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