INTERFACING WITH THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
THE FUTURE OF MEDICAL DEVICES - WITH ELISA DONATI
What does the future of medicine look like when microchips and nervous systems speak the same language?
I asked Dr Elisa Donati, a senior scientist working at the intersection of neuroscience, technology and medicine at the Institute of Neuroinformatics at University of Zürich and ETH Zürich. She is a truly inspiring innovator, and reinforced to me yet again the exponential opportunities ahead in medical devices.
You can listen to our conversation below, or download it from your favorite podcast app.
REAL NEURONS ARE ANALOG, NOT DIGITAL
Real neurons in nature are analog, not digital. They process information event-by-event, not in lock-step with computer clocks. They transmit and process large volumes of information in parallel, and accomplish complex tasks using astonishingly little energy.
Medical devices do none of the above … until now.
By re-thinking medical computer chips to be ‘neuromorphic’ and mimicking the way neurons work in nature, Elisa and her colleagues are enabling game-changing medical devices that are much, much better at speaking to, and listening to, our bodies.
They are designing prosthetic hands that let wearers feel pressure and texture and temperature through their fingertips, and improve kinaesthetics when picking up objects. They are making cochlear implants with better quality and higher fidelity stimulations, and pacemakers that take their cues directly from the respiratory system — concentration of oxygen and CO2 in the blood, how the diaphragm is moving, etc — just as the heart does in nature. They are creating implants to bridge signals across severed spinal cords.
And that’s just the beginning ...
UNLOCKING THE AUTONOMIC SYSTEM
By improving communications with the autonomic nervous system, they aim to create new ways to manage type-2 diabetes and other hormonal imbalances (by doing continuous neuro-monitoring of hormone levels, and stimulating nerves to release hormones properly) as well as obesity, erectile dysfunction, epilepsy, depression and more.
That’s a long list of targets and it STILL doesn’t stop …
Elisa’s dream is to unlock new treatment pathways for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. When a particular part or function of the brain stops working due to degradation of neural activity, she hopes to one day replace these cells with artificial ones that restore some of that lost functionality.
AN EXPONENTIAL FRONTIER
I hope you enjoyed Elisa’s inspiring insights. We recorded at the beautiful seaside location of the 2023 NeuroEng Workshop, at the generous invitation of the International Centre of Neuromorphic Systems, so you may have heard the sounds of the ocean or an occasional walker passing us by :-)
And here’s the thing: neuromorphic medical devices are just ONE of the game-changers emerging at the intersection of neuroscience, technology and medicine. You might want to check out ‘brain decoding’ and connectomes and AI-assisted neural mapping and related breakthroughs, which collectively promise to revolutionize the future of psychiatry, ophthalmology, prosthetics, hearing-aids, pain-management and more!
Or, you can book me to present a keynote on the future of medicine, where I cover all these exciting developments.
I explore pathways to a better future. My goal is to capture game-changing opportunities in keynotes that audiences remember forever. It’s my way of making a difference.