Transcripts For CSPAN2 BOOK TV 20160312

Booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. Television for serious readers. Now we kick off the weekend with malcolm gay. He explores the signals from the brain that dictate motor skills. And now i am very thrilled to introduce malcolm gay to left bank books. Malcolm gay is an arts reporter for the boston globe where he covers visual and performing arts. He previously worked as a contributing writer at the New York Times and the critic at large for our very own riverfront times where he reviewed of visual and performing arts. His writing has appeared in wired, the olympic, and time, among other publications. In 2004 the society of professional journalists Northern California chapter named him that youre supposed in the emerging journalist. At a 2005 he received the James Beard Award for nutrition or food related consumer issues. His work has since received other national accolades, including top honors in 2008 from the association of alternative news weeklies, and in 2009 from the National Association of black journalis journalists. In 2010 he was awarded the Woodward Bernstein award for the Missouri Association of criminal defense lawyers. He was named in patterson fellow in 2013. He studied philosophy and art of the Colorado College later earning and m. J. From the university of california, Berkeley Graduate School of journalism where he studied narrative nonfiction. The brain electorate which details the race among top neurosurgeons emerge the mind with machine is his first book. Author of americas great debate calls the brain electric a masterpiece of reporting in sight right at its best. Tonight, he will be discussing his book the brain electric, answering questions from you and sign copies of his book that we have available for sale at the desk. So please help me in welcoming malcolm gay to left bank books. [applause] hello. I actually know many of you, so you all have heard a lot about this but i think over the years and months, it seems like decades sometimes. But anyway thank you all for coming. I think weve all had conversations about the brain electorate in some way or another. And one thing that people ask me again and again is knowing me knowing my history and my interest, how did somebody like me become interested in the question like this. The one pushing people reliably ask me. A lot of people here to hear about the brain and to think its absolute the last place i would like to go. Its too complicated, its too crazy, its inside the head. But there are a lot of things that contribute to my interest in this. The first person and probably if there were one place to put it, my interest in this at the feet of eric who is a neurosurgeon, neuroscientist, expert, genius extraordinaire at orange right up the street. Hes in his 40s. I think he has more than 800 patents to his name. He had a robust neurosurgery practice. He had written a Science Fiction novel. He was an abstract painter. He had a research lab. He was one of these guys who makes the rest of us crazy. Hes incredible. So i started talking to eric after hearing about his work, in the first thing he said i was plenty to do with a Magazine Store and ask him to do a quick thinker i was writing journalism everywhere, and it seemed like a great magazine topic. Eric brought me into, he was very generous and brought me into a surgery immediately. Eric, what he really works with is sections of the brain to find a bad brain, the rooted in epileptic seizure. And what he started doing, this case actually was not an epilepsy case. It was a tumor and it wasnt a welldefined tumor because one of these tumors that grows throughout the brain. And so after surgery, the patient goes down, the guy goes down and hes anesthetized. Eric opens his head, and in the middle of the surgery eric wakes him up dirt that god is kind of dazed and wondering where he is, and then he, eric, a surgical assistant is asking eric, or asking the guy about the most mundane things. Is asking him about his job and is asking to have the cardinals are doing and what is elected on the weekends and things like this. But the whole idea was that he wanted the man to keep talking because as eric was pulling away at the tumor come as he was taking out this cancer, he wanted to make sure he wasnt encroaching on any of the Language Centers of the brain. Answer as the guy was talking about stocking the shelves at the Grocery Store and he could remember the name for peace, erica would realize that no, i need a buck off of this section. To me it was an incredible moment for me. I think i had some kind of ill formed notion of what makes a person held and what makes us who we are and how we communicate. I hear he was working with the biological matter of what we are. He was able to manipulate that and talk about that. And not only was able to work with actual substance of the brain itself but he was able to pull using electrodes thoughts out of the brain. And that to me all of a sudden, all of these philosophical questions come intellectual questions, biological questions come rushing to the four. I pretty quickly realized the magazine these have to be scrapped and this was a much bigger peace. One of the things that i think youre looking at Something Like the brain, and youre looking at this kind of poorly understood, mysterious object that we never see but is us, its really kind of a difficult thing to say well, were to get a story about this . A lot of the questions are really interesting but how do you keep it, how do you make it into a story . How to make it to book that someone like me would want to read . Whats in their dissenting that youre looking for wax its well and good to go to surgeries and talk about these intellectual issues, but the brain is really a black box. I started calling around and start speaking with people that were deep in this field. Among them ted berger is a narrow scientist out of ucla, and ted got all of these guys are always the smartest guy in the room, but ted works with memory, building additional procedures for memory. So basically what people do is he will disable the hippocampus which is kind of an older brain structure which is critical to the formation of memory and youll be able to disable the. Then he will, using electrodes, read the signals that are coming into the hippocampus, and he would then carry those out to a computer. And ted as a mathematician and neuroscientist, but what he will end up doing is hes crafted what he believes to be kind of a master algorithm of memory. And so what he can do is bring these incoming signals into his algorithm, and that will actually spit out outgoing signals that mimicked the same signals that the hippocampus would create. And then he will offload those into the areas of the brain to form memories. Other people were working in visual prosthetics, so prosthetics of the optics. Some directly on the visual cortex as opposed to simply the eye. One person was working with a palette that you would place on the tank that allowed people to see. It basically because of the two camera that would scan the area and that would send small signals to the tongue which is this warm, moist, highly sensitive area. The brain is plastic enough that it will take those signals and interpret them after time as visual information. People are able to rock climb and hike and play soccer, lined people, with this. Fish is a tremendous, all of these things are wonderful and really interesting. But what you come up against is how do you avoid becoming just this huge catalog of theres this Interesting Research and heres this Interesting Research . I wanted the story and wanted something that brought the stakes of whats happening home. Thats about the time that i met my deal magill was one of the top guys in the field. He works all over the field in terms of motor and other sensory areas. But miguel at the time was whispering about this new neural prosthetic that would bind the brains of multiple animals and create what he called a brain to brain interface. So this kind of multiorganism creation that would be a cyborg network. He was also working with bringing in infrared come of visual information and allowing animals to see areas of the spectrum they otherwise would not be able to see. He was doing really edgy, really, a lot would say Science Fiction crazy stuff. But he also said that everybody in the field was an amateur, and that he was really the only guy that really had the straight dope on this. That to me, thats a telling moment because all of a sudden you realize its not one big happy family. It was around that time that i ran into Andrew Schwartz, and Andrew Schwartz is another one of these top guys. And andrew was at the time working, still is, working on motor. He was working with trying to reproduce fluid dexterous movement and the robotic arm that would mimic an approach, the grace of the human body. He had incredible, i will not say luck results, and andrew, hes one of these guys that doesnt, hes unswayed by social charms. Aunties interested in measurable and is interested in results. Aunties interested in science. So i really kind of kept quiet around him a lot, but learned a tremendous amount from him here and one of the things he said was everybody in the field doesnt know what theyre talking about. And so at this point i kind of start to realize here are the two top guys and they have these diametrically opposed views of the least each other, but they agree on the field or all of a sudden theres this narrative architecture of how i can tell this story and how i can enter into these rich intellectual questions and biological questions, evolutionary questions, philosophical questions and some pretty high flying neuroscience along the way, that this would act as a real bridge to be able to talk about that. What i wanted to concert it was on this fierce Competition Among these top neuroscientists who are prestige, intellectuals, and ultimately think i think a lot of them would believe the ultimate prize, and thats the nobel. Of course that makes it very difficult thing to report because all of these guys have multimillion dollar labs. If its thursday theyre going to be in korea, so its just a hard way to get into the. But once you get into the upper wrong, you know, you were never two, three, four questions went from talking with these top guys and then asking a question and then saying, i have no idea. We just dont know. And thats really where we are with the brain. Theres so many questions that we have so many titillating and exciting, minute windows onto the vast neural galaxy. And yet we still dont know basic of basic things. In the book at one point andrew says, we want to do all of this but we dont know the first thing about why a neuron fires, and thats the basic, thats how it all starts. But one of the grand ironies of this, that was kind of interesting way to go about it is your this clash of titans to give these incredibly and vicious men, and they are mainly men, who are working with the weakest among us. The award with paraplegics and quadriplegics and locked in same people who have it brain stem stroke. These people, they are not really interested in these big sciencefiction questions. They are interested in being able to feed themselves and take care of their daily business. They are interested in just getting to normal. And the truth is, is that most of these people will never actually benefit from this technology. We are really in the beginning portion of this race. They are going into this with no really thought about how this is going to affect them, how its going to help them. They are undergoing voluntary brain surgery with the expectation that it will help future generations. You get this kind of crazy juxtaposition of this multimillion dollar project, huge egos, incredible science, and then these incredibly fragile people. And they are all working together. In a sense they are all working together for this, what i would say is, this very kind of fundamentally human story, and thats harnessing technology to make us more of what we already are. Harnessing this technology to make us more human. Back to me, its this quest and i think it gets into some very heady issues, and theres lots of ways to kind of approach this question, i think that ultimately where this goes is this kind of quest for betterment and for bettering who we are. Its very easy to get into kind of sign sciencefiction questions of where were going to have google in our brain and were going to have neurally implanted cars and things like that. And that may happen. That actually may happen, but one of the researchers i was speaking with said, we know weve arrived we were doing the most normal, mundane things with this, brushing our teeth, combing our hair, being able to call people. Thats really what a lot of people are working with. I think that was kind of, thats really what the story is all about. Its about neuroscience and its about all of these other questions, but its also about the people that are engaged, deeply, deeply engaged in these questions, out of this fundamental human need. So in any case, thats kind of a little bit about what my thinking in terms of how put the book together and what i wanted the book to be. Theres a lot of, theres a lot of nerve science in it, but what it wanted to be able to do was to write a book that somebody like me would be able to read and want to read. I think i will end without but i will read a little bit and we can maybe talk about the book some, i hope you enjoy it. So im going to read the beginning, chapter six, its called a backup plan. I dont have any water. Andrew schwartz knew that if he wanted to stay relevant in youtube cinks penetrating electrode into the cortex. Darpa could provide that opportunity but the agency opted to go with the applied Physics Laboratory at johns hopkins. They have tons and tons of military contracts, so they are used to dealing with these guys he said. They have become virtually like to do all these 3d charts which darpa seem to like it when darpa announced a product, it also releases a list of potential performers, Research Laboratories from the agency is willing to fund as part of a project. Any researcher or lab that competes can choose from that list, building a team across institutions. For schwartz, that minority with a project manager manager and a select group of robotics experts to build an oil before linking it to the brain. To our less than six people in the world that know how to build a robotic arm and all come from mit. All these other doctors basically said we can build a robot arm, you know. We know were doing. Both hopkins and the other can talk about enjoying their darpa. Im sitting to so youll be my boss, he said . Needless to say i didnt get on any of those games. Schwartz was effectively locked out. The pentagon had shut the door a darpa funders were far from cutting him off that they wanted him to keep working with monkeys and awarded him a 2 Million Contract for a study that would not only catapult his research on 26 these 60 percentage of pas of the New York Times, but eventually would give them a shot at the human motor cortex. They of people doing the same kind of thing i was doing, a lot more people with a lot more money and they didnt get anywhere. They cant count as a backup plan. Other researchers are circling around the problem of how to link the brentwood multijointed prosthetic limb, but few have successfully closed the loop with a robot arm. Earlier work ethic in place in either virtual or environment or a computer screen and essays to save distance. Mental control of a cursor would be a boon to quadriplegics but darpa wanted a brain controlled prosthetic limb that you could use to brush your teeth or comb your hair. The race was on an schwartz devoted his Research Funds to a suite of experiments. Elegant neural control of a dexterous multijointed limb. It turned out to be great. I did not report to apo or anybody. I just did my own work. With electrodes in hand, schwartz and his colleagues began to work with to monkeys and a pair of robot arms. Training the Research Monkey fall somewhere between art and science. Said you cant do a monkey what to do, researchers must devise ingenious ways to familiarize the animals with a physical essence of a task. Its a delicate procedure and schwartz began by training is lucky to control the arm using a joystick or pressing the joystick forwar forward the anis learned they could extend a limited theres fixed point in space, grab a marginal or sliced great and pull back on the joystick to bring it to the mouth. As the monkey brought the marsh bill back researchers fixed it and wouldve for positions with animal to grab. Once the monkeys were unfamiliar with the task, researchers removed the joystick in mobilize the animals are by placing them in tube attached to the task chairs. They recorded their active well placing the arm undercoat automatic control giving researchers command over the arm to grab food and brought to the monkeys mouth. One of the great discoveries of the late 20 something happened at a lab of jaco. The site is that implanted electrodes of monkeys hoping to listen in on neurons he believed were associated with hand and mouth movements. The researchers recorded from individual neurons as the monkey reach for a peanut tracing the sound firing pattern before, during, and after the movements. By that measure his experiment did not differ tremendous leap from the recordings is so researchers are making in other labs. Whatsit his work apart a car by accident. During a break between tasks the monkey sat idly in its chair as researchers build about three. The monkey wasnt moving at all but when one of the researchers snatched a spare peanut and popped it in his mouth, the neuron theyve been recording had erupted as the monkey and grabbed the pso. The brain or lease a specific class of cells seemed not too distant was between an action performed an action absorbed. It was a class of neurons that was involved in motor planning but there was also interested in physical actions of others. Much has been written about mirror neurons and Brain Research is how proposed mirror neuron systems play a critical recognizing the needs of others. We flinch when we see someone injured on the street. We throw at almost any sport and we feel deep sympathy for the fictional trials of characters in film and theater. Why . Because of some basic level our brain physically recreates the experience as though it were our own. Mirror neurons not only are the fundamental mechanism by which we feel empathy but also play a role in socalled theory of mind, enabling us to recognize other people have ideas and desires that are distinct from our own. Added more practical level the brains pension to recreate object actions helps researchers to prepare the monkeys were brain computer interfaces. As the monkeys watched the arm grabbed a piece of food the animals motor neurons began firing as they were grabbing food with its own biological or. Me while schwartz and his colleagues used the information to build their decoder to a computer algorithm that associate specific neural firing patterns with particular movement. As the researchers continue to be the arm the algorithmic association between fiery patterns of the robot arm grew stronger. Eventually they began to dial down the control of the arm and when automatic control. The monkey a partial command of you wit but the site is could sl correct its movement. If you are began to go wildly off course they have effectively given a monkey training wheels that encourage you to move the arm into the side back and forth direction but constricting the Arms Movement from site to site. It was a synergy between animal and algorithm. The computer was better learning to interpret the monkeys codes. The resulting paper published in 2008 was a watershed moment. Cbs 60 minutes to encode this data on the front page of the nuke times and was subsequently picked up by countless other news organizations. No one had ever shown such elegant control. Schwartz had clearly not get out of the park and his lab was inundated with enduring progress. I hated it. I could never express what i wanted to express. All i can say is selfdefeating, yeah, they can grasp pieces of it and put into it and put it to the method you end up telling the same damn thing over and over. Still schwartz was undeniably proud of his work had shown proof of principle. That only could a monkey gain elegant content control over a robot arm but it could also use it as a worthy circuit of its biological counterpart to perform an essential factor will it was the underlying science that most excited short. Brain computer interfaces were pointed to some foundational principles, how the brain learns, its relationship to objects, even thought its so. I always laugh when psychologists and cognitive neuroscientist who say theyre going to study cognition are thinking, i say can you define that for me . If are going to poke when my electrodes in the brain and find a thought, how would i know if i founded . They cant defend. They cant even define the necessary parameters i thought so how am i supposed to find it . What schwartz developed was a closed input output system. He could use to test the accuracy of this model. We can prove how well it works because we can look at the movement with a performance. You do this if you say thought takes electricity and chemicals. Wheres your model . I can say based on my model, my hypothesis, my subject can do this. So i will stop there. [applause] so that is, the book has many, there are many different labs, the are many different research, researchers who all kind of circle about each other like, you know, that big dogs that they are. Antischwartz county plays a big role in it and usually done terrific work of discussion during terrific work. If you guys have any questions id be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. How did you get these people to give you time but you mentioned so many of them are such big fish and have so many responsibilities and so much money, and other people are trying to interview them. How did you get them to give it time . And was there any one of those like big fish that you couldnt get, that wouldnt give you time . Persistence, groveling, whiskey. No. It was a lot of persistence. I call these guys again and again and again. You never get them. You always get the flunky or the secretary or someone else. I stock some of them. I would go to the conferences and grabbed him by the lapel and the like we need to talk, i have these questions for you. At one point with mr. Schwartz, i drove out to pittsburgh to meet his big research a subject of the ones that ive been promised to see, but darpa was in town and so when i arrived they turned me away. Answered the you just have to go home now. So why did not. It was a lot of persistence. It was a lot of emails, a lot of skyping, a lot of traveling. There were some people that i really wanted to speak with that, you know, a lot of these guys, i mean, its interesting. A lot of them have these kind of archetypical personalities and some of them are kind of the classic scientist. They dont really want to engage with the public. They are very interested in the research. One of the researchers who is one of schwartzs counterparts actually, very early on repeatedly told me he just wouldnt talk to me. At a certain point i had to respect the. As i was saying theres this great sifting that happens. You know, i at a certain point had to say ive got the star and the story and the story. With eric i wouldve gone much further with him but there were issues. He was taking one of his technologies. He was forming a private company around that is actually doing quite well now. And one of the funders for that company at one point in no Uncertain Terms told me to leave her life. It was over at that point. So i really had to kind of, i had to add, in some respects i had to follow the story and go with the story that i had. Eric do so many Different Things that i was able to concentrate on one area but not the other. It was persistence in a lot of ways. I know theres a lot of work being done on prosthetics, but i havent read your book but is there coverage of what you might call the more Science Fiction our cutting edge . Eric alludes to a lot of us in his public lectures. In terms of physical mortality is based on all this stuff, the implications of the funded no problem of hacking the human brain. Dozier book deal with what any of that kind of stuff . It sort of does. Its always in the mix in essence. A lot of people like eric, im sure youre familiar with miguel, they are futurists. They are as interested, they are as interested in helping people medically and getting people to kind of to normal as they are including google in your brain. And having a neurally implanted, you know, car or motorcycle or what have you. They are very interested in that field. One thing that miguels work speak to on a sciencefiction level is hes talking about having his brain to brain interface. And at that point his Research Really presses up against our notions of biology at our notions of self. So you have this, we had these ideas about what makes a human in kind of biological confines of humanity and on personnel is. When miguel starts talking about linking the brains of multiple humans into a cyborg network, hes very quick to say what sort of the consciousness emerges from that . What sort of competition the model emerges from that . And the truth is we have no idea, and we cant know. And maybe we can even understand it because we are not smart enough. Maybe there is some other type of consciousness that emerges from these lengthy consciousness is that at this point we are deaf to or blind to. Said in one of his lectures at the google thing is a relatively simple project. He said it is like two to four years ago, sample size your 24 7 access to the internet right there just by thinking about it. He said two to four years. Eric is an optimist. Eric is an optimist. Is a professional optimist. I mean, what were going to be able to do, at this moment, and i thought of bringing one of these in, which you can buy off the shelf eeg. But eeg is always good to be a somewhat limited interface. Eeg is going to have all of these various muscular artifacts and you dont know that youre necessarily getting neural information. I think that the day when we are lining up for outpatient implants, thats a little ways away. You can control drones with your brain today. You can control, i mean, erics lab has created an app for your iphone we can play, its called brain copter. Its already out there in a lot of ways. Its utility remains unclear i think. In some ways the consumer model at this point remain kind of modeled, i would say. But, you know, i think that you look at where the technology is going, and i think what people really are most excited, a lot of people are excited in a sciencefiction part of it. Was it challenging to to a book that was more accessible to more average reader . No. No. I mean, you know, im not a scientist. It was a steep steep learning curve. And i was reading major articles and i was reading science articles. And to not only understand the science but to understand the sides to avoid where you can actually explain it in a dramatic, interesting way. That even as a dramatic, but you can explain it in simple terms that people can understand and her eyes will not glaze over while they are doing it. Yeah, that was a big challenge. So there was a lot of, and you learn to read the articles and to learn to read, and also its interesting because when you first start there so much hyperbole and the Science Press about bci. These studies, and she really, a lot of people in the press they just say look what they did. But they dont actually really know how to study and a look at the study and its claims and its methodologies are much more modest than it might appear at first glance. You start to actually understand the limitations of what these people are doing as well. It was a steep learning curve on that, for sure. For sure. Worded things that through research you may be learned or were undeserving that you thought sort of challenge your morals around maybe the research that was happening that they were doing, or anything like that . What did you find challenging . Well, it would be, i mean, when you go into the monkey labs and you see, its not, it can be challenging to see the animal models. A lot of them are working on animal models. I wasnt as concerned by that as i thought i would be, because most of these animals, granted they are research animals, but in the realm they are well cared for, groomed. They seem company, i didnt spend a lot of time cage time with them, but no, it is a big question that people get very worried about it. And its a legitimate debate. To this day Washington University does not publish the address of that Animal Research house. That is challenging. The other thing that was challenging to me was working with one person in particular who really did believe that these technologies would help him. And didnt have, he didnt think that this necessarily would help them immediately that he was doing it with the expectation that somewhere down the road he would be first in line. And that was challenging because im certain that the researchers have many long conversations with him trying to temper his expectations of what was possible, and yet it didnt completely sink in. So theres a certain kind of shared delusion that goes on that is not entirely comfortab comfortable. The other things that are not entirely comfortable with his the patenting. Most of these people, theres one guy, at one point eric in the books is everything between the brain and the skull, thats me. Theres another man in the book has a patent on all these when you start getting into questions of privatizing these technologies and privatizing the brain in that way, it becomes a question come and announcin img it shouldnt happen that way necessarily, but i am saying that it becomes a question. [inaudible] off the record. No, none of them have sued there have not been any lawsuits. There have been threats of lawsuits between two top researchers that had to do with the formation of cyber kinetics which was the first, it was a bci group or company that was trying to privatize and create what they called brain gauge. And one of the researchers felt that all of his had been in the public realm and, if they move to patent it and formed his company, he threatened to sue yeah but do you talk about the patients, i assume we are talking about patients expect more than they are going to get out of the process. I would say that was one person, but yeah. Because i got the idea that people did i think they do. Thats the flipside of this. And particularly i think dan sherman and another person in the book, you know, but she and particularly she was raised catholic and the idea of service and is kind of helping others was instilled in her from a very, very young age. Herbig cause was hungry and should work in soup kitchens and donate canned goods and all of this stuff. She suffers a very rare disease that has deep, very slow, i guess very fast and are on death. Over the course of three years she became completely paralyzed. And became the sponsored. Part of that was she felt she was a burden on others and she felt that she was completely, she was a burden to her family, she couldnt help anyone anymore. Even if you wanted to volunteer she would have to have someone help her volunteer so it would be an imposition on anyone to hell. She became suicidal at a certain point. This research, and shes very clear this research is not going to help her immediately, but the very idea that this is going to help future generations of the disabled has given her such spiritual solace and is really kind of read and i did, it is given her a renewed meaning and spiritual dimension to her life that for a long, i think that she felt god had kind of abandoned her. So in that respect, i dont know thats quantifiable but its a real benefit i think. She was a meaningful life. Have you thought or in your Research Found that theres politics involved now especially in the practical dimension, you know, being able to hook up your brain to help paraplegics with all the people, people are coming back from combat now . Is there more money for it . Well, i think, so there are a couple of things. Yes, there is more money for it. Want is jeffrey who was kind of the driving force, is a real force of nature. Hes in the book and usually kind of the one who spearheaded the revolution in the revolution of the program. He was in the army for a long timewas recruited into darpa, which is kind of rare. Deserved to doors in iraq and came back he served two tours in iraq and came back and saw several people with indications, and some of them were from leftover mines from russia. Some of them were from combat. He came back and felt that, he was also trained as a neurologist, came back and felt he was dutybound to make these kids whole again. One of the problems with opera live in prostheses, most people have some sort of actual disease so they lose parts of the lake. The lake is not a simple prosthetic, but its much easier, its a much easier engineering challenge to craft a prosthetic leg and it is in our because an arm moves in free space and it hangs. It has all of these various challenges, including Something Like 26 degrees of freedom versus i think nine in the leg. And the market share for upper arm prostheses is almost nonexistent because there are so many people that have amputated legs. But when somebody looking at rad to create an upper bound prosthesis they look at the population of people that would benefit, no words by it. And they say its not, we will not be able to get a reasonable return on our investment. Thats where darpa really stepped in. In that respect, in that respect i think politics kind of broadly spoken really did inform this. As well obama just in 2013 with the brain initiative. Theres a lot more money for brain machine interface that has been in a long time. [inaudible] have to decide how theyre going to regulate it yet . If it becomes more ubiquitous or people utilize it, is going to be presented in a different way . Could be burdensome down the road . Something that people look at and then it becomes an ongoing regular process . Right now i think, that was, so with erics company, for instance, most implants, most common implants actually puncture the brain and go into the brain itself. And that is really intense regular process to get the fda to approve that sort of implant. Where eric was able to kind of size that into our equation was by using a type of implant that doesnt actually pierce the brain. It sits on top of the brain and its part of a twostep epilepsy surgery procedure. They do the craniotomy, place the electorate on the breakaway for the person of seizures to localize this issue. And during the time he creates these interfaces. So he hasnt had to really deal with that sort of Regulatory Framework in that regard. Going forward isadore to become a privatized, an actual commercial device which has every intention to do, i think that within become, at this point hes working with eeg. Is not working with, with neural illusions. If he were to try to get into actual brain implants that were implants, i think i would be, it would be a lot more regulatory hurdles to jump before he got there. But at this point hes done a couple of studies with it, and very few of these, that i very few implants that have made that leap. There is one thats called neural pace, its kind of like deep brain stimulation but what it does is it delivers a small bolt of electricity to bypass epileptics seizures and a dark deep brain stimulation as well, which are forms of brain machine interface. They would have to pass fda approval like anything else. That would be a challenge. Any other questions . Yes. Who is funding all this . A lot of it is being funded by the military for a lot of it is being funded by the department of defense. The National Science Foundation Funds quite a bit of it, the federal government, but a lot of it is being funded by the military. I think in past iterations of this, of these research initiatives, they insist theyve said they want to effectively build better, stronger, smarter, faster soldiers. Thats kind of fallen by the wayside with bci particularly. At this point theyre really interested in kind of the basic science of getting the motor system up and running. There have been programs in the past where they tried to neural the link Fighter Pilots to their cockpits. And use bci to help people having hands cognition during prolonged sleep deprivation. There had been these scary big brother questions, but these days, at least with the revolution Prosthetics Program is really about getting these guys back to normal. Is it likely that Insurance Companies 10 years will be willing to pay to get a new arm if someone gets in an accident or injured . I imagine the stuff is fairly expensive. It will be hugely expensive. I dont know. I couldnt really answer. I dont know exactly if obama cared would cover that, but maybe. Did your Research Stay within the United States . I dont know the names youre talking side dont know where those all our. Our. So theres kind of a continental divide, kind of an atlantic divide. Most of the people that are working the basically, accessing the brain directly or in the United States. In europe its much more easy. I spoke with people in england. I didnt, i kind of stayed away from eeg cited doctor to many europeans, or people that are based in europe. Several europeans are working here in the United States, and working including bill kennedy the pages recently. This is one of the things where i wish the book were coming out a little later. He went to a plate that was believes and had surgery done upon himself to implant electrodes in his own brain so he could study himself. So i mean it really takes all kinds. Just to follow up because you are saying here primarily defense oriented, thinking about stronger powers abroad, are there some that are doing more than others . Theres a lot of interest in in germany. Is a lot of interest in england and in france. Those three countries have a fairly robust bci lab. And the italian labs were huge in terms of really foundational things, and the entire group of researchers that came that created that were uncovered this idea of mirror neurons. [inaudible] by the book. [laughter] read it immediately. You know, thats a great question and was one of the questions went i was kind of talking about how i was thinking about writing this book, one reason why i really didnt want to do kind of, try to catalog everything is because every two weeks thursday huge defense. Summer to concentrate on kind of the underlying science, the core technologies, the core drama. Entrance of incremental to in terms of incremental advancements, they are happening every day. But in terms of the broader arc of the story, the reason i wrote it the way i did, the reason i concentrated so closely on the motor system is because i think, terrible pun, it had legs. My hope is that it will be germane for use to. For years to come. If there are no other questions, thank you all. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres a look at whats on prime time tonight. That all happens tonight on cspans booktv. About six or seven years ago when i became fascinated by the oregon trail and all the things that were true, that they never taught us in school and, of course, you wouldnt find in an a hollywood movie. I came across the line, the last document crossing of the oregon trail was in 1909. You know, my autism, my whole since the things it just didnt occur to me especially since i had a horse background going up oon a farm in new jersey. It didnt occur to me there might be a strange response, thats the book i should you on the trail. Lets take a covered wagon across and talk about the oregon trail. People say you are crazy. You would never get there. The wheels will break in nebraska. You are such a weirdo. And im going, like i know, but it feels normal to me. So we bought the team, i got my brother to come along. Thank god because hes a much more experienced horseman tonight and he can fix anything. I bought a team of mules from the amish in missouri very close to where i had to depart from. The amish are not allowed to have cell phones and communicate any kind of modern way. Thats why you always called on their cell phone at night last night because we know he will be out in the barn doing chores. I bought this with a great team and i bought a restored 1883 wagon, original covered wagon. And took us four months, 79 camps. We would camp in the pioneer campgrounds and the fairgrounds and ranchers, flying j. Truck stops are good because they have showers last night my brother said we are going to get in trouble. You cant just theres a little patch of grass back there. I bet you nobody says a word. Nobody said a word. And things like, we went, took us 29 days to cross wyoming. That includes our wheels breaking and someone replacing those wheels and so forth. 29 days from fort laramie to fulfill. Perilous things, come down the rockies come straight down, stuff like that. 29 days. We had three showers and i can remember each place where we had no showers. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Heres a look at some authors recently featured on booktvs after words. Washington post columnist e. J. Dionne argued the republican partys adoption of goldwater conservative principles is driving away moderate voters. Former nsa and cia director Michael Hayden discussed the decisions he made as director of both agencies following the events of september 11. Senator cory booker recounted the people and personal experiences that shaped his political life. In the coming weeks on after words former Bush Justice Department official will contend that executive power has gone beyond its constitutional limits under president obama. Ellen malcolm will recount her gracious of emilys list which works to elect prochoice Democratic Women to political office. Also coming up nancy cohen will discuss the challenges that women face in politics and the potential of a female president. This weekend Michael Eric Dyson will explore how race has impacted the obama administration. Women look at what happened in ferguson, with Michael Brown being killed by the policeman, darren wilson, we will look at what happened in South Carolina as you said at the church, where dylann roof, and armed white racist and white supremacist murdered nine innocent souls. Both from a state that obama represents through the police and their Violence Toward an armed black people, men and women, and in the Broader Society where white racial violence, barack obama had to contend with the ebb and flow of race. How he would address it. How he would acknowledge it. Tice, the dark side and dark money. Host author jane mayer, when we talk about the koch brothers, who are we talking about . Guest well, we are talking about interestingly two of the richest people brothers in the