human clinical trial.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:34

        Or I... And against, uh, I'm deliberately interrupting, or I can text an entire team of people-

    18. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:04:39

        Sure.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:40

        ... simultaneously-

    20. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:04:41

        Sure.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:41

        ... and they can text me. And in theory, I could have a bunch of thoughts and 5, 10, 50 people could hear.

    22. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:04:47

        Right.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:48

        Um, or, um, probably more to their preference, um, they could talk to me.

    24. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:04:52

        Yeah. And, and so, you know, texting each other with our brains is maybe an uninspiring rendition of this, but it, it's not, uh, very difficult to imagine the implementation of the same device in a more verbally focused area of the brain that allows you to more naturally speak the thoughts that you're thinking and have me have them rendered into speech that I can hear, uh, you know, maybe via a bone conducting implant. Uh, so silently hear.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:21

        Mm-hmm. Or, or not silently. Like I could... Let's say I was getting off the plane and I wanted to let somebody at home know that I had arrived. I might be able to think in my mind, hmm, think their first name, which might cue up a, a device that would then play my voice to them-

    26. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:05:36

        Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:36

        ... and say, "Just got off the plane. I'm going to grab my bag and then I'll give you a call."

    28. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:05:39

        Right. On their home Alexa.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:41

        Right.

    30. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:05:41

        (laughs)
15. 1:12:44 – 1:22:13

    Brain Machine Interface (BMI), Neurofeedback; Video Games

    1. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:12:44

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:44

       So, let's take this a step further, uh, because as you're saying this, I'm realizing that people have been doing exactly what Neuralink is trying to do now for a very long time. Let me give you an example. Um, people who are blind, who have no pattern vision have used canes for a very long time. Now, the cane is not, um, a chip. It's not a- an electrode. It's not Neosensory.

    3. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:13:10

       Right.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:10

       None of that stuff. What it is is essentially a, uh, a stick that has, um, an interface with a surface so it swept back and forth across the ground and translating what would otherwise be visual cues into somatosensory cues.

    5. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:13:28

       Sure.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:29

       And we know that blind people are very good at understanding, um, even when they are approaching, say, a curb edge because they are integrating that information from the tip of the cane, um, up through their somatosensory cortex and their motor cortex with other things like the changes in the- the wind and the sound as they round a corner and, um, here I'm imagining a, like a corner in San Francisco downtown where it's y- as you get to the corner it- it's a completely different set of auditory cues.And very often, we know, and this is because my laboratory worked on visual repair for a long time. I talked to a lot of blind people who use different devices to navigate the world, that they aren't aware of the fact that they're integrating these other cues, but they nonetheless do them subconsciously.

    7. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:14:13

       Right.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:14

       Um, and in doing so, get pretty good at navigating with a cane.

    9. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:14:17

       Right.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:18

        Now, a cane isn't perfect, but you can imagine the other form of, of navigating as a blind person, uh, which is to just a- attach yourself or attach to you another nervous system, the best that we know being a dog, a sighted dog-

    11. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:14:34

        Sure.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:34

        ... that can cue you, again, with, um, stopping at a curb's edge, or even if they're ... some individuals that might seem a little sketchy, dogs are also very good at sensing, um, different, uh, arousal states and others, threat, danger.

    13. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:14:47

        Sure.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:48

        I mean, uh, they're exquisite at it, right? So here what we're really talking about is taking a, a cane or bi- another biological system, essentially c- a whole nervous system and saying, "This other nervous system's job (laughs) is to get you to navigate more safely through the world."

    15. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:15:01

        Right.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:02

        In some sense, what Neuralink is trying to do is that, but with robotics to insert them, and chips, which raises the, the, the question. People are gonna say, "Finally, a question."

    17. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:15:13

        (laughs)

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:13

        The question is this, we hear about BMI, brain-machine interface-

    19. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:15:18

        Right.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:18

        ... which is really what Neuralink specializes in. We also hear about AI, another example where there's great promise and great fear.

    21. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:15:24

        Right.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:25

        We hear about machine learning as well. To what extent can these brain-machine interfaces learn the same way a seeing-eye dog would learn, but unlike a seeing-eye dog, continue to learn over time and get better and better and better because it's also listening to the nervous system that it's trying to support?

    23. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:15:46

        Right.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:47

        Put simply, what is the role for AI and machine learning in the type of work that you're doing?

    25. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:15:51

        That's a great question. I th- I think, you know, it goes both ways. Basically what you're doing is taking a very crude software intelligence, I would say not exactly a full, full-blown AI, but some well-designed software that can adapt to changes in firing of the brain, and you're coupling it with another form of intelligence, a human intelligence. And you're, uh, allowing the two to learn each other. So undoubtedly, the human that has a Neuralink device will get better at using it over time. Undoubtedly, the, uh, software that the Neuralink engineers, uh, uh, have written, uh, will adapt to the firing patterns, uh, that, that the device is able to record, and over time focus in, uh, on meaningful signals toward movement, right? So if, uh, a neuron is fire, uh, high firing rate when you intend to move the mouse cursor up and to the right, it doesn't know that when it starts. When you first put this in, it's just a random series of signals, uh, as far as the chip knows, but you start correlating it with what the person, what you know the person wants to do, uh, as expressed in a series of games. So you, you assume that, you know, uh, that the person wants to move the mouse on the screen to the target that's shown because you tell them that's the goal. And so, you start correlating the activity, uh, that you record when they're moving toward an up and right target on a screen with that firing pattern, and similarly for up and left, down and left, down and right. And so you, you develop a model, um, semi-intelligently in the software for what the person is intending to do, and let the person run wild with it for a while. And they start to get better at using the model presented to them by the, by the software, as expressed by the mouse moving or not moving properly on the screen, right? So it's, imagine a scenario where you're asking somebody to play piano, but the, the sound that comes out of each key randomly shifts over time, um, very difficult problem, but a human brain is good enough, uh, with the aid of software to, to solve that problem, and, and map well enough to a semi-stable state that they're gonna know how to use that mouse even when they, say, turn the device off for the night, come back to it the next day-

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:14

        Mm-hmm.

    27. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:18:15

        ... and some of the signals have shifted.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:17

        As you're describing this, I'm, I'm recalling a recent experience. I got one of these, um, rowers, you know-

    29. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:18:23

        Mm-hmm.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:23

        ... for, to, um, exercise. Um, and I am well-aware that there's a proper row stroke and there's a, uh, improper row stroke. (laughs) And, um, most everybody, including me, who's never been coached in rowing, um, gets on this thing and pushes with their legs and pulls with their arms and back, and it's some mix of incorrect and maybe a smidgen of correct type, um, execution. There's a function within the rower that allows you, or in this case me, to play a game where you can actually, um ... Every row stroke, you generate, um, arrows, uh, toward a dartboard.
16. 1:22:13 – 1:33:18

    Improving Animal Experimentation, Pigs

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:22:14

       Let's talk about pigs.

    2. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:22:15

       Sure.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:22:17

       Neuralink has been, um, quite generous, I would say, in announcing their discoveries and their goals. Uh, and I, I want to highlight this because I think it's quite unusual for a company to do this.

    4. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:22:30

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:22:30

       Um, I'm probably going to earn a few enemies by saying this. Um, despite the fact that I've always owned Apple devices and I'm from the South Bay, um, you know, the Apple design team is notoriously cryptic about what they're going to do next (laughs) , or when the next phone or computer is going to come out is, is, is vaulted to, um, uh, a serious extent. Neuralink has been, um, pretty open about their goals.

    6. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:22:53

       Right.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:22:54

       Um, with the understanding that goals change and have to change. Um, and one of the things that they've done, which I think is marvelous, is they've held, um, online symposia where you and some other colleagues of mine from the neuroscience community, Dan Adams, who I have tremendous respect for, and Elon and others, um, there at Neuralink, have shared some of the progress that they've made in experimental animals. I'm highlighting this because I think, um, if one takes a step back, I mean, just for most people to, uh, know about and realize that there's experimentation on animals, implantation of electrodes and so on, is itself a pretty bold move. Because that understandably evokes some strong emotions, um, in people, and, um, in some people evokes extremely strong emotions.

    8. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:23:39

       Sure.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:40

       Um, Neuralink did one such symposium where they showed implant devices in pigs.

    10. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:23:48

        Right.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:49

        Then they did another one, you guys did another one where, um, it was implant devices in monkeys.

    12. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:23:54

        Right.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:55

        I assume at some point there will be one of these public symposia where, um, the implant devices will be in a human. What was the rationale for using pigs? Um, I'm told pigs are very nice creatures.

    14. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:24:08

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:24:08

        I'm told that they are quite smart.

    16. MMDr. Matthew MacDougall1:24:10

        Right.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:24:11

        Um, and for all my years as a neuroscientist and having worked admittedly on every species from, um, mice to cuttlefish, to humans, to hamsters, to, uh, you know, I confess, um, various carnivore species, uh, which I no longer do, I work on humans now for various reasons. I never in my life thought I would see a implant device in the cortex of a pig.

Episode duration: 2:01:40