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Israeli Technology and the Synthetic Brain
Transcription of interview with Matti Mintz
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Matti Mintz is a professor of psychobiology. He is in the Department of Psychology at Tel-Aviv
University. He was named on ABC news as the inventor of the Robo-Rat.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Mintz on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: The Robo-Rat is a hybrid of a biological and a synthetic rat. Can you
tell us about that?
Matti Mintz: I’m very happy that you use this term of hybrid rather than the cyber-rat
or something like that. A cyber-rat is kind of a public term, but the academy would rather
use the term “hybrid”. The question is whether we can help a person that is damaged
in one part of the brain to recover his lost function caused by the damage. There are many
examples where we actually used these electrodes or informatics technology to help some of
these people. The known examples are Parkinson patients, where you stimulate the subthalamic
area of the brain and you see that although Parkinson’s is not cured the symptoms are
taken care of.
Some electrodes are for stimulating the brain, and others are for recording from the brain.
Through the history of neuroscience, we actually gained a lot of control over recording from
the brain and stimulating the brain. The next idea we had together with some other associates
was of connecting the recording electrodes to the stimulating electrodes by some smart
synthetic device. At the beginning of the program, you record from a place in the brain,
you analyze this information, and you provide stimulation back to the brain trying to correct
something.
Our idea was that we can actually correct some function that is lost because due to
damage to the brain. So just imagine that there is a very tiny place in the brain that
was damaged because of aging, lack of blood supply, because of some accident or because
of some toxin. We record from the inputs to this tiny place of the brain, we analyze the
information in the synthetic device, a cheaper program, and we try to analyze this information
in a very similar way to the way it was in the original place in the brain. After analyzing
this information, we return the analyzed information, the decision back to the brain. It’s a kind
of a side lop that is correcting the function that was lost because of the small damage
with the brain. This is basically the idea.
I’m reading partly the information that reflects the decision to move the finger.
We know already for many years how to read this kind of information. This is not new.
We know how to record from our sympathetic reflex to record the sensory information that
is coming and we know has to do with some movement, and we know how to do it already
for many decades.
Douglas Goldstein: This is not the same as understanding what someone is thinking and
the science fiction motive of reading someone’s mind.
Matti Mintz: Absolutely. I stressed that we are replacing very tiny place in the brain.
Let’s say you have a long sequence of movements that you decided to make and within the sequence,
we are providing a replacement for one of these movements. This is far away still from
knowing what you think, but in the sequence of behaviors that you want to execute now
because of decision to move around. One of these movements was impossible because there
was damage in the brain and we are giving you the option to execute this movement within
a longer sequence of movements.
Douglas Goldstein: Are there any applications outside the laboratory yet, or are we still
waiting for that?
Matti Mintz: Part of the applications are for within the hospitals. People are now implanted
with electrodes to correct motor movements in order to help them recover from obsessive
compulsive diseases. There are attempts to recover from depression. There are recordings
from the brain to discover sites of epileptic fits in the brain, etcetera. This kind of
application that we are speaking about is a smart device between the recording and stimulation
of the brain. We are not aware that such a device is yet in clinical use. But we think
that some applications of this kind of device that will be there in future years can already
be introduced as a clinic tool. Which parts of the brain can be recovered by this technique
is still a question. Another group, for example, working in California is trying to replace
a much bigger part of the brain compared to what we are doing. They tried to replace the
hippocampus, which is important for the special orientation of the memory, and they’re making
a lot of progress. I believe that in the future you’ll be able to replace at least some
small parts of the brain.
Douglas Goldstein: What’s the focus of your lab right now?
Matti Mintz: We are now trying to expand our expertise and instead of working on a one
single discrete motor movement, we want to actually recover a sequence of movements.
Let’s say you want to move your hand, and after moving your hand toward the table, you
want now to grasp a glass. So here, it’s not only one movement that’s involved but
rather a sequence.
Now the question is whether we can actually benefit from the techniques that we master
during this project to replace longer sequences of movement. This is very challenging, and
much more technology is needed. This kind of project involves many partners that build
electrodes, simulations, and chips integrated to the whole technology that together analyzes
signal processing. So we are trying now to build this group again and convince my partners
that we can actually now approach much more difficult tasks that will involve slightly
bigger areas of the brain, still not the whole cerebellum, but bigger parts of the brain.
Douglas Goldstein: You’re doing it more from a study point of view, but are there companies that are involved today that perhaps
in the future will be a common name because everyone’s going to say “I had my brain
fixed by such and such a company?”
Matti Mintz: First of all, the budget for this study came from Israel, from myself and
from a complexity science project funding institution, but mainly from the European
community. They require cooperation from us, and they are funding studies that are of a
large scale in a sense that the principal investigators are corporate. One of the corporate
partners was in fact a company in Austria that was building for us the integration system
for all of the technologies. Through this experience, they started to develop more and
more sophisticated equipment, so this is already a proven impact on Europe’s economy or one
company.
When we’re developing this complex integrated technology, there are many small parts of
this technology that are already patterned bios. For example one of my students came
to the idea that if you want to recover function in the brain, we need to implant the electrode
that will be functional in the brain for many years. But when electrodes are inserted into
the brain, they damage the brain and they trigger a response of the immune system, which
encapsulated the electrode and prevented it from functioning properly. So you need to
find a way to antagonize the effect of the immune system, and this is the pattern that
my university accepted and the companies will be interested in this kind of improvement
in the electrodes. Many companies, including in the States, are now producing these electrodes
for brain recording and stimulation. This is definitely something that is enhancing
the economic market in Israel definitely. We expect that more of this kind of improvements
will come when we progress with this project.
Douglas Goldstein: Could you tell people how they could follow the work that you’re doing?
Matti Mintz: My website is now under reconstruction, so this is kind of closed, but if people would
come to the website of our project, the project was called ReNaChip. It’s an acronym for
Rehabilitation Nano Chip. If they will go to this website of ReNaChip which is www.renachip.org,
this is the only original name of the ReNaChip that is existing and can be seen on the web,
they will find all our partners. Our partners are coming from Tel-Aviv University, School
of Engineering, England, Austria, Italy, Rome, Barcelona and Lund, Sweden. All of these partners
are mentioned there.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel. Securities offered
through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA, SIFMA. Accounts carried
by National Financial Services LLC. Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article. While it is
believed to be current and accurate, divergence from the original is to be expected. The original
podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/. All information on this website is purely
information and should not be used as the sole basis for making financial decisions.
The opinions rendered herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas
Goldstein, Profile Investment Services, Ltd., or Israel National News. Readers should consult
with a professional financial advisor before making any financial decisions. Please see
the complete disclaimer at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/.