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I am a physician-scientist. I have spent twenty-five years developing brain-computer interfaces, first at Brown University where I helped design the original BrainGate trial, and now at the Farber Institute for Neuroscience in Philadelphia where I direct a neurorestoration center and care for people with stroke, brain injury, and spinal cord disease. I have seen how deep brain stimulators and other medical devices can be transformative. I am neither Luddite nor technophile: I

Response to: https://scienceplusplus.org/metascience/ The intellectually generous catalog of reform ideas mistakes taxonomy for mechanism . Nielsen and Qiu are essentially saying: "imagine if there were many better ideas, and a healthy ecosystem tested and scaled them." That's not a theory of change; it's a description of what change would look like if change were already happening. The causal engine is missing. Kanjun Qiu co-founded Astera, which funds exactly the kind of l

The case for engineering biological convergence on a human timescale In Madeira, there are elegant woody bushes in the wet valleys cooled by the waterfall breeze , that looked like the rhododendrons that fill waterfall valleys like in Pennsylvania. The lily-of-the-valley tree in Madeira seems to have taken on the same role as rhododendrons in Appalachia- both liking rich, acid soil, in the damp, shaded soil: an example of convergent evolution arriving at a similar shaped and

There is something nobody in the BCI field says out loud, even though it is the only explanation for what the money is actually doing. Sequoia, Founders Fund, a16z, Khosla, Prime Movers, GV, Lux — collectively topping more than a billion dollars into Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, Science Corp, Paradromics, and their peers. Every one of these companies publicly emphasizes clinical applications: paralysis, epilepsy, depression, stroke recovery. The FDA pathway, the PMA app

The brain-computer interface field has captured serious investor imagination. Companies are developing interfaces using implanted electrodes, ultrasound, and engineered molecules, and hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed in over the past three years. The investors funding this race are not primarily motivated by helping people with ALS or spinal cord injury — they are betting on a mass consumer market: thought-to-text, memory upload, AI symbiosis for healthy adults. A

"They travel between the stars in immense living ships, and send down smaller ships as shuttles and to plant living communities." Octavia Butler wrote these words in her Xenogenesis trilogy (later collected as Lilith's Brood ), describing the Oankali—genetic traders who voyage through space not in metal vessels but in living organisms engineered to sustain themselves across the void. The Oankali's ships are more than transportation: they are symbiotic ecosystems, self-healin

Can Buddhism Drive Innovation? When the Buddha experienced back pain and dysentery, he didn't achieve enlightenment by refusing treatment—he simply didn't cling to the outcome. But would a society of enlightened beings have invented the treatments to back pain and dysentery in the first place? The Question No One Asks We're told that Buddhism is compatible with science. The Dalai Lama dialogues with neuroscientists. Matthieu Ricard, a molecular biologist turned monk, runs hum

How hybrid biological-artificial intelligence systems could transform medical AI by learning the way humans do Part I: The Vision (TL;DR)...

DRAFT WHITE PAPER: Prepared for the Implantable Brain-Computer Interface Collaborative Community (iBCI-CC) Executive Summary As invasive...

As invasive brain-computer interface (iBCI) companies race toward FDA approval, they face a critical strategic decision that will...

Why the most transformative BCI innovations fall through the cracks—and what it means for the future of neurotechnology There's a...

PART 1: OVERVIEW Pioneering Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neurorestoration I lead the Raphael Center for Neurorestoration at Thomas...

In the September 24, 2025, New York Times, former Prime Minister Benny Gantz wrote an essay with the following assertions: Core...

A comprehensive blueprint for creating sustainable, evidence-based pain rehabilitation programs that serve patients, preserve surgical...

Part I: The Vision - A New Paradigm for Neurological Recovery The Problem We Must Solve Millions of people live with neurological...

What if the next leap in computing doesn’t come from faster GPUs or more efficient transformer models, but from a living system that...

A roadmap for navigating the bandwidth bottleneck between biological and artificial intelligence Neural tissue and silicon firmware can communicate directly with each other both in vitro and in vivo. © 2025, Mijail D. Serruya The Fundamental Problem Current brain-computer interfaces are impressive—and we can ask: are they 'just' a more direct equivalent to screen-and-keyboard, or are something fundamentally different? Are we trying to squeeze the entire ba

The Blueprint Three Visions of Biologically Grown Infrastructure Living Shelters: Architecture as Organism The convergence of bioelectric morphogenesis and computational ecological design enables a radical reimagining of human shelter—not as dead structures imposed upon landscapes but as living systems that grow themselves into habitable form. By integrating Mike Levin's TAME (Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere) principles with multi-species consortia, we can program b

Question: Is there a way to present information so visitors can make their own conclusions rather than being guided or steered one way or...

"I have a queer sensation as if I am not here... As though I were half here and half not here." When Wilder Penfield's electrode touched...