as he mentioned my name is Misha Ezra
and today I’m gonna talk about something
that most all of us are using right now
and I don’t mean your phones I’m going
to talk about your ears so in 1790
Alessandro Volta he had just invented
the battery and he put the electrodes in
his ears and then promptly passed out
right before he passed out he said he
felt the sensations of spinning and most
likely that sensation was from
vestibular stimulation which is what I’m
gonna talk about over the next several
minutes right before I get into it let’s
take a moment to think about balance
balance is something most of us take for
granted right most of us can easily walk
across a gravel path we can transition
from walking on a sidewalk onto grass
back onto the sidewalk and we don’t
really have to think about it people
don’t normally stumble doing those
things now maintaining balance requires
that the brain receive information from
three main sources you need information
from your visual system so data coming
in from the eyes you need information
from your proprioceptive system which is
your muscles and your joints and as an
example of proprioception some of you
want to follow along or all of you if
you hold out your fingers just like that
and bring your face close your eyes and
touch the tip of your nose with your
finger and eyes closed and most
everybody can do that but some man is
success right and that’s because of your
sense of proprioception this inner sense
that we have so the third thing the
brain needs is information from your
vestibular system or your inner ear so
what exactly is going on inside your ear
turns out a whole lot the sensory
information about motion about
equilibrium about spatial orientation
all of this information goes from your
vestibular system to your brain and in
each ear you have what constitutes the
vestibular system which is what I just
highlighted
the rectangle it’s three semicircular
canals that are at right angles to one
another and they take care of detecting
rotational movement and then you have
the utricle and the saccule those take
care of detecting gravity as well as
linear movement it’s kind of like the
gyroscopes in the accelerometer working
in your phone it’s the same kind of
system and it’s a pretty amazing system
so the semicircular canals are filled
with a fluid called endolymph and at the
base of each canal is a copula and some
hair bundles inside it so if you look on
the right side of the image when the
person rotates the fluid gets sloshed
around and when the fluid moves the hair
moves and then the hair sends a signal
to the brain telling what’s happening
right and then there’s three
semicircular canals there is essentially
the anterior canal which detects motion
like this like head nodding there is
posterior canal which detects motion
like a head tilt towards your shoulders
and then there’s the lateral canal that
detects motion like a swivel your head
going side to side the utricle and the
saccule they work slightly differently
they have tiny calcium carbonate
crystals kind of like tiny bones that
are floating on top of the gel membrane
inside of which there’s again hair
bundles and so when you look at the
person bending over to pick up a box the
bones get pulled down because of gravity
and they pulled the gel membrane along
and then the hair gets pulled along and
again the hair sends a signal to the
brain saying alright this is what’s
happening
so the utricle largely sits horizontally
in your head and that’s how I detects
movement in this plane things like
moving forward side to side the saccule
sits vertically in your head and so it
detects movement in the vertical plane
things like sitting down or standing up
when all of this works people can do
some really amazing things with ballots
right but what happens when things don’t
work right what happens if the signals
that are going to the brain just don’t
line up well that’s when you get motion
sickness
all right so motion sickness essentially
is a mismatch of signals that are sent
to the brain from your eyes and your
ears and I imagine a lot of people have
experienced this here when you’re
reading a book in a moving car your ears
are telling the brain I’m moving but
your eyes are telling the brain nope
we’re not moving because you’re
essentially static relative to the car
seat the floor beneath your feet and so
it’s this disagreement between those two
signals that triggers nausea and
vomiting right the same thing happens in
virtual reality like VR as it exists
right now essentially depends on visual
information and so the possibilities of
what we can see in V are practically
endless however what we can feel in VR
is very limited right most of the time
you just feel like you’re standing in
your living room or sitting on your
couch even though you may be flying or
swimming or doing all sorts of things in
VR now what if we could make you feel
this motion what if we could fix motion
sickness that’s exactly what we did will
be built a vestibular stimulation device
it basically is a small wearable that
can automatically sense when to provide
you the right type of feedback when
you’re on VR the way it works is that we
place electrodes behind each ear and
then we hook up the device to a small
battery and then we stimulate the nerves
that I talked about earlier the nerves
that go from your inner ear to your
brain we stimulate them with a small
amount of current
something like maybe one milliamp so
electrically stimulating the vestibular
system is called galvanic vestibular
stimulation or GBS we tested our device
we tested GBS in AVR rollercoaster
experience you can imagine what a via
rollercoaster might feel like and in
this case it went from a vomit fest to
something that people actually found
thrilling and exciting people like I
want this in my home I want to do it all
the time and they said that they could
feel every turn off the roller coaster
in their body something that they’d
expect to feel on a real roller coaster
another thing we can do in VR which is
what I started to talk about is remote
control people basically how can we
steer people using GPS and if you watch
in the video the person actually intends
to walk straight but they end up turning
quite smoothly and that happens well
there’s a prerequisite for it that you
need to be looking down when you do
apply GPS so if they had been looking up
and we had applied GPS they would have
staggered and that almost feels like
somebody’s pushing you that doesn’t feel
comfortable but this is fairly
comfortable you just turn towards the a
nodal direction quite smoothly so we use
this idea in building a two-person VR
game kind of like an escape the room vir
game where there’s one person who’s in
VR and they’re in a dark room they can’t
see anything but they can hear things
around them and then the other person is
using a tablet or a PC and they their
task is to use GPS to steer the person
in VR around obstacles help them escape
the room right so it’s a collaborative
game Zeus is all well and good it’s all
fun and it’s pretty interesting but what
else can GPS do right Volta didn’t stick
electrodes in his ears just for the sake
of doing so what he wanted
to do was see how stimulating the ear
could be done electrically I wanted to
see how it would impact hearing
similarly other researchers in the
1800’s they also tried to use the
investi with a stimulation to see if it
would fix deafness or if it would cure
other diseases of the ear now doctors
are starting to use vestibular
stimulation for things like therapy
rehab even for training athletic
training enhancement scientists are
starting to use GPS trying to see how
really low levels of stimulation can
actually impact higher-order brain
function
things like tactile sensation face
recognition and even memory right so as
a last thought we all know that machines
are getting smarter by the day right and
what if we could evolve alongside the
machines now brain hacking has been a
futuristic fascination for decades but
we all understand that actually fully
understanding the brain is going to take
many many years of work but with GPS we
can actually get started right now by
building devices that can impact small
parts of the brain hack those little
areas just like the one we created thank
you very much [Applause]
and today I’m gonna talk about something
that most all of us are using right now
and I don’t mean your phones I’m going
to talk about your ears so in 1790
Alessandro Volta he had just invented
the battery and he put the electrodes in
his ears and then promptly passed out
right before he passed out he said he
felt the sensations of spinning and most
likely that sensation was from
vestibular stimulation which is what I’m
gonna talk about over the next several
minutes right before I get into it let’s
take a moment to think about balance
balance is something most of us take for
granted right most of us can easily walk
across a gravel path we can transition
from walking on a sidewalk onto grass
back onto the sidewalk and we don’t
really have to think about it people
don’t normally stumble doing those
things now maintaining balance requires
that the brain receive information from
three main sources you need information
from your visual system so data coming
in from the eyes you need information
from your proprioceptive system which is
your muscles and your joints and as an
example of proprioception some of you
want to follow along or all of you if
you hold out your fingers just like that
and bring your face close your eyes and
touch the tip of your nose with your
finger and eyes closed and most
everybody can do that but some man is
success right and that’s because of your
sense of proprioception this inner sense
that we have so the third thing the
brain needs is information from your
vestibular system or your inner ear so
what exactly is going on inside your ear
turns out a whole lot the sensory
information about motion about
equilibrium about spatial orientation
all of this information goes from your
vestibular system to your brain and in
each ear you have what constitutes the
vestibular system which is what I just
highlighted
the rectangle it’s three semicircular
canals that are at right angles to one
another and they take care of detecting
rotational movement and then you have
the utricle and the saccule those take
care of detecting gravity as well as
linear movement it’s kind of like the
gyroscopes in the accelerometer working
in your phone it’s the same kind of
system and it’s a pretty amazing system
so the semicircular canals are filled
with a fluid called endolymph and at the
base of each canal is a copula and some
hair bundles inside it so if you look on
the right side of the image when the
person rotates the fluid gets sloshed
around and when the fluid moves the hair
moves and then the hair sends a signal
to the brain telling what’s happening
right and then there’s three
semicircular canals there is essentially
the anterior canal which detects motion
like this like head nodding there is
posterior canal which detects motion
like a head tilt towards your shoulders
and then there’s the lateral canal that
detects motion like a swivel your head
going side to side the utricle and the
saccule they work slightly differently
they have tiny calcium carbonate
crystals kind of like tiny bones that
are floating on top of the gel membrane
inside of which there’s again hair
bundles and so when you look at the
person bending over to pick up a box the
bones get pulled down because of gravity
and they pulled the gel membrane along
and then the hair gets pulled along and
again the hair sends a signal to the
brain saying alright this is what’s
happening
so the utricle largely sits horizontally
in your head and that’s how I detects
movement in this plane things like
moving forward side to side the saccule
sits vertically in your head and so it
detects movement in the vertical plane
things like sitting down or standing up
when all of this works people can do
some really amazing things with ballots
right but what happens when things don’t
work right what happens if the signals
that are going to the brain just don’t
line up well that’s when you get motion
sickness
all right so motion sickness essentially
is a mismatch of signals that are sent
to the brain from your eyes and your
ears and I imagine a lot of people have
experienced this here when you’re
reading a book in a moving car your ears
are telling the brain I’m moving but
your eyes are telling the brain nope
we’re not moving because you’re
essentially static relative to the car
seat the floor beneath your feet and so
it’s this disagreement between those two
signals that triggers nausea and
vomiting right the same thing happens in
virtual reality like VR as it exists
right now essentially depends on visual
information and so the possibilities of
what we can see in V are practically
endless however what we can feel in VR
is very limited right most of the time
you just feel like you’re standing in
your living room or sitting on your
couch even though you may be flying or
swimming or doing all sorts of things in
VR now what if we could make you feel
this motion what if we could fix motion
sickness that’s exactly what we did will
be built a vestibular stimulation device
it basically is a small wearable that
can automatically sense when to provide
you the right type of feedback when
you’re on VR the way it works is that we
place electrodes behind each ear and
then we hook up the device to a small
battery and then we stimulate the nerves
that I talked about earlier the nerves
that go from your inner ear to your
brain we stimulate them with a small
amount of current
something like maybe one milliamp so
electrically stimulating the vestibular
system is called galvanic vestibular
stimulation or GBS we tested our device
we tested GBS in AVR rollercoaster
experience you can imagine what a via
rollercoaster might feel like and in
this case it went from a vomit fest to
something that people actually found
thrilling and exciting people like I
want this in my home I want to do it all
the time and they said that they could
feel every turn off the roller coaster
in their body something that they’d
expect to feel on a real roller coaster
another thing we can do in VR which is
what I started to talk about is remote
control people basically how can we
steer people using GPS and if you watch
in the video the person actually intends
to walk straight but they end up turning
quite smoothly and that happens well
there’s a prerequisite for it that you
need to be looking down when you do
apply GPS so if they had been looking up
and we had applied GPS they would have
staggered and that almost feels like
somebody’s pushing you that doesn’t feel
comfortable but this is fairly
comfortable you just turn towards the a
nodal direction quite smoothly so we use
this idea in building a two-person VR
game kind of like an escape the room vir
game where there’s one person who’s in
VR and they’re in a dark room they can’t
see anything but they can hear things
around them and then the other person is
using a tablet or a PC and they their
task is to use GPS to steer the person
in VR around obstacles help them escape
the room right so it’s a collaborative
game Zeus is all well and good it’s all
fun and it’s pretty interesting but what
else can GPS do right Volta didn’t stick
electrodes in his ears just for the sake
of doing so what he wanted
to do was see how stimulating the ear
could be done electrically I wanted to
see how it would impact hearing
similarly other researchers in the
1800’s they also tried to use the
investi with a stimulation to see if it
would fix deafness or if it would cure
other diseases of the ear now doctors
are starting to use vestibular
stimulation for things like therapy
rehab even for training athletic
training enhancement scientists are
starting to use GPS trying to see how
really low levels of stimulation can
actually impact higher-order brain
function
things like tactile sensation face
recognition and even memory right so as
a last thought we all know that machines
are getting smarter by the day right and
what if we could evolve alongside the
machines now brain hacking has been a
futuristic fascination for decades but
we all understand that actually fully
understanding the brain is going to take
many many years of work but with GPS we
can actually get started right now by
building devices that can impact small
parts of the brain hack those little
areas just like the one we created thank
you very much [Applause]
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