The Transformative Power of Neurotechnology | Protocol Labs

The Transformative Power of Neurotechnology

In his talk at the Breakthroughs in Computing series at LabWeek22 in Lisbon, Milan Cvitkovic, founder and CEO of Integral Neurotechnologies, delved into the expansive and evolving field of neurotechnology. While the term brain-computer interface (BCI) might be more familiar to some, Cvitkovic explains that neurotechnology encompasses a broader spectrum. Neurotechnology is one of the most crucial endeavors for humanity, albeit one without a single intuitive goal like climate technology or longevity research. The field's diverse potential applications can make it challenging to present a concise argument for its importance without resorting to high-level abstractions. To illustrate the field's potential, Cvitkovic enumerates various goals, emphasizing that neurotechnology is not just about controlling devices with our minds. Its applications span from healthcare advancements to the profound enhancement of human capabilities, advocating for its recognition as a civilization-level priority.

Interested in the latest research and developments in the field of neurotechnology? Join us at LabWeek Field Building , taking place June 10-16, 2024 at Edge Esmeralda , a pop-up event city in Healdsburg, CA.

Overview of the Field of Neurotechnology

As I begin to share my thoughts, I'll flag from the outset that I will use the term neurotechnology a little more than I use the term brain-computer interfaces (BCI). They are nearly synonymous. Neurotechnology is, in my opinion, tied for the most important thing that civilization needs to be working on right now. Unfortunately, from a PR and field-building perspective, neurotechnology doesn't have a single intuitive goal the way that climate technology or longevity research do. There are so many possibilities and possible use cases that it can be hard to make a succinct argument for neurotechnology's importance without being so high level that you're risking a nosebleed.

I would liken the state of neurotech today to the state of the web in 1990. I think it was self-evident to the true believers who were building the web in 1990 that increasing communication and connectivity was important for society, but they couldn't point necessarily to a single killer use-case that would justify the whole thing. But similarly, it's self-evident to me how much value there is in increasing the precision and effectiveness with which we can interact with the brain and with our own minds. But I think that vision's a little vague for many people, and I think that vagueness is unhelpful.

So, I want to start via some brute force examples to enumerate some of the goals of neurotechnology, because it's not only important to know what the stakes are for success in this field, but I also worry people's general conception of neurotechnology is often limited to the idea of controlling our phones with our brains or something (as great as that would be). In fact, that's kind of a crushingly narrow vision than I think people like me who work on the field think about it. So let’s kick off by defining some goals for this crucial space.

“The global burden of neurological and psychiatric disorders is the highest it's ever been and only getting worse.”

Advancements in Healthcare and Beyond

The first and most obvious point to mention is the potential for neurotechnology to cure disease and alleviate suffering. It's hard to even put into words how desperate the need is here. About 21 percent of the global disease burden is caused by neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders… that’s one in five Americans. And if you leave out malnutrition, treatable communicable disease and injuries, it's closer to 40 percent of the global disease burden as measured by disability-adjusted life years (DALY), and that percentage has been steadily increasing, so concretely we're talking about neurological disorders like Alzheimer's, ALS, epilepsy, Parkinson's blindness and paralysis — and on the neuropsychiatric side, we're talking about depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, schizophrenia, the list goes on and on. Two-thirds of people with a known mental illness don't seek treatment, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The global burden of neurological and psychiatric disorders is the highest it's ever been and only getting worse.

The point is that even if you're inclined to roll your eyes at the more futuristic stuff that comes later on in this talk, the therapeutic potential of neurotechnology alone justifies it being a civilization-level priority.

Over the past 20 years, the funding of mental health research in the US has been flat. So, despite the fact that the burden of mental health disorders is increasing, the funding for research to address that burden has remained the same. And the burden of disease is expected to continue to increase. I don't know how much clearer I can make it that there's a huge unmet need.

Now at some point, it has occurred to most people that what counts as a disease or disability is a little bit relative. Fatigue, for example: the vast majority of Americans and, I suspect, people in the world use a nanoscale neurotechnology called caffeine every day to regulate their energy levels. It's so ubiquitous that fatigue in the morning is something we excuse as being before we've had our coffee, rather than just the acceptable state of biology. You could say similar things about pain before painkillers. So the natural question is: Why leave the status quo where it is?

Seamless Communication Between a Human Brain and a Computer

The thing that people usually think of when they hear the term "brain-computer interface" is seamless communication with a computer's devices, tools and digital content, but also, in the future, hopefully seamless communication between people. A particular category of neurotechnology that's deeply important to me is giving ourselves the ability to behave like and hopefully become the sorts of people that we already wish we were on reflection: people with better impulse control, people who are more open-minded, people who are more honest and braver with each other and with ourselves.

"A common factor in most — arguably all — existential risks to humanity is humans behaving in regretful ways or failing to coordinate or failing to look past their narrow self-interest, even in ways that they agree are bad behavior of themselves.”

To be clear, this is not some feel-good desire on my part. I would contend that a vast proportion of the problems we face individually and as a species come down to failures to behave in the way that we already want to.

Controlling Mood and Behavior

We all recognize in cases like depression and bipolar that people's moods are not a well-calibrated function of their external circumstances, but outside these pathologized cases, how often are the state of our minds really matched that well with what we're doing in our lives?

And what tells us that we don't usually think to tally it up because it's just the way things are? Why is it that when you go to lunch with your boring uncle, you can't just dial-up patience and kindness to the level that you're going to wish they were at as soon as you walk out of your boring uncle's house?

Another underrated use case, I think, is improving rationality. For example, by the ability to flag or eliminate cognitive biases. Imagine thinking through whether to take a job offer and getting a ping from your phone that says, "Hey, it looks like your brain activity shows that you're suffering from status quo bias. Here's a note that you wrote to yourself last time you did this."

Exploring Use Cases of Neurotechnology

One potentially pivotal use case of neurotechnology regarding AI is obtaining greater quantity and quality of data on human values than we can get from language or other conscious expressions of morality, like voting. AI progress in the recent past has tended to be driven by large datasets. Human values are the things we want an AI to learn. Providing it with more, higher quality data on human values might be wise.

Another interesting use case might be direct measurements of subjective well-being in the brain, although first we'd have to disentangle what subjective well-being is at the neurological level in order to measure it.

A Look at Governance and Use Cases

Lastly, on just this goals section, like any new technology, there are absolutely uses that I don't personally advocate for. I think perfect lie detectors in the hands of authoritarian governments would be one. Addictive technologies that don't come bundled with the addiction tools, accidental corruption or reinforcement of bad values, or giving AI systems additional attack surface on human minds.

OK, let's come down from the razzle-dazzle a little bit. Now that I've hopefully painted something of a picture of the value of neurotechnology, let's look at the state of the field today.

First, it's only fair to start by mentioning the OG and still most widely used type of neurotechnology, which is small molecule drugs. We're all familiar with drugs; you probably take them every day in some form. Drugs have a pretty good UX for neurotechnology. Once they're in you, they last all day usually, you don't have to wear or charge anything. But they're hard to turn off once you've taken them, and despite their profound and diverse effects, they aren't particularly flexible or programmable.

Also, just a shout-out to cognitive techniques, like meditation, hypnosis, brain-training software. I don't count these as neurotechnologies per se, but like drugs, they're used by millions, if not billions, of people every day, and the effects they have are instructive, I think, for neurotechnology development.

Another widely used technology is transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS. It's a non-invasive method; it works by electromagnetic induction. It's FDA-approved for depression, anxiety, OCD, and smoking cessation. Statistics are a little tricky, but it seems like 50,000-plus people a year use it.

A Look at Frontier Tech in the Next Five Years

The next-generation technology most people are familiar with are electrode-based motor brain-computer interfaces. The basic idea here is to put a lot of small electrodes very near the neurons responsible for motor function in the cortex in the outer part of the brain and determine a user's movement intentions straight from those neurons from the activity of those neurons.

Another emerging neurotechnology is ultrasound-based methods. One type of ultrasound neurotechnology is already FDA approved. This technique is called high-intensity focused ultrasound or HIFU. In HIFU, waves can be focused on a target in the brain and then used to destroy tissue to ablate tissue like tumors or neurons that are damaged by Parkinson's disease. This is a non-invasive procedure in the sense that no physical matter is entering the body.

Themes for the Future of Neurotechnology

I wanted to pause here briefly and just empathize with possibly some members of the audience. If you're anything like me when I started neurotech, you might be thinking that this all just seems like a massively scattershot set of tools and techniques and might be wondering if there's a neat ontology that these all fall into.

To watch the rest of Milan Cvitkovic’s talk, go here.