Eric Topol

That's super interesting.

Izzy, that kind of goes against something that I've heard you speak about and talk about, which is that humans using AI well should be much stronger than AI on itself or humans without AI.

All right.

Well, I am really thrilled for this new Ground Truths live video to welcome a pioneering neurosurgeon who is the CEO of the Feinstein Institute of Medical Research at Northwell, Dr. Kevin Tracy.

Kevin, it's great to have you.

Yeah, well, your work, which has been going on for decades, culminated in this book.

A part of it encapsulated in this book, The Great Nerve.

If everybody doesn't know what The Great Nerve is, it's the Vegas nerve.

Vegas for Latin word for wandering.

And this nerve is like the internet throughout the whole body, connecting the brain to everything.

And you made a seminal discovery recently.

I think it was back in 1986 with baboons, the idea that up till that time, the brain and the immune system were thought to be in different orbits.

They weren't connected.

They were firewalled.

And you came up with experiments, I think, in baboons and tumor necrosis factor.

And for the first time, you connected the dots.

Is that a fair summary of what happened back then?

Yeah, so I think this was such a big thing because this inflammatory reflex, as you labeled it, I think, really brought together the pathway in the brain

this great nerve, vagus nerve, as a mediator of inflammation throughout the body, which sets up a whole lot of ability to hack into this vagus nerve with vagus nerve stimulation.

And so you present in the book many anecdotes.