Nick Pyenson

A thousand every night.

And so it is my job to make sure that people know that.

I think it's absolutely possible to state categorically that quite a number of results that we can experience as benefits within medical science are because of animal research and testing in animals first.

There are some studies that just cannot be done in people.

For example, patients that have Parkinson's disease, when the patients are struggling to generate movements that you and I would find something that we don't have to think about.

The Parkinson's disease example and its connection to primate neuroscience is based on Henry Mollison in the 50s and how that sort of transformed our thinking and was informed by the animal research routes, including primate neuroscience.

So the primate neuroscience basis was being able to record from the different parts of the brain to understand their action, be able to stimulate.

And so some of the neurosurgical treatment procedures would be where they would receive an electrode that is implanted to target a very small part of the brain that, when stimulated, could bring about movement that is difficult to initiate or control uncontrolled movement.

So imagine having to do this with human neurosurgery patients.

It would be like a fishing expedition that I don't think would be ethical where you would have to go and try to stimulate a part of the brain

and maybe you do things that were completely unintended and cause all sorts of adverse effects or side effects, it would be inappropriate.

Yeah, on the question about whether organs on a chip, for example, or even AI can now start to replace animal experimentation, it's not possible to replace it.

You know, we don't have a brain organ yet.

Now, of course, folks may be familiar with artificial intelligence.

But that's not a brain.

The AI models arose from advances in neuroscience, what we call neural network models that are now AI models.

And they keep depending on advances in neuroscience.

But that doesn't mean that AI can replace animal experimentation or these organs on a chip can replace understanding the brain in its full working order in an individual that is interacting with their environment.

That still depends on experiments with human participants and with animal research whenever necessary.

I don't know if animals will be eliminated entirely in the future.