The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces

Max Hodak believes that BCI is not a specific product but a category, similar to pharma, with many companies pursuing different applications.

Science recently announced that more than 40 people have received one of their first BCI treatments, which gives people their sight back.

Science finished a big clinical trial last year, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in the fall.

The implant works by having patients wear glasses with a camera and a laser projector that projects an image into the eye, exciting cells directly above the implant.

The retinal stimulator bypasses dead rods and cones to get a visual signal back into the retina for patients who have lost them.

Max Hodak recounts cases of patients born blind due to congenital cataracts who, after having them fixed as adults, could not make sense of the visual information, leading to severe distress.

Max Hodak explains that blind patients often report hallucinations and internally generated percepts because the brain, when not receiving input from the optic nerve, still tries to see.

Max Hodak states that a decade ago, a company called Second Sight had an electrical stimulator implanted in the eye via a 4.5-hour surgery involving a titanium box.

Max Hodak explains that Second Sight stimulated the 1.5 million ganglion cells, resulting in flashes of light (phosphines) that the brain did not assemble into a coherent image.

Max Hodak states that age-related macular degeneration globally affects 200 million people, with the severe form (geographic atrophy) affecting 1 to 2 million.

Max Hodak states that the optic nerve is cranial nerve 2, and the vestibular cochlear nerve (carrying hearing and balance) is cranial nerve 8.

Max Hodak's deepest hard skill is software, and he has a degree in biomedical engineering.

Max Hodak recounts reading an article in The Lancet about a 17-year-old in Boston who was kept alive on an ECMO circuit while waiting for a lung transplant but was removed from the list due to complications.

Like the the systems that exist for this are like $500,000.