Bob Novella

speaker

5,248 appearances 19 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 2d ago

Bob Novella’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 19 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.

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The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe · The Skeptics Guide #827 - May 15 2021 podcast

All right. voice-verified

So research on BCI – we're going to call this BCI – started in the 1970s. voice-verified

And it's actually made – as Steve said, we've made some interesting and significant progress recently. voice-verified

So let me just give you a little bit more background. voice-verified

So pretty much anything that a human does from moving their body to talking to eating – voice-verified

To thinking, this produces specific patterns of electrical activity in your brain. voice-verified

I'm sure that everybody's is different. voice-verified

There might be some commonality between them, but it's like a fingerprint. voice-verified

It's different. voice-verified

The electrical activity has recognizable patterns, though, because they're repeated. voice-verified

And the BCI machine can detect and interpret those electrical signals. voice-verified

And at its core, that's it. voice-verified

Now, of course, I'm oversimplifying it, but I want to give you an idea of what I'm about to talk about. voice-verified

So the research that I'm going to discuss today – voice-verified

was created at Stanford University. voice-verified

So the test subject is a 65-year-old man who became paralyzed from the neck down back in 2007. voice-verified

So in 2016, researchers implanted two grids, each with 100 tiny electrodes on the surface of his brain. voice-verified

And I know that sounds kind of horrific, but this is what it would take to get that type of reading, to get that accurate type of reading. voice-verified

We don't have the ability to do it that well outside of the skull yet. voice-verified

So unfortunately, they have to crack your skull open to put these electrodes in there. voice-verified

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