TKS Session 9: Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) + BCIs Explore Module Wrap Up
This is a two-in-one blog post today. For session 9, we looked at this emerging tech called brain computer interfaces (BCIs) and how they are transforming the way we treat patients with disabilities or mental health disorders. For this session, we were asked to complete the BCIs explore module, so I will incorporate the wrap-up for it in here as well.
To begin the session, my intention was to effectively communicate and present my understanding of my focus, phage therapy, which was measured by my perceived overall confidence while presenting and the questions/feedback I got after presenting.
So that’s how we started the session, with me presenting my focus presentation on phage therapy. The focus presentation needs to hit four points:
What is your focus and why is it interesting?
What have you done?
What have you learned?
What’s next?
So far in my focus, I’ve completed my learn and apply phases, and am now moving into my review phase where I’m going to research in more depth the obstacles of getting phage therapy FDA-approved and what kinds of solutions/progress are being made in trying to do so.
Here is my focus presentation I presented in session:
We then began the actual session by looking at the mindset of the week: Boss Mentality.
What is boss mentality? Think of it as the presence or vibe you give off when you walk into a room. People know you’re confident and mean business. You don’t have to look tough or be buff or any of that. It’s all about the way you present yourself and communicate. You're comfortable with being uncomfortable, so you’re essentially always comfortable in any situation, which is why you come off with a confident presence.
Then we got into the session topic today, BCIs, which are a link between your brain’s electrical activity like the brain signals they produce and an external device like a computer or prosthetic limb. What BCIs do is they take those brain signals and analyze them as commands, which are then passed on to the external device to carry out a desired action. The capabilities or functions of BCIs depend on what device they are connected to and what exact brain signals we are trying to detect. BCIs can applied to many different fields such as different medical cases, nanotech, VR, robotics, AI, Connectomics, gaming, communication, music, etc. Right now BCIs are mostly implemented for anything health-related rather than things like gaming or music, but there are companies experimenting with BCIs in those fields.
While BCIs can have a big impact on many people with physical or mental disabilities, it’s tough to get support from investors for this kind of technology, one of the biggest reasons being that it’s a piece of hardware. Hardware solutions tend to take more time because of having to go through the manufacturing process and possibly shipping and assembly. Software solutions, on the other hand, are things that can be created online, which tend to be easier to prepare and are more favourable time-wise. Besides that, there are still people pioneering the use of BCIs now that there is a good amount of this tech FDA-approved. There are currently many human trials being done with non-invasive BCI tech like the sensor caps, partially invasive tech where the BCI doesn’t infiltrate the brain, and fully invasive BCI tech where we implant chips into your brain to allow for the most accurate brain readings.
This topic then led us to the market research for BCIs. We then looked at how we conduct market research for any product or idea and categorize it into three main groups: TAM, SAM, and SOM.
TAM: The market amount for your product/idea.
SAM: The amount of that market that is eligible for your product/idea
SOM: The amount of that eligible market that is willing to try your product/idea
After learning more about BCIs and their uses, we were given a prompt to pitch a specific application in either healthcare or lifestyle BCIs can be used in, where the winning pitch got a (imaginary) 100k grant to implement their idea. In groups, we would do all the research and formulate a pitch on what our problem was, how our solution would work, and what our future steps would be if we got the 100k grant.
Our group with Arissai Filleul, Mariana Jara, and Ben Reamico look at the application of BCIs in people with polio.
Polio (poliomyelitis) is a virus that multiplies in the intestine. If the case gets worse over time, it can lead to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs), which can cause the paralyzed leg to have stunted growth, even past the knee, and be shorter than the other. While polio has been irradicated in most countries, there are still a few countries with polio that can be caught. Since polio can be contagious, the danger of a global outbreak is still possible.
The people who had polio are given prosthetic braces to make up for the stunted growth, but those braces don’t give these people the full range of mobility in their leg when moving around, which can make movement overall uncomfortable. Our idea was to connect these prosthetic braces to a BCI that can help polio victims execute full movement in their leg. The BCI would be a non-invasive cap that monitors the brain’s electrical activity in specific regions of the brain responsible for things like motor control, resting states, coordination and spatial awareness, tactile and body position sequences, etc.
If we won the grant, we would use it to begin the manufacturing process of our non-invasive caps.
Here is our pitch on our application of BCIs for polio victims:
We saw other examples of BCI use cases in areas such as depression, strokes, seizures, data compression, and others. Each group got some feedback on their presentations. For our group, we just needed to go deeper on the connection between the prosthetic and the BCI powering it and clarify that a bit better. Our team did not win the imaginary pitch but it was still cool to learn about BCIs, something I would have otherwise not learned much about.
Next week velocity starts (it was pushed back a week), and I’m excited to see what the whole thing entails and see how I level up throughout this program-within-the-program! I also just published my October newsletter, so definitely check that out. Can’t wait for the next sessions to follow!
