the year is 2033 and we’re in the living
room of a typical family in Buenos Aires
and we see a girl she’s sitting on the
couch and she’s doing her engineering
homework and measures of her
comprehension are being computed from
her brain activity and her eye movements
adapting the information that’s
presented to accelerate her learning now
meanwhile her sister and her dad are
enjoying an interactive virtual reality
experience together with friends from
around the world and this is sort of a
modern take on the classic
choose-your-own-adventure concept but
here an AI generated storyline is
continually shaped based on the
emotional state of the group across the
room her mom who’s a sociologist is
reviewing an interactive report showing
real-time updates on her research study
this is a collaboration with researchers
worldwide aimed at better understanding
relationships between everyday social
interactions and brain activity and
health in over a hundred thousand
participants from around the globe now
in the background we can see a news
update from the first human expeditions
to Mars where personalized brain health
monitoring systems are being used to
help assess and predict changes in
astronauts cognitive health helping to
ensure the safety of long-duration
deep-space exploration
now this narrative may sound like
science fiction however these are all
realistic applications of scientific
research and development that’s already
happening today with the potential to
positively transform many aspects of our
daily lives and the key technologies
that will someday enable such a future
or right now being increasingly
integrated into our daily lives into the
objects that we interact with and the
environments we live in and ultimately
into us today the mind is the new
frontier
and I believe that we are at a point in
time where advances in neuro technology
and computing and machine learning are
converging on a singular point in
history beyond which lies a new era of
discovery and exploration of who we are
and what we can become
now an early love for exploration and
discovery was instilled in me as a young
child growing up in over a dozen
countries worldwide and exposed to many
different cultures and languages but my
fascination with computing and
technology began when I was just 9 years
old and I was living in Brazil and my
father acquired I used 386 Toshiba on
which was installed the QBasic
programming software and I taught myself
to code and I fell in love with this new
medium where all I needed was this
computer and my mind to enter into this
whole new world of discovery and
creative possibility well fast-forward
about a decade and a few countries later
and I found myself at UC Berkeley
completing undergrad degrees in computer
science and cognitive science and it was
my interest in the intersection of these
fields and neuroscience that brought me
to the field of brain-computer
interfaces or BCI developing computer
algorithms to translate patterns of
neural activity associated with specific
cognitive States into meaningful
instructions and around that time as I
was finishing up at Berkeley I was
fortunate to have the opportunity to
work at Palo Alto Research Center this
is the legendary birthplace of so many
key computing technologies that we use
every day
for instance the personal computer or
the graphical user interface Ethernet
and importantly ubiquitous computing the
foundational idea that underlies mobile
computing and the Internet of Things now
the father of ubiquitous computing was
the late Mark Weiser and he led the
computer science lab in the late 80s and
Weisser articulated a powerful role for
technology when he famously wrote in
1991 the most profound technologies are
those that disappear
they weave themselves into the fabric of
everyday life until they are
indistinguishable from it and he also
said that the more you can do by
intuition the smarter you are the
computer should extend the unconscious
technology should create calm now I
resonated deeply with this view of
technology’s ultimate purpose and
especially as it applied the VC eyes and
that is to act as an invisible extension
of ourselves
woven seamlessly into the fabric of our
lives calmly empowering us to be more
capable and to connect and interact with
the world and with each other in
unprecedented new ways I envisioned a
future in which advances in neural
interface technology combined with
distributed computing could enable
anyone who wants to to allow the devices
and applications embedded in their
environment to act as agents of their
conscious and subconscious minds a sort
of cognitive halo extending our minds
beyond the limits of our bodies well my
thinking on the topic was further
influenced a few years later as I was
working on my PhD at UC San Diego’s
Schwartz Center for computational
neuroscience and there I was working
with a group of fellow researchers on
open source neuroscience software that
was being used by thousands of
researchers and labs around the world
and it became clear that a ubiquitous
neuro tech platform like the one that at
a mission at Parc could also act as an
accelerator enabling researchers and
developers to realize their own visions
for neuro technology by easily building
on state-of-the-art validated pipelines
for neuro physiological signal
processing and BCI
without needing to reinvent the wheel or
build their own solutions from the
ground up and it was from these visions
that in Theon was founded with the goal
to empower anyone anytime or anywhere to
access a labs worth of brain embodies
signal analysis and state decoding in
the cloud through a simple interface and
with just a few lines of code to be able
to integrate various measures of one’s
brain state into an
application or device and we called this
platform neuro scale and we believe that
such empowerment can help catalyze
growth and innovation across multiple
domains and applications ranging from
improved human performance and
well-being to new forms of communication
and creative expression to accelerated
scientific research discovery and new
clinical solutions so for example in
2014 we co-developed with UCSF Adam
gazelle II the glass brain and this was
the first VR experience where you could
fly through a 3d model of your own brain
seeing it’s changing network activity in
real time this was all using
state-of-the-art EEG brain mapping well
today was just a few lines of code a
developer could access similar pipelines
running on neuro scale and use this to
create their own mobile VR AR experience
that’s designed to for instance
reinforce specific brain functions
through an adaptive reward mechanism or
to create a brain where living place
where device is connected through the
internet of things respond dynamically
to one’s neural state and as we enhance
and combine these technologies with
machine intelligence we envision
powering new systems that are capable of
augmenting our capabilities and
increasing our productivity and health
and well-being for instance were
currently working with the human
spaceflight laboratory at the University
of North Dakota as well as with ntl
group cog neonics and researchers from
NASA on research testing the feasibility
of using wearable EEG sensors combined
with specially designed cognitive
assessment protocols to better
characterize and predict changes in
crewmembers brain performance during
simulated lunar or Martian missions and
if successful technology like this could
not only have useful applications here
on earth but could also help to increase
the safety and feasibility of
long-duration deep-space exploration of
that other great frontier the wild of
deep
space meanwhile back here on earth
there’s still a great deal that we must
learn about the brain and how it
functions in the equally wild and
complex and unpredictable world outside
the lab so for instance a typical
cognitive neuroscience study it would be
carried out in relatively constrained
environments usually in a laboratory
using sample sizes ranging from tens to
have most hundreds of individuals these
mostly healthy college students but how
does brain activity and brain function
vary across broader groups of
individuals in different parts of the
world and across a wide range of
applications both in health as well as
in dysfunction what if we could scale up
our research to involve hundreds of
thousands or even millions of
participants from around the globe what
if we could better understand how the
brain learns across different
environments and individuals now this
could enable us to design new kinds of
personalized personalized systems that
are capable of accelerating learning or
enabling individuals to overcome
learning challenges what if we could
enable researchers across disparate
domains for instance a sociologist or a
geneticist to easily test hypotheses at
the intersection of neuroscience and
their own fields of expertise what new
insights or discoveries might we achieve
well I’d like to invite on the stage a
so everyone meet Rachel Rachel meet
everyone now as I’ve been speaking
miniature sensors worn in Rachel’s ears
and on her chest are recording her brain
and heart activity and streaming this to
the neuro scale platform where in
real-time these are being translated
into measures of her cardiac performance
and relaxation and attention and other
states and Rachel can grant permission
to any internet-connected device or
application to access these states in
real time so for instance his web
browser visualization which actually if
we were connected to the Internet would
be running but Rachel can also do
something like this ask nurse cow for my
average relaxation level over the last
five minutes hold it up so she can
respond 36 percent not bad but maybe you
want to try taking a little break just
how I feel right about now – so oh yeah
so here we can see her her activity
streaming in real time through neuro
scale and Rachel can also provide her
data in anonymized form to an automated
lab in the cloud enabling researchers to
access the results of automated analysis
pipelines and generate reports and test
new hypotheses using this and and other
[Applause]
now 27 years ago when Jacques Vidal
first coined the term brain computer
interface such a system would have
occupied an entire room but today it can
be worn on our bodies and it can be held
in our hands and in the coming decades
it will disappear altogether woven
invisibly into our bodies and into the
world around us now researchers today
are working on new kinds of miniaturized
neural sensors that could someday be
safely embedded throughout the brain
enabling much higher resolution neural
recordings and technology like this
could help to enable the design of
personalized therapies that are designed
specific for a patient’s brain or body
and as scientific research progresses
and neuro technology becomes ubiquitous
we will also have the opportunity to
gain a deeper understanding of cognition
and emotion and if we so choose a future
like the one described in that bueno
situs household could become a reality
now today we stand on the cusp of a
paradigm shift and we don’t know what
the future holds in the path ahead is
not without obstacles and risks and many
important issues that we face in other
technological domains for instance
ethics and privacy and data ownership
all must be addressed for the emerging
neuro tech domain and as a global
community we must work together to
engage an informed discussion and open
an inclusive debate to ensure we make
wise choices that set us on the right
path but the entire history of human
exploration has held in balance both
risk and reward in the face of the
unknown the mind is the new frontier and
we are all explorers embarking on a
journey that will take us beyond this
frontier to discover what we can become
thank you
[Applause] [Music]
room of a typical family in Buenos Aires
and we see a girl she’s sitting on the
couch and she’s doing her engineering
homework and measures of her
comprehension are being computed from
her brain activity and her eye movements
adapting the information that’s
presented to accelerate her learning now
meanwhile her sister and her dad are
enjoying an interactive virtual reality
experience together with friends from
around the world and this is sort of a
modern take on the classic
choose-your-own-adventure concept but
here an AI generated storyline is
continually shaped based on the
emotional state of the group across the
room her mom who’s a sociologist is
reviewing an interactive report showing
real-time updates on her research study
this is a collaboration with researchers
worldwide aimed at better understanding
relationships between everyday social
interactions and brain activity and
health in over a hundred thousand
participants from around the globe now
in the background we can see a news
update from the first human expeditions
to Mars where personalized brain health
monitoring systems are being used to
help assess and predict changes in
astronauts cognitive health helping to
ensure the safety of long-duration
deep-space exploration
now this narrative may sound like
science fiction however these are all
realistic applications of scientific
research and development that’s already
happening today with the potential to
positively transform many aspects of our
daily lives and the key technologies
that will someday enable such a future
or right now being increasingly
integrated into our daily lives into the
objects that we interact with and the
environments we live in and ultimately
into us today the mind is the new
frontier
and I believe that we are at a point in
time where advances in neuro technology
and computing and machine learning are
converging on a singular point in
history beyond which lies a new era of
discovery and exploration of who we are
and what we can become
now an early love for exploration and
discovery was instilled in me as a young
child growing up in over a dozen
countries worldwide and exposed to many
different cultures and languages but my
fascination with computing and
technology began when I was just 9 years
old and I was living in Brazil and my
father acquired I used 386 Toshiba on
which was installed the QBasic
programming software and I taught myself
to code and I fell in love with this new
medium where all I needed was this
computer and my mind to enter into this
whole new world of discovery and
creative possibility well fast-forward
about a decade and a few countries later
and I found myself at UC Berkeley
completing undergrad degrees in computer
science and cognitive science and it was
my interest in the intersection of these
fields and neuroscience that brought me
to the field of brain-computer
interfaces or BCI developing computer
algorithms to translate patterns of
neural activity associated with specific
cognitive States into meaningful
instructions and around that time as I
was finishing up at Berkeley I was
fortunate to have the opportunity to
work at Palo Alto Research Center this
is the legendary birthplace of so many
key computing technologies that we use
every day
for instance the personal computer or
the graphical user interface Ethernet
and importantly ubiquitous computing the
foundational idea that underlies mobile
computing and the Internet of Things now
the father of ubiquitous computing was
the late Mark Weiser and he led the
computer science lab in the late 80s and
Weisser articulated a powerful role for
technology when he famously wrote in
1991 the most profound technologies are
those that disappear
they weave themselves into the fabric of
everyday life until they are
indistinguishable from it and he also
said that the more you can do by
intuition the smarter you are the
computer should extend the unconscious
technology should create calm now I
resonated deeply with this view of
technology’s ultimate purpose and
especially as it applied the VC eyes and
that is to act as an invisible extension
of ourselves
woven seamlessly into the fabric of our
lives calmly empowering us to be more
capable and to connect and interact with
the world and with each other in
unprecedented new ways I envisioned a
future in which advances in neural
interface technology combined with
distributed computing could enable
anyone who wants to to allow the devices
and applications embedded in their
environment to act as agents of their
conscious and subconscious minds a sort
of cognitive halo extending our minds
beyond the limits of our bodies well my
thinking on the topic was further
influenced a few years later as I was
working on my PhD at UC San Diego’s
Schwartz Center for computational
neuroscience and there I was working
with a group of fellow researchers on
open source neuroscience software that
was being used by thousands of
researchers and labs around the world
and it became clear that a ubiquitous
neuro tech platform like the one that at
a mission at Parc could also act as an
accelerator enabling researchers and
developers to realize their own visions
for neuro technology by easily building
on state-of-the-art validated pipelines
for neuro physiological signal
processing and BCI
without needing to reinvent the wheel or
build their own solutions from the
ground up and it was from these visions
that in Theon was founded with the goal
to empower anyone anytime or anywhere to
access a labs worth of brain embodies
signal analysis and state decoding in
the cloud through a simple interface and
with just a few lines of code to be able
to integrate various measures of one’s
brain state into an
application or device and we called this
platform neuro scale and we believe that
such empowerment can help catalyze
growth and innovation across multiple
domains and applications ranging from
improved human performance and
well-being to new forms of communication
and creative expression to accelerated
scientific research discovery and new
clinical solutions so for example in
2014 we co-developed with UCSF Adam
gazelle II the glass brain and this was
the first VR experience where you could
fly through a 3d model of your own brain
seeing it’s changing network activity in
real time this was all using
state-of-the-art EEG brain mapping well
today was just a few lines of code a
developer could access similar pipelines
running on neuro scale and use this to
create their own mobile VR AR experience
that’s designed to for instance
reinforce specific brain functions
through an adaptive reward mechanism or
to create a brain where living place
where device is connected through the
internet of things respond dynamically
to one’s neural state and as we enhance
and combine these technologies with
machine intelligence we envision
powering new systems that are capable of
augmenting our capabilities and
increasing our productivity and health
and well-being for instance were
currently working with the human
spaceflight laboratory at the University
of North Dakota as well as with ntl
group cog neonics and researchers from
NASA on research testing the feasibility
of using wearable EEG sensors combined
with specially designed cognitive
assessment protocols to better
characterize and predict changes in
crewmembers brain performance during
simulated lunar or Martian missions and
if successful technology like this could
not only have useful applications here
on earth but could also help to increase
the safety and feasibility of
long-duration deep-space exploration of
that other great frontier the wild of
deep
space meanwhile back here on earth
there’s still a great deal that we must
learn about the brain and how it
functions in the equally wild and
complex and unpredictable world outside
the lab so for instance a typical
cognitive neuroscience study it would be
carried out in relatively constrained
environments usually in a laboratory
using sample sizes ranging from tens to
have most hundreds of individuals these
mostly healthy college students but how
does brain activity and brain function
vary across broader groups of
individuals in different parts of the
world and across a wide range of
applications both in health as well as
in dysfunction what if we could scale up
our research to involve hundreds of
thousands or even millions of
participants from around the globe what
if we could better understand how the
brain learns across different
environments and individuals now this
could enable us to design new kinds of
personalized personalized systems that
are capable of accelerating learning or
enabling individuals to overcome
learning challenges what if we could
enable researchers across disparate
domains for instance a sociologist or a
geneticist to easily test hypotheses at
the intersection of neuroscience and
their own fields of expertise what new
insights or discoveries might we achieve
well I’d like to invite on the stage a
so everyone meet Rachel Rachel meet
everyone now as I’ve been speaking
miniature sensors worn in Rachel’s ears
and on her chest are recording her brain
and heart activity and streaming this to
the neuro scale platform where in
real-time these are being translated
into measures of her cardiac performance
and relaxation and attention and other
states and Rachel can grant permission
to any internet-connected device or
application to access these states in
real time so for instance his web
browser visualization which actually if
we were connected to the Internet would
be running but Rachel can also do
something like this ask nurse cow for my
average relaxation level over the last
five minutes hold it up so she can
respond 36 percent not bad but maybe you
want to try taking a little break just
how I feel right about now – so oh yeah
so here we can see her her activity
streaming in real time through neuro
scale and Rachel can also provide her
data in anonymized form to an automated
lab in the cloud enabling researchers to
access the results of automated analysis
pipelines and generate reports and test
new hypotheses using this and and other
[Applause]
now 27 years ago when Jacques Vidal
first coined the term brain computer
interface such a system would have
occupied an entire room but today it can
be worn on our bodies and it can be held
in our hands and in the coming decades
it will disappear altogether woven
invisibly into our bodies and into the
world around us now researchers today
are working on new kinds of miniaturized
neural sensors that could someday be
safely embedded throughout the brain
enabling much higher resolution neural
recordings and technology like this
could help to enable the design of
personalized therapies that are designed
specific for a patient’s brain or body
and as scientific research progresses
and neuro technology becomes ubiquitous
we will also have the opportunity to
gain a deeper understanding of cognition
and emotion and if we so choose a future
like the one described in that bueno
situs household could become a reality
now today we stand on the cusp of a
paradigm shift and we don’t know what
the future holds in the path ahead is
not without obstacles and risks and many
important issues that we face in other
technological domains for instance
ethics and privacy and data ownership
all must be addressed for the emerging
neuro tech domain and as a global
community we must work together to
engage an informed discussion and open
an inclusive debate to ensure we make
wise choices that set us on the right
path but the entire history of human
exploration has held in balance both
risk and reward in the face of the
unknown the mind is the new frontier and
we are all explorers embarking on a
journey that will take us beyond this
frontier to discover what we can become
thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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