Jacob Robinson

Are we headed toward a technology revolution in therapeutic BCI?

I just wrote this piece about why I believe neurotech will become an indispensable tool for addressing the growing mental health crisis and become as common as personal computing. 🧵

open.substack.com/pub/brainjacob…

#BCI

Ok y’all, EEG can’t measure the same brain signals as implanted BCIs. It doesn’t matter how much AI you throw at it.

Spatial averaging filters out high-frequency neural activity by the time it reaches the scalp. Anything higher than ~70 Hz for research-grade systems or ~20 Hz for consumer systems is below the noise floor.

Implanted electrodes are much closer to the brain and can resolve brain activity up to ~200 Hz (epidural), ~600 Hz (ECoG), and ~2 kHz (penetrating).

Saying you can infer high-frequency brain signals from EEG is like saying you can infer the lyrics to a song you’ve never heard by listening to the bassline. Sure, you can guess some lyrics, but they certainly won't be accurate.

That doesn’t mean that EEG can’t be useful. But we shouldn’t pretend that EEG can do the same thing as an implant. It can’t because: Physics.

So excited to work with the team at @EmoryUniversity and @IowaNeurosurg

Thanks to @emilylmullin at @WIRED for taking some time to chat with us about our recent approval to start a clinical trial! Exciting year for #BCI !!

We have cars and phones that get better over time - we should expect the same from medical technologies.

Cars and phones used to be updated only when something was broken via recalls or software patches. Now we have improvement-native devices that receive planned, validated improvements over time. It's way better. Patients deserve that same level of care and support.

Here are some thoughts about why and how we should build "improvement-native" medical technologies.

open.substack.com/pub/brainjacob…