0:00:00.330,0:00:03.181
The kind of neuroscience that I do and my colleagues do

0:00:03.181,0:00:05.347
is almost like the weatherman.

0:00:05.347,0:00:08.863
We are always chasing storms.

0:00:08.863,0:00:13.746
We want to see and measure storms -- brainstorms, that is.

0:00:13.746,0:00:16.514
And we all talk about brainstorms in our daily lives,

0:00:16.514,0:00:19.964
but we rarely see or listen to one.

0:00:19.964,0:00:21.598
So I always like to start these talks

0:00:21.598,0:00:24.580
by actually introducing you to one of them.

0:00:24.580,0:00:28.007
Actually, the first time we recorded more than one neuron --

0:00:28.007,0:00:30.230
a hundred brain cells simultaneously --

0:00:30.230,0:00:32.699
we could measure the electrical sparks

0:00:32.699,0:00:35.379
of a hundred cells in the same animal,

0:00:35.379,0:00:37.181
this is the first image we got,

0:00:37.181,0:00:39.496
the first 10 seconds of this recording.

0:00:39.496,0:00:42.847
So we got a little snippet of a thought,

0:00:42.847,0:00:45.752
and we could see it in front of us.

0:00:45.752,0:00:46.764
I always tell the students

0:00:46.764,0:00:50.870
that we could also call neuroscientists some sort of astronomer,

0:00:50.870,0:00:52.496
because we are dealing with a system

0:00:52.496,0:00:55.413
that is only comparable in terms of number of cells

0:00:55.413,0:00:58.349
to the number of galaxies that we have in the universe.

0:00:58.349,0:01:01.379
And here we are, out of billions of neurons,

0:01:01.379,0:01:04.197
just recording, 10 years ago, a hundred.

0:01:04.197,0:01:05.780
We are doing a thousand now.

0:01:05.780,0:01:11.180
And we hope to understand something fundamental about our human nature.

0:01:11.180,0:01:13.112
Because, if you don't know yet,

0:01:13.112,0:01:18.362
everything that we use to define what human nature is comes from these storms,

0:01:18.362,0:01:23.013
comes from these storms that roll over the hills and valleys of our brains

0:01:23.013,0:01:26.898
and define our memories, our beliefs,

0:01:26.898,0:01:29.598
our feelings, our plans for the future.

0:01:29.598,0:01:31.996
Everything that we ever do,

0:01:31.996,0:01:37.063
everything that every human has ever done, do or will do,

0:01:37.063,0:01:42.497
requires the toil of populations of neurons producing these kinds of storms.

0:01:42.497,0:01:44.980
And the sound of a brainstorm, if you've never heard one,

0:01:44.980,0:01:48.329
is somewhat like this.

0:01:48.329,0:01:51.475
You can put it louder if you can.

0:01:51.475,0:01:57.878
My son calls this "making popcorn while listening to a badly-tuned A.M. station."

0:01:57.878,0:01:59.363
This is a brain.

0:01:59.363,0:02:02.797
This is what happens when you route these electrical storms to a loudspeaker

0:02:02.797,0:02:05.663
and you listen to a hundred brain cells firing,

0:02:05.663,0:02:10.285
your brain will sound like this -- my brain, any brain.

0:02:10.285,0:02:14.047
And what we want to do as neuroscientists in this time

0:02:14.047,0:02:19.397
is to actually listen to these symphonies, these brain symphonies,

0:02:19.397,0:02:22.797
and try to extract from them the messages they carry.

0:02:22.797,0:02:25.648
In particular, about 12 years ago

0:02:25.648,0:02:28.696
we created a preparation that we named brain-machine interfaces.

0:02:28.696,0:02:31.398
And you have a scheme here that describes how it works.

0:02:31.398,0:02:36.964
The idea is, let's have some sensors that listen to these storms, this electrical firing,

0:02:36.964,0:02:40.046
and see if you can, in the same time that it takes

0:02:40.046,0:02:45.015
for this storm to leave the brain and reach the legs or the arms of an animal --

0:02:45.015,0:02:47.879
about half a second --

0:02:47.879,0:02:50.230
let's see if we can read these signals,

0:02:50.230,0:02:53.630
extract the motor messages that are embedded in it,

0:02:53.630,0:02:55.902
translate it into digital commands

0:02:55.902,0:02:57.788
and send it to an artificial device

0:02:57.788,0:03:03.681
that will reproduce the voluntary motor wheel of that brain in real time.

0:03:03.681,0:03:07.529
And see if we can measure how well we can translate that message

0:03:07.529,0:03:11.047
when we compare to the way the body does that.

0:03:11.047,0:03:13.913
And if we can actually provide feedback,

0:03:13.913,0:03:19.647
sensory signals that go back from this robotic, mechanical, computational actuator

0:03:19.647,0:03:21.898
that is now under the control of the brain,

0:03:21.898,0:03:23.209
back to the brain,

0:03:23.209,0:03:25.330
how the brain deals with that,

0:03:25.330,0:03:30.231
of receiving messages from an artificial piece of machinery.

0:03:30.231,0:03:32.552
And that's exactly what we did 10 years ago.

0:03:32.552,0:03:35.513
We started with a superstar monkey called Aurora

0:03:35.513,0:03:37.981
that became one of the superstars of this field.

0:03:37.981,0:03:40.280
And Aurora liked to play video games.

0:03:40.280,0:03:41.653
As you can see here,

0:03:41.653,0:03:46.597
she likes to use a joystick, like any one of us, any of our kids, to play this game.

0:03:46.597,0:03:51.268
And as a good primate, she even tries to cheat before she gets the right answer.

0:03:51.268,0:03:55.551
So even before a target appears that she's supposed to cross

0:03:55.551,0:03:58.401
with the cursor that she's controlling with this joystick,

0:03:58.401,0:04:02.352
Aurora is trying to find the target, no matter where it is.

0:04:02.352,0:04:03.821
And if she's doing that,

0:04:03.821,0:04:07.135
because every time she crosses that target with the little cursor,

0:04:07.135,0:04:10.085
she gets a drop of Brazilian orange juice.

0:04:10.085,0:04:13.035
And I can tell you, any monkey will do anything for you

0:04:13.035,0:04:16.135
if you get a little drop of Brazilian orange juice.

0:04:16.135,0:04:18.866
Actually any primate will do that.

0:04:18.866,0:04:20.200
Think about that.

0:04:20.200,0:04:23.600
Well, while Aurora was playing this game, as you saw,

0:04:23.600,0:04:26.035
and doing a thousand trials a day

0:04:26.035,0:04:29.918
and getting 97 percent correct and 350 milliliters of orange juice,

0:04:29.918,0:04:33.317
we are recording the brainstorms that are produced in her head

0:04:33.317,0:04:34.964
and sending them to a robotic arm

0:04:34.964,0:04:38.835
that was learning to reproduce the movements that Aurora was making.

0:04:38.835,0:04:42.618
Because the idea was to actually turn on this brain-machine interface

0:04:42.618,0:04:47.318
and have Aurora play the game just by thinking,

0:04:47.318,0:04:49.935
without interference of her body.

0:04:49.935,0:04:52.851
Her brainstorms would control an arm

0:04:52.851,0:04:55.560
that would move the cursor and cross the target.

0:04:55.560,0:04:58.751
And to our shock, that's exactly what Aurora did.

0:04:58.751,0:05:02.951
She played the game without moving her body.

0:05:02.951,0:05:05.188
So every trajectory that you see of the cursor now,

0:05:05.188,0:05:08.400
this is the exact first moment she got that.

0:05:08.400,0:05:10.184
That's the exact first moment

0:05:10.184,0:05:16.951
a brain intention was liberated from the physical domains of a body of a primate

0:05:16.951,0:05:20.651
and could act outside, in that outside world,

0:05:20.651,0:05:23.617
just by controlling an artificial device.

0:05:23.617,0:05:28.534
And Aurora kept playing the game, kept finding the little target

0:05:28.534,0:05:32.451
and getting the orange juice that she wanted to get, that she craved for.

0:05:32.451,0:05:39.152
Well, she did that because she, at that time, had acquired a new arm.

0:05:39.152,0:05:42.115
The robotic arm that you see moving here 30 days later,

0:05:42.115,0:05:44.801
after the first video that I showed to you,

0:05:44.801,0:05:47.451
is under the control of Aurora's brain

0:05:47.451,0:05:50.619
and is moving the cursor to get to the target.

0:05:50.619,0:05:54.518
And Aurora now knows that she can play the game with this robotic arm,

0:05:54.518,0:06:00.234
but she has not lost the ability to use her biological arms to do what she pleases.

0:06:00.234,0:06:04.301
She can scratch her back, she can scratch one of us, she can play another game.

0:06:04.301,0:06:05.901
By all purposes and means,

0:06:05.901,0:06:10.017
Aurora's brain has incorporated that artificial device

0:06:10.017,0:06:12.767
as an extension of her body.

0:06:12.767,0:06:16.300
The model of the self that Aurora had in her mind

0:06:16.300,0:06:20.384
has been expanded to get one more arm.

0:06:20.384,0:06:22.734
Well, we did that 10 years ago.

0:06:22.734,0:06:25.567
Just fast forward 10 years.

0:06:25.567,0:06:30.550
Just last year we realized that you don't even need to have a robotic device.

0:06:30.550,0:06:36.034
You can just build a computational body, an avatar, a monkey avatar.

0:06:36.034,0:06:40.284
And you can actually use it for our monkeys to either interact with them,

0:06:40.284,0:06:44.723
or you can train them to assume in a virtual world

0:06:44.723,0:06:47.767
the first-person perspective of that avatar

0:06:47.767,0:06:53.418
and use her brain activity to control the movements of the avatar's arms or legs.

0:06:53.418,0:06:56.184
And what we did basically was to train the animals

0:06:56.184,0:06:59.234
to learn how to control these avatars

0:06:59.234,0:07:03.133
and explore objects that appear in the virtual world.

0:07:03.133,0:07:05.434
And these objects are visually identical,

0:07:05.434,0:07:09.317
but when the avatar crosses the surface of these objects,

0:07:09.317,0:07:15.717
they send an electrical message that is proportional to the microtactile texture of the object

0:07:15.717,0:07:19.733
that goes back directly to the monkey's brain,

0:07:19.733,0:07:24.785
informing the brain what it is the avatar is touching.

0:07:24.785,0:07:29.550
And in just four weeks, the brain learns to process this new sensation

0:07:29.550,0:07:35.984
and acquires a new sensory pathway -- like a new sense.

0:07:35.984,0:07:38.400
And you truly liberate the brain now

0:07:38.400,0:07:42.784
because you are allowing the brain to send motor commands to move this avatar.

0:07:42.784,0:07:47.784
And the feedback that comes from the avatar is being processed directly by the brain

0:07:47.784,0:07:50.217
without the interference of the skin.

0:07:50.217,0:07:52.751
So what you see here is this is the design of the task.

0:07:52.751,0:07:57.001
You're going to see an animal basically touching these three targets.

0:07:57.001,0:08:01.350
And he has to select one because only one carries the reward,

0:08:01.350,0:08:03.217
the orange juice that they want to get.

0:08:03.217,0:08:08.850
And he has to select it by touch using a virtual arm, an arm that doesn't exist.

0:08:08.850,0:08:10.850
And that's exactly what they do.

0:08:10.850,0:08:14.285
This is a complete liberation of the brain

0:08:14.285,0:08:18.567
from the physical constraints of the body and the motor in a perceptual task.

0:08:18.567,0:08:22.734
The animal is controlling the avatar to touch the targets.

0:08:22.734,0:08:28.385
And he's sensing the texture by receiving an electrical message directly in the brain.

0:08:28.385,0:08:32.268
And the brain is deciding what is the texture associated with the reward.

0:08:32.268,0:08:36.100
The legends that you see in the movie don't appear for the monkey.

0:08:36.100,0:08:38.584
And by the way, they don't read English anyway,

0:08:38.584,0:08:43.800
so they are here just for you to know that the correct target is shifting position.

0:08:43.800,0:08:47.734
And yet, they can find them by tactile discrimination,

0:08:47.734,0:08:50.951
and they can press it and select it.

0:08:50.951,0:08:53.633
So when we look at the brains of these animals,

0:08:53.633,0:08:57.300
on the top panel you see the alignment of 125 cells

0:08:57.300,0:09:01.501
showing what happens with the brain activity, the electrical storms,

0:09:01.501,0:09:03.568
of this sample of neurons in the brain

0:09:03.568,0:09:05.684
when the animal is using a joystick.

0:09:05.684,0:09:08.284
And that's a picture that every neurophysiologist knows.

0:09:08.284,0:09:13.467
The basic alignment shows that these cells are coding for all possible directions.

0:09:13.467,0:09:19.150
The bottom picture is what happens when the body stops moving

0:09:19.150,0:09:25.284
and the animal starts controlling either a robotic device or a computational avatar.

0:09:25.284,0:09:28.350
As fast as we can reset our computers,

0:09:28.350,0:09:34.168
the brain activity shifts to start representing this new tool,

0:09:34.168,0:09:39.418
as if this too was a part of that primate's body.

0:09:39.418,0:09:44.133
The brain is assimilating that too, as fast as we can measure.

0:09:44.133,0:09:47.751
So that suggests to us that our sense of self

0:09:47.751,0:09:51.901
does not end at the last layer of the epithelium of our bodies,

0:09:51.901,0:09:57.619
but it ends at the last layer of electrons of the tools that we're commanding with our brains.

0:09:57.619,0:10:02.383
Our violins, our cars, our bicycles, our soccer balls, our clothing --

0:10:02.383,0:10:09.234
they all become assimilated by this voracious, amazing, dynamic system called the brain.

0:10:09.234,0:10:10.933
How far can we take it?

0:10:10.933,0:10:15.151
Well, in an experiment that we ran a few years ago, we took this to the limit.

0:10:15.151,0:10:17.633
We had an animal running on a treadmill

0:10:17.633,0:10:19.900
at Duke University on the East Coast of the United States,

0:10:19.900,0:10:22.600
producing the brainstorms necessary to move.

0:10:22.600,0:10:26.691
And we had a robotic device, a humanoid robot,

0:10:26.691,0:10:29.085
in Kyoto, Japan at ATR Laboratories

0:10:29.085,0:10:35.179
that was dreaming its entire life to be controlled by a brain,

0:10:35.179,0:10:38.452
a human brain, or a primate brain.

0:10:38.452,0:10:43.050
What happens here is that the brain activity that generated the movements in the monkey

0:10:43.050,0:10:46.517
was transmitted to Japan and made this robot walk

0:10:46.517,0:10:50.584
while footage of this walking was sent back to Duke,

0:10:50.584,0:10:55.817
so that the monkey could see the legs of this robot walking in front of her.

0:10:55.817,0:10:59.884
So she could be rewarded, not by what her body was doing

0:10:59.884,0:11:04.845
but for every correct step of the robot on the other side of the planet

0:11:04.845,0:11:07.454
controlled by her brain activity.

0:11:07.454,0:11:14.572
Funny thing, that round trip around the globe took 20 milliseconds less

0:11:14.572,0:11:18.722
than it takes for that brainstorm to leave its head, the head of the monkey,

0:11:18.722,0:11:22.592
and reach its own muscle.

0:11:22.592,0:11:28.622
The monkey was moving a robot that was six times bigger, across the planet.

0:11:28.622,0:11:35.022
This is one of the experiments in which that robot was able to walk autonomously.

0:11:35.022,0:11:40.289
This is CB1 fulfilling its dream in Japan

0:11:40.289,0:11:43.989
under the control of the brain activity of a primate.

0:11:43.989,0:11:45.978
So where are we taking all this?

0:11:45.978,0:11:48.321
What are we going to do with all this research,

0:11:48.321,0:11:53.989
besides studying the properties of this dynamic universe that we have between our ears?

0:11:53.989,0:11:58.822
Well the idea is to take all this knowledge and technology

0:11:58.822,0:12:04.306
and try to restore one of the most severe neurological problems that we have in the world.

0:12:04.306,0:12:08.889
Millions of people have lost the ability to translate these brainstorms

0:12:08.889,0:12:11.005
into action, into movement.

0:12:11.005,0:12:16.239
Although their brains continue to produce those storms and code for movements,

0:12:16.239,0:12:21.406
they cannot cross a barrier that was created by a lesion on the spinal cord.

0:12:21.406,0:12:23.856
So our idea is to create a bypass,

0:12:23.856,0:12:27.888
is to use these brain-machine interfaces to read these signals,

0:12:27.888,0:12:31.938
larger-scale brainstorms that contain the desire to move again,

0:12:31.938,0:12:35.907
bypass the lesion using computational microengineering

0:12:35.907,0:12:43.021
and send it to a new body, a whole body called an exoskeleton,

0:12:43.021,0:12:48.588
a whole robotic suit that will become the new body of these patients.

0:12:48.588,0:12:52.714
And you can see an image produced by this consortium.

0:12:52.714,0:12:56.773
This is a nonprofit consortium called the Walk Again Project

0:12:56.773,0:12:59.556
that is putting together scientists from Europe,

0:12:59.556,0:13:01.421
from here in the United States, and in Brazil

0:13:01.421,0:13:05.938
together to work to actually get this new body built --

0:13:05.938,0:13:09.272
a body that we believe, through the same plastic mechanisms

0:13:09.272,0:13:15.074
that allow Aurora and other monkeys to use these tools through a brain-machine interface

0:13:15.074,0:13:20.704
and that allows us to incorporate the tools that we produce and use in our daily life.

0:13:20.704,0:13:24.388
This same mechanism, we hope, will allow these patients,

0:13:24.388,0:13:28.156
not only to imagine again the movements that they want to make

0:13:28.156,0:13:31.363
and translate them into movements of this new body,

0:13:31.363,0:13:38.121
but for this body to be assimilated as the new body that the brain controls.

0:13:38.121,0:13:41.972
So I was told about 10 years ago

0:13:41.972,0:13:47.038
that this would never happen, that this was close to impossible.

0:13:47.038,0:13:49.489
And I can only tell you that as a scientist,

0:13:49.489,0:13:52.475
I grew up in southern Brazil in the mid-'60s

0:13:52.475,0:13:57.523
watching a few crazy guys telling [us] that they would go to the Moon.

0:13:57.523,0:13:58.984
And I was five years old,

0:13:58.984,0:14:03.224
and I never understood why NASA didn't hire Captain Kirk and Spock to do the job;

0:14:03.224,0:14:05.656
after all, they were very proficient --

0:14:05.656,0:14:09.106
but just seeing that as a kid

0:14:09.106,0:14:12.091
made me believe, as my grandmother used to tell me,

0:14:12.091,0:14:13.936
that "impossible is just the possible

0:14:13.936,0:14:17.840
that someone has not put in enough effort to make it come true."

0:14:17.840,0:14:21.639
So they told me that it's impossible to make someone walk.

0:14:21.639,0:14:24.890
I think I'm going to follow my grandmother's advice.

0:14:24.890,0:14:26.340
Thank you.

0:14:26.340,0:14:34.369
(Applause)