[Music]
you all know this sound this is the
sound of the human heartbeat but how
many of you actually know what human
brain sounds like you’ve all seen what
the brain looks like but how many of you
know what the brain actually sounds like
we here at infant the IRA Center for
fetal and neonatal research have
developed a way to listen to the brain
and here it is I bet that’s not what you
thought it would sound like it’s amazing
isn’t it no artificial sounds were added
and that is from a preterm babies brain
but before I go any further how do I
look here today I know I know the things
I have to do seriously though this cap
is an EEG cap it contains numerous
sensors that allow us to monitor the
brains activity in real-time and you
might ask why is this important well
I’ll go into that in a few moments but
in the sense it’s like looking into a
window into the brain beautiful isn’t
she
she is one of 78,000 babies born here
annually in the country of Ireland of
these 4,800 approximately are born
prematurely or to look at it another way
every 116 minutes a preterm baby is born
to give you some context in Ireland
pregnancy and birth a usually low-risk
however
150 babies may need some form of medical
intervention and for that reason we have
neonatal cuts like the one we have here
to give you some more context a
full-term pregnancy is usually 40 weeks
on average and the baby weighs
approximately 4,000 grams whereas with a
preterm baby it is defined as a baby
less than 37 weeks and they usually
weigh about 400 grams so if you think
about that that’s staggering it’s like
10 times less than what a full-term baby
weighs or another way of looking at it
is they the smallest of the smallest
babies may only weigh just as heavy as a
bottle of water or another way to look
at it is these babies are so small that
if you took off your ring their actual
whole arm could fit true through it so
there are that small so how can we give
these little ones the best start in life
so to do that some of the smallest
people in the planet begin their journey
in an incubator like this one here and
this incubator typically has a blue
light and with this blue light it helps
with jaundice and this is also temporary
temperature regulated we also monitor
the baby’s heart rate and breathing but
what we do here at infant is we also
monitor the baby’s brain waves and we do
that using this type of an EEG cap like
the one you can see here so contain
sensors and we can monitor the
brainwaves but some of you might be
wondering how have I been left holding
this baby are how have I come to this
career pad in some ways so my
fascination began when I was a fifteen
year old with technology and a few of my
classmates and I came together and we
decided we try our hand at business and
be honest we didn’t fare too badly we
came second in Europe and some of you
might ask well what did we do well apart
from dressing up as men in black at the
time I know this is all the rage back
then but we actually set up a web
development company and I know some of
you might not think that’s very
cutting-edge right now
because eight-year-olds today can write
complex code but at the time we were
always looking into a thing called
Wireless Application protocol or wack
and what WEP is it allows you to send
Internet content from from the Internet
to your smartphone or to your your
tablet like we all have here today and
although WAP has been outdated now it
was the kind of beginning of the
platforms for such technology so then
that got me thinking in terms of how
could I apply this to health that led me
to complete a PhD in neuroscience and to
investigate people having difficulties
with brain disorders and trying to
figure out how can technology solve
these these complex brain disorders and
just to give you an administration what
fascinates me about the brain is that
this is the brain here and the brain can
be divided into two parts
there’s one the first part is this part
down here the lower structures in some
ways is a primitive cortex and what the
primitive cortex does it allows us like
animals it controls our reading and our
autonomic function some ways where is
this part here is the cortex and this
cortex is what separates us from animals
and makes us the most evolved species on
the planet in terms of it allows us to
think in real-time but also what’s
fascinating is it allows us to
understand things and that can be very
powerful and I’ll give you an example
now so this here is the latest artwork
that my sister sent me I got this
message on whatsapp reason and she said
what do you think of it what do you
think of it it could be anything
couldn’t it so what came to my mind
straightaway was I thought maybe this is
Purkinje fibers and Purkinje fibers are
the internal workings of the heart in
some ways and that is what my brain did
used because of a background the
medicine in neuroscience so this is what
I saw so I wrote back to him saying have
you should call this person the Purkinje
fibers and she sadly she wrote back to
me saying this is actually a close-up of
rostoff a chapter that we have at home
so yeah needless to say I don’t know
much about abstract art what actually
struck me was how is it that my brain
could connect one thing to another or
how is it that if you think about it
different perspectives can impose
different perceptions on things and that
is the key to understanding how
innovation can come about so we here at
infant I’ve come up with a way of using
looking at things in different ways
bringing together doctors nurses
engineers scientists all together and
coming up with an innovative technology
to help monitor the brains of preterm
babies and this EEG technology we use
regularly in the neonatal unit so some
of you might ask well why is this
important well when an adult is having a
seizure you will actually physically see
it happening it’s right in front of your
eyes you will know y’all know where as
when a preterm baby like this one over
here they are actually they can be nice
and quiet and still and we don’t know
whether they are having a seizure so the
only way that we can detect that they
are having a seizure is by using this
EEG cap what we look at is a waveform
like this you can all tell me what’s
going on there Kenji it’s nice and
simple isn’t it so what this is actually
showing is showing a spike complex which
composed of two parts it has a duration
and it has an intensity and what our
algorithm can do is it’s an automatic
way of figuring out where this spike
wave is instead of having an expert to
read them because up until now there’s
only
there is actually only a handful of
specialists not only in Ireland but
throughout the world that can read these
complex waveforms so our algorithm we
hope is a solution to this problem and
one or one other area that we’re looking
into that our future development is
we’re looking into and it’s called baby
link and what that involves is we are
hoping to combine the amazing sound that
you heard at the start of this talk with
the sound with the neonatal algorithm
and we
we’ll be able to send that wirelessly to
our smartphone technology so for example
if a baby is having a seizure in the
unit we will be able to send this
information the nurse will be able to
ring up the doctor and say would you
mind having a look wherever they are in
the world and say could you read the
scan for me please and the doctor will
be able to give a solution so that is
just one of our future developments here
at infant so just conclude by taking
different perspectives from different
backgrounds and looking at things and
different and in innovative ways and
bringing them all together
we here at infant have come up with a
solution to a very complex brain problem
and not only do we want to share this
knowledge with with you and Ireland but
we feel that this knowledge should be
shared throughout the whole world now isn’t that an idea or sharing