NEUROSCIENCE|BRAIN|DE-CODING|HUMAN BRAIN
How to De-code the Human Brain?
Even in California’s high-tech, this man wandering around UCLA was a curious sight.
His motion-catching suit, gloves tucked inside the sensor, and realistic eyewear was already enough to turn heads. But what prevented people from getting in their tracks and making them look like a strange hat, tied tightly around his head with a swimming-like device fitted with circular electrode connectors. Several wires coming out of the spring from the head — representing a portable hard drive attached to a police enclosure — disappeared into the bag. Half of the cyborg seems to be trapped between sci-fi futurism and Hardware Mad Libs.
With Mo-DBRS, a setup can basically change how we determine the human brain.
The entire platform is a state-of-the-art technology camera that integrates brain recording, biomarkers, motion capture, eye tracking, and AR / VR visualization. Most of the processing equipment is packed in a backpack so that the wearer does not have to be tied to a “home” computer. Instead, they can move freely and explore — either in the real world or in VR — something that would not happen with brain-scanning technology like MRI.
The movement may seem like a small addition to the brain scan, but it changes the game. Many of our precious neural skills — memory, decision making — are discriminated against as we explore the world around us. Mo-DBRS provides a window into those brain processes in the natural environment, where a person is not told to hold on when a large magnet strikes and gets stuck in his or her head. In addition to its unusual appearance, Mo-DBRS opens the door to brain scanning for people in areas close to the real world, while also having the ability to convert those brain signals offline with a few taps on a tablet.
All software capabilities enable Mo-DBRS to open, so neuroscientists can play fast and contribute to the platform. However, because the set depends on volunteers with electrodes implanted in the brain, it is currently only being tested on a few people with epilepsy who already have neural implants to help diagnose and prevent their seizures.
Published in Neuron last week, the response from the neuroscience community on Twitter was “Amazing setup,” writes Twitter Klaus Gramann, a researcher in physical fitness at Technische Universität Berlin.
Mo-DBRS is not as smooth as Neuralink brain implants. It is also limited to people with electrodes already in their brains. Now, what’s the big deal?
Everything. Does that sci-fi dream of regaining memory, transforming disability, fighting depression, clearing fear, and resolving consciousness? It all depends on capturing and understanding the code of the human brain — that is, how do electronic devices turn into memories, emotions, and behavior? Since the beginning of modern neuroscience, this has been done using electrodes inserted into mice or other experimental animals.
Take memory, a brain skill that lays the foundation for who you are.
To date, memory research has relied heavily on mice roaming around mazes in search of pleasant treatments. Wrong translation? Those tests mimic our finding our cars in the parking lot, and we point to the brain waves behind that memory of the place. By recording signals from the hippocampi of rats, an ocean-shaped structure buried deep in the brain, scientists have created a framework for how our memory works — how one experience is linked to time and space, and how precious memory is linked to our emotions and strengthened.
The obvious problem? People are not mice.
For brain activity to be as close as a memory, it is incredibly difficult to extract recordings of brain mice. While traditional methods of human brain imaging, such as active MRI (fMRI) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) can paint a still image of the brain as it remembers a place — often played on a video screen — the setting is so far away from the “normal” that a person cannot move at all.
Meet Mo-DBRS
The Mo-DBRS follows a whole “wish list” of brain-determining requirements: reading and writing from the human brain in real-time, off-line, while moving, and neural integration of neural and heart rate, breathing, and other biomarker sensors.
The stimulus came from patients with epilepsy and other neurological disorders that had already been implanted with electrodes in their brain and they continued their normal life. “There are more than 2,000 people with permanent hearing aids and stimuli… and the number is expected to increase as other treatments are proven to be effective”. These devices are inserted into the deeper parts of the brain — those that control memory, emotions, and movement. By carefully planning to avoid interfering with their treatment, the authors speculate, it may be possible to enter this neural recording to directly determine the function of the human brain in a real-life situation, rather than relying on mouse studies or MRI-style immobile brain imaging.
The heart of Mo-DBRS brain recording and setting stimulation is a medical device called NeuroPace, which is often inserted into the skull to help patients with epilepsy control their outbreaks. Think of NeuroPace as a pacemaker in the brain. Both can “read” electrical signals in the brain and “write” in the brain — short-term electrical therapy is used to prevent the unconscious storm from occurring. However, like radio, many brain processes depend on a certain level. By vibrating waves that help control fainting, the team was able to listen to and control other brain processes, such as electrical signals that build up like people are exploring new places. The data from the embedded device is transferred wirelessly to a custom-built “wand” (a strange object that looks like a hard drive-police) tied outside the head.
Using a Raspberry PI computer and tablet — both housed inside a backpack — connected to the rod, the team was able to wirelessly insert neural implants to deliver electrical impulses to the brain. At the same time, the team also gave a skin EEG, which measures the electrical impulses of the brain with electrodes mounted on a headgear as a swimming cap. This technology team provides a burst of neural data, from inside and outside the brain.
Moving beyond the brain, the team continued to equip volunteers with a chest cord that felt a heartbeat, breathing, and sweating. These biomarkers capture the emotional responses surrounding a particular memory, which can help better understand how emotionally erased memories tend to cling. To synchronize all the details, the team included an artificial “marker” — an electrical pattern that looked unusual — on a brain record to indicate the start of the study.
The whole system weighs about 20 pounds [9 kg], with most of the equipment in a backpack. The simple, lightweight version, called the “Mo-DBRS Lite” is also ready to go, explains the team, but it comes with a caveat of declining efficiency in syncing with high learning delays from the brain.
As proof of concept, Mo-DIBS was tested on seven volunteers already included in the NeuroPace program. One person easily wanders around the room to look at a sign on the wall while his eyes, brain function, and other biomarkers are followed without interruption. Put it in the VR section, and it’s entirely possible to repeat the old memory navigation test in a maze — only in this case, there are mice, scientists directing directly into the human brain, with the ability to disrupt those signals and play with memory.
Although Mo-DBRS was built using NeuroPace, the platform could be integrated with other neural inputs, the group said. All software code is designed for researchers to work together and expand.
