A brain implant that turns your thoughts into text | Tom Oxley

At least you'd be listening to Ted Talks daily today. How tiny technological devices can open up an entire world of communication for those with paralysis or other life-limiting disability from Ted 2022, neurotech entrepreneur, Tom Oxley describes a future where we can essentially speak or move with our thoughts alone.

A few months ago, I surrendered the password to my Twitter account to let a person with paralysis tweet out their thoughts.

And I mean, that literally Philip her case can't use his fingers to type like you are, but thanks to a tiny brain implant. He was able to send the following tweets.

Hello world short, sweet, Monumental progress.

No need for keystrokes, do voices. I created this tweet just by thinking it.

My Hope Is that I paved the way for people to be able to sweep through thoughts Phil.

Now, you might be thinking, there's some people out there who should not be allowed to tweet directly from their Brian.

I agree.

It's the people with paralysis and disability. This technology can be life-changing.

I'm very excited to introduce you to Philip and Rodney.

They both have a neurodegenerative disease called ALS means they can't move the hands or speak clearly, but they cannot text. Thanks to a brain computer interface for a b c. I I would feel a brain signals up on the screen. They connected to the computer by bluetooth. The device is fully internalized invisible to the outside world and then learn to control the keyboard with clicks. Darkly coming from the Bryan.

The busiest conjure up images of Science Fiction, like the Matrix with a cable jacked up into your brain, through a hole in your skull. But I'm here to show you that the future can be much more elegant than that.

So we got this group chat going, which I thought was a great idea. Until I started roasting me about the TED Talk.

They found hilarious. Thanks for the vote of confidence, cause bloody Australians

Now, you can say it's still quite slow for them to type this way, but this is like dial-up speeds at the beginning of the internet. This is been the dream of patients and caregivers doctors and scientists for decades. And for good reason

You might know someone who's lost the ability to use their hands, may be from a stroke or a spinal cord injury or multiple sclerosis paralysis. It comes in all shapes and sizes from minor inconvenience to life-threatening.

During my neurology residency, I cared for a man in his forties. He had a stroke and developed locked-in syndrome.

Mini couldn't move his body, except for his eyes left or right. He could see and hear and think and feel just like normal.

But I couldn't move or speak ever again.

And in what way, I can stand says, we supported his wish to be taken off life support.

And so I've been wondering ever since was the not anything else that could have been done.

Connection is a fundamental human made.

So many of our patients have lost the ability to speak little and type. The years makes no desperately want to reconnect to this family with the loved ones.

you know, the main request we get is

text messaging and then email control over their smartphone and Chikara social media.

We've been speaking so much lately about their flaws of these Technologies, but the people with paralysis, this is a return to life.

Bci's make all of this possible.

No problem has been that bass. You guys typically require invasive surgery. This is the Utah a right?

This is design similar to all of the base. She is currently under development, which required drilling needles directly into the bright. Now, this is the basis of critical fundamental research of the last 20 years and early proof that this technology really can't perform but some patients, it means open brain surgery which involves cutting through the skull with a sore.

And there are only about 150 functional nearest surgeons in the US that can perform this procedure popping. The fact that the recovery is tricky, the brain doesn't really like having needles put into it.

It develops this foreign body tissue rejection. Immune reaction of the time. So I've been wondering, is there any other way into the brain?

And there is a secret back door.

The blood vessels of the natural highways into the Brian is a hollow tubes, that connect every corner of the brain. The largest vein is right next to the motor cortex, exact part of the brain that we want to connect to to restore control to the outside world. Now we already know how to travel through the blood vessels. We've been doing it for 40 years, mostly going to the house.

If anyone here has had a heart attack is a pretty good chance you had a stent.

A stent is a metal scaffold delivered through a catheter, which opens up like a flower into the blood vessel.

Millions of sensibility of each year, not in the OR, but in the cath lab Casa De La Vara tree.

It's not common in the cath lab to navigate into the brain, through the blood vessels and their two and a half thousand Physicians who can navigate a way up into the bright. But what's really amazing about this? Is it, the bci's. We already know that devices can be left inside a blood vessel cells grow over it. Incorporated into the wall, like a tattoo Under the Skin. Am I protected from that? Immune reaction

This is part of the reason why I came became the first in the world to receive a green light from the FDA to conduct clinical trials of a permanently implanted a CI.

So, what we had to do was figure out a way to put a sensor.

Connected to this cross length of the stent. They could record that brain activity. Let's do that. We had to do a complete overhaul of stent. Manufacturing then connected to a cable, which brings the information out of the brain and do it all in a way that it can be delivered in the cath lab.

This way we can make BCI accessible not to the thousands of people, but to the millions of people who need this technology, Graham felstead an incredible human being suffering with ALS, became the first person in the world to receive and use one of these brain-computer interfaces. I was standing in the cath lab doctors pay to Mitchell. Had just completed the surgery. It just felt like we were witnessing something new in the world. I had tingles down my spine. I've got them now, thinking about it. Again, I tend to my colleague paint and I said something poetic and profound like paint,

And then 2 hours later. Something even more amazing happened, G woke up. And he asked, am I alive?

And I'll Nurse Christine broke out in tears of relief. It was, it was a phenomenal moment.

Once it's in place, it's connected to this tiny antenna that sits under the skin in the chest.

This collects the role brain. I sent it out of the body, wirelessly to then connect with external devices.

It's always on and ready to go. Kind of like how your brain Dish Network.

That is how it works.

Our Engineers work without patience to decode specific movements. So we tell the patient press down your foot. So, don't repeatedly pressed down this foot. And we can, yeah, you went to see the movie because they paralyzed but we've been able to determine which brain signals are generally linked to write down your foot. That we repeat. This been several different types of movements that can close your hand or pencil grip. Your finger may not seem like much, but they've become the building blocks that every single interaction or digital device, that is needed for control.

converted to

Click up down left, right? Men you back at cetera.

but what's really amazing, is it to some degree, this process, a brain, signals a universal,

The brain signals to press down your foot for me is the same as it is for you.

Now this means that would creating a dictionary of brain across all humans. This is going to make me. See, I truly scalable

I stopped once said to me, it's kind of like learning how to ride a bike. Takes a bit of practice, but once you're rolling, it becomes natural. Now, I just look on the screen, but I want a quick, and I'm texting messaging the World by Twitter with g.

He said, as his iOS was progressing, litigation immense Comfort to know that, even if his body was failing, he was always going to be able to tell his wife that he loves her.

In the future. I'm really excited about the breakthroughs BC I could deliver to other conditions like epilepsy depression and dementia. But beyond that, what is this going to Maine for Humanity?

What's really got me thinking is the future of communication?

Take emotion.

If you ever considered how hard it is to express how you feel,

you have to self reflect package the emotion into woods and then use the muscles of your mouth to speak those words but you really just want someone to know how you feel.

Some people with certain conditions that's impossible. In your words, you could throw your emotion just for a few seconds.

Have been really still how you feel.

At that moment, we would have realized the necessary use of words to express our current state of being was always going to fall short.

The full potential of the brain would then be unlocked.

It's a right now.

VCI is about restoring the lives of millions of people with paralysis after years of feeling trapped this technology promises to return of autonomy and Independence.

But what I really mean is dignity.

Thank you.