Neuralink & Technologies to Enhance Human Brains | Dr. Matthew MacDougall

In this episode my guest is Matthew MacDougall, MD, the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink. Dr. MacDougall trained at the University of California, San Diego and Stanford University School of Medicine and is a world expert in brain stimulation, repair and augmentation. He explains Neuralink’s mission an

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life I’m Andrew huberman and I’m a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine today my guest is Dr Matthew McDougall Dr Matthew McDougall is the head neurosurgeon at neurolink neurolink is a company whose goal is to develop Technologies to overcome specific clinical challenges of the brain and nervous system as well as to improve upon brain design that is to improve the way that brains currently function by augmenting memory by augmenting cognition and by improving communication between humans and between machines and humans these are all of course tremendous goals and neurolink is uniquely poised to accomplish these goals because they are approaching these challenges by combining both existing knowledge of brain function from the fields of Neuroscience and neurosurgery with robotics machine learning computer science and the development of Novel devices in order to change the ways that human brains work for the better today’s conversation with Dr Matthew McDougall is a truly special one because I and many others in science and medicine consider neurosurgeons the astronauts of Neuroscience in the brain that is they go where others have simply not gone before and are in a position to discover incredibly novel things about how the human brain works because they are literally in there probing and cutting stimulating Etc and able to monitor how people’s cognition and behavior and speech changes as the brain itself has changed structurally and functionally today’s discussion with Dr McDougall will teach you how the brain works through the lens of a neurosurgeon it will also teach you about neuralink specific perspective about which challenges of brain function and disease are immediately tractable which ones they are working on now that is as well as where they see the future of augmenting brain function for sake of treating disease and for simply making brains work better today’s discussion also gets into the realm of devising the peripheral nervous system in fact one thing that you’ll learn is that Dr McDougall has a radio receiver implanted in the periphery of his own body he did this not to overcome any specific clinical challenge but to overcome a number of daily everyday life challenges and in some ways to demonstrate the powerful utility of combining novel machines novel devices with what we call our nervous system and different objects and Technologies within the world I know that might sound a little bit mysterious but you’ll soon learn exactly what I’m referring to and by the way he also implanted his family members with similar devices so while all of this might sound a little bit like science fiction this is truly science reality these experiments both the implantation of specific devices and the attempt to overcome specific movement disorders such as Parkinson’s and other disorders of deep brain function as well as to augment the human brain and make it work far better than it ever has in the the course of human evolution are experiments and things that are happening now at neuralink Dr McDougall also generously takes us under the hood so to speak of what’s happening at neurolink explaining exactly the sorts of experiments that they are doing and have planned how they are approaching those experiments we get into an extensive conversation about the utility of animal versus human research in probing brain function and in devising and improving the human brain and in overcoming disease in terms of neurosurgery and neural links goals by the end of today’s episode you will have a much clearer understanding of how human brains work and how they can be improved by Robotics and engineering and you’ll have a very clear picture of what neural link is doing toward these goals Dr McDougall did his medical training at the University of California San Diego and at Stanford University School of Medicine and of course is now at neurolink so he is in a unique stance to teach us about human brain function and dysfunction and to explain to us what the past present and future of brain augmentation is really all about before we begin I’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme I’d like to thank the sponsors of today’s podcast our first sponsor is hvmn Ketone IQ hvmn Ketone IQ increases blood ketones I want to be very clear that I like most people have heard of the ketogenic diet but I like most people do not follow a ketogenic diet that is I’m not in ketosis however most people don’t realize that you can still benefit from increasing your blood ketones which is what hvmn Ketone IQ does I take Ketone IQ prior to doing really focused cognitive work so I take it once in the afternoon anytime I’m going to prepare for a podcast or do a podcast or if I’m going to do some research or focus on a grant anything that requires a high level of cognitive demand and that’s because ketones are the brain’s preferred use of fuel even if you’re not following a ketogenic diet if you’d like to try Ketone IQ you can go to hvmn. com huberman to save 20 off your order again that’s hbmn. com huberman to save 20 today’s episode is also brought To Us by levels levels is a program that lets you see how different foods and activities affect your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor nowadays there’s a lot of excitement about continuous glucose monitors and levels allows you to assess how what you eat and what combinations of foods you eat and exercise and sleep and things like alcohol should you indulge in alcohol and things of that sort how those impact your blood glucose now it’s very important that the cells 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