Dr. Michael Kilgard

That's a neat laboratory curiosity, but what's it useful for?

Well, let's take our time.

Can we make neurons have more neurons for a low tone or a high tone?

Yes, we can.

Can we make neurons get faster or slower?

Yes, we can.

We even played speech sounds to rats.

Rats don't care about English.

It doesn't matter to them.

It's not relevant to them.

But if you repeatedly pair the word dad...

or the word sad, the neurons will shift to favor responding to a human saying dad or a human saying sad.

It just makes sense.

That's the statistical probability.

It matters to them.

My dog understands some English, not all of it, but the ones that are walk and treat and dinner and bed, all those are sit.

Those are all things that she knows.

We saw the neurons making those same changes.

And this began to get us more and more optimistic that you could use it to treat some condition.

We've now shown in humans that you can use physical therapy, occupational therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and sensory therapy, all of which activate neurons.