Bringing Neuroscience Outside the Lab

[Music]

when i was a kid

i used to love comic books at the back

of a comic book

there is always this ad for a pair of

x-ray glasses

the idea was you put them on they give

you x-ray vision

you can see the bones in your hand

i wasted 10 bucks on those glasses but

what if i told you

there was a pair of glasses that would

allow you to take a peek at what’s going

on inside your brain

well there is

this is the electrical activity of my

brain

the glasses you just saw me put on are

measuring my brain waves

or what people like me call eeg

our thoughts are represented by complex

patterns of electrical activity within

neurons

the building blocks of our brain and

technology

like the glasses i’m wearing can measure

this electrical activity

you have to admit the glasses are pretty

cool but

the reality is the technology to measure

eeg isn’t that complicated

you can buy these glasses at your local

electronics store

i don’t actually make the glasses what i

do is make the glasses interesting

i do the math that’s the trick the hard

part

developing the math to analyze eeg

waveforms

to understand their meaning

recently i took my research team to our

local hospital

we were there to study cognitive fatigue

a state when the brain is tired

and you’re more likely to make mistakes

our goal was to use

technology like the glasses to measure

and track cognitive fatigue in doctors

and nurses while they worked

we collected our data right in the er in

the middle of the chaos

to ensure the doctors and nurses took

part in our study

we gave them a tim horton’s gift card

each time we measured their brain waves

our incentive worked 60 doctors and

nurses volunteered

in fact one nurse volunteered eight

times in one shift

that’s a commitment to science

our results showed that doctors and

nurses were tired after a 12-hour shift

in the er

and not too surprising however

we found a subset of doctors and nurses

who were experiencing cognitive fatigue

at the start of their shift in other

words

these doctors and nurses were in a brain

state where they were more likely to

make a mistake

when they began working how did we know

the doctors and nurses were tired

we figured out there’s a unique eeg

pattern when people are experiencing

cognitive fatigue

my home base is the university of

victoria where i’m the lead scientist of

the theoretical and applied neuroscience

laboratory

like most professors i teach classes i

go to conferences

and i supervise graduate students but

the reality is i spend most of my time

in front of a computer

developing mathematical algorithms to

analyze eeg

waveforms like the ones you saw at the

start of my talk

the patterns in eeg waveforms are wildly

complex

and to understand them we use math and

equations like these

okay i know that looks a little bit

complicated

so to help you understand how i

understand eeg

let’s talk about music for a minute

music is made up of a series of notes

that have both pitch

and duration to create music

composers arrange notes into different

patterns

as we listen our brain interprets these

patterns

and we draw meaning from them

eeg is made up of a series of waves

that have both amplitude the height of

the individual peaks

and latency the time between the peaks

and like music eeg patterns have meaning

the brain waves on the left hand side of

the screen are from someone sitting

quietly

and the brain waves on the right hand

side of the screen are from the same

person while meditating

what you’re looking at is enhanced alpha

activity

it’s one of the eeg frequencies that

increases

during medication but there are even

more complex patterns in the eeg

waveforms

these patterns are too hard to see with

the naked eye and that’s where the math

comes in

math allows us to transform

the eeg waveforms so we can see the

patterns more clearly

and it also allows us to decode the

complex relationships

in these patterns

right now you’re looking at someone

thinking

within these patterns lies cognitive

fatigue

think of all the instances where

cognitive fatigue can impact us

tired truck drivers and pilots tired

bankers

and executives and of course tired

doctors and nurses

and cognitive fatigue is just one of the

brain wave patterns that we’re

identifying

as we improve the math we believe we’ll

be able to find a unique pattern

for any brain state

this is going to be a difficult problem

to solve

but i believe it’s solvable

you know growing up i just wanted to be

a basketball coach

i did that for a while and taught high

school physics and math

i decided to go back to university for a

graduate degree

and one course in neuroscience changed

my life

i found my passion decoding the complex

patterns in eeg waveforms to understand

their meaning

so what’s next

i want to take neuroscience out of the

lab

and into the real world and perhaps

even to mars in december of 2019

i led a canadian research team on a one

week mission

in the high seas mars habitat on the big

island of hawaii

our goal was to demonstrate that

technology like the glasses

combined with math could be used by

astronauts

to measure and track cognitive fatigue

and other brain states

the hab as it is called is eerily like

mars

it’s in the middle of a rocky red

volcanic field

we were in full simulation that week

working as astronauts

each day we went outside on assigned

missions wearing spacesuits

inside the hab we did chores to keep it

operational

we lived off of freeze-dried food we had

to exercise for three or more hours a

day

with only 60 seconds of water to shower

that’s actually one of the things i

learned about space exploration that i

didn’t know

while they can’t hear you scream in

outer space they can smell you from a

mile away

and of course we did neuroscience we

measured our brain waves at breakfast

lunch and dinner every day

given 16 hour work days and living

conditions similar to those on the

international

space station we did get tired

by the end of the week we were all

experiencing a brain fog

and our decisions and actions were

clearly impacted

i know i don’t trust the math i was

doing at the end of that week

but the key part is we believed we were

tired

because it was a pattern that we saw in

our brain waves

on an actual mars mission that

potentially means the decision to see if

an astronaut

is ready to take on a dangerous task

wouldn’t be based

on an opinion but on a mathematically

derived

result now i have to emphasize these are

preliminary findings

we’re working to publish them right now

but the brain wave patterns that we saw

in the hab

were the same as the ones that we saw in

the hospital and other studies that

we’ve already published

at the start of a star trek episode they

say that space

is the final frontier you’ve probably

guessed by now i’m a bit of a nerd

but i believe the brain is the final

frontier

by decoding its signals we can better

understand

how it works what’s happening when it’s

performing well

and when it may fail us and by combining

math

with emerging technology like the

glasses

we’re developing a capability to measure

someone’s brain waves

anywhere at any time

in just a couple of minutes

take a second and think about what that

really means

thank you

you