 So my name is Andreas Ofnhäuser. I'm the head of the Institute of Bioelectronics. It's the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany is funded by the Hamels Association in Germany. And we are working on the coupling of biological systems with electronic devices. And what were you talking about at your presentation? So today I was talking about the use of nanotools to enhance the coupling of the electrical signals of neurons to electronic devices, like metal electrodes, so microelectrode arrays and so on. So it doesn't mean you're connecting the brain to a computer? Oh, this is the final goal. But of course we are not there. So we are working mostly on in vitro systems. So that means systems which are cultured in the dish, in the lab. And we are mostly not using these experiments for in vivo studies, even we do so. So we do experiments with living tissue or also with living animals. Does a neuron just work like plus-minus? Like you just connect some power and it works? Yes and no. So in principle the action potential of a neuron is a signal which can be seen as a spike. So in this case it would mean it's a little bit like a plus and minus or an on and off. But in principle it's an analog signal. So for instance if a signal is coming from a pre-synaptic neuron onto a post-synaptic neuron, then of course it's a post-synaptic signal and this is a very small signal and this is an analog signal. So yes, it is a kind of a binary signal but especially if you look into synaptic signals, they are more analog signals. And when you get into the brain you just need higher resolution and it works? Oh no, a lot of things have to be solved. So first of all it has to be compatible with the brain. So that means only a few materials are allowed which go into the living body, in the human body. Then it has to withstand the body fluids for a long time otherwise it gets dissolved very quickly. And so there are many things to be solved. And in addition it does not need to lead to a body reaction. So it's car formation because otherwise the complete device is shielded and it's not useless. So many things to do and I think a long way to go. So I've heard of two brain computer interfaces. The one Elon Musk is talking about. He wants to make a hole and put some stuff inside the brain. And there's an open water that's using light and kind of like holograms and stuff like that and they can read what's going on, stuff like that with reflection. But what is the goal of what you're working on? What are you trying to do? So we work more on the fundamentals, on how to interface neurons with devices. But of course at the end this should be used for understanding the brain. So still I think the brain is a mystery and to better understand how the brain is working one really needs to understand how the signals in the brain are created, communicated and transferred. And to doing so one needs methods which allow us to study the signals. So either if you go for a better understanding of the brain or if you go for let's say creating devices to help people which are injured and cannot use the legs anymore and so on. I think whatever you do I think you need to improve the devices and to improve the coupling of the devices to the neurons. When I heard Mary Lou Jackson talk about some studies she saw maybe it was from ten years ago where people watching YouTube videos and then they could just think about something and the computer could recreate the video just based on what they were thinking. So basically you could think about your passed away family member and then your children will actually get an idea of how they were. It sounds like it's just a question of seeing what the brain is doing in high resolution and it's like an MRI or something like that. But is that something different or you're talking about something like that? No I'm talking something different because I think with an MRI you typically record very large samples of neurons. So you talk about activities in brain areas. But I don't think that this is enough to really understand how the brain is working. I think you have to go to ideally onto the single neuron level and to do this you need better devices, you need better electrodes. How do you connect? Yeah I mean I mentioned this yesterday in my talk. So connecting to single neurons by nano tools is possible. But of course we have to see if this is also working in vivo. We haven't done this so far. We can test this. But I think these are the points to be solved. So there's some nano system that you inject and touch it. And you do that in vitro. Now we do it in vitro so we connect neurons in vitro to our devices. And this works very nicely. But of course it has not been tested so far in vivo. How do you get neurons in vitro to be acting like they should in vivo? So neurons can be cultured. So typically you prepare cultures of neurons by dissecting embryonic neurons. For instance mouse brain or rat brains. One can also go to stem cells as an alternative way. So one can use IPSE cells to create neuron-like structures. So there are many possibilities. So there are a very large variety of model systems for in vitro neuroscience studies. And we use a couple of them. How far are we from actually understanding the whole thing happening in vivo? And are we talking about germinator? What is happening? What is the next step? And how far is the next step? There are many next steps. I think one next step is biocompatibility of this implants. So most of the implants are only used for short term or maybe a couple of months. So I think the devices need to be more stable so that people are willing to get them implanted. I mean nobody is doing this operation for let's say half a year or a couple of months. So this is the one thing. On the other side we have to get better resolution from the neurons. So getting close to single cell resolution from neurons. What is the far term goal? There is one comment right here. It sounds like the tech assists in pushing muscle impulses to external devices. Are you pushing muscles? Are you getting them impulses by devices? Or are you just reading what is going on? Mostly reading. So reading the signals from neurons. Does it make sense to do the other way too? Of course I mean especially if you think about implants then the other way is very interesting. So for instance if you think about that the people losing their vision or their hearing then of course you need to get the input. Then input is also very important. Either in the visual cortex or in the retina or in the cochlea or in the cortex for the hearing. How far are we in science and understanding neurons? Do you think we know a lot? We just need to start experimenting with it? Or there is so much we don't know and how do we get to know more? I think we know already quite a lot. I think this knowledge is maybe also a little bit diverse because it is spread a little bit between disciplines. But I think we still need to improve technologies to further advance our understanding. I think advancing understanding was always connected to advancing technology and I think this needs to also be here in this case in the neuroscience area. And is enough being done in Europe? So much more needs to be done and how do you get more done? The students are there they are interested to work on this stuff right? So in Europe I think we missed a little bit the chance of what the US did. So they had this brain project in the US and from this brain project many new devices were developed and new approaches were developed to interface with the brain. In Neuron we focus more on that data science so it's more computational neuroscience. This is also important but I guess we missed a little bit the chance to go also into the direction of experimental neuroscience. But things are moving now. You're at the conference, you're interacting with the decision makers, you're having a lot of conferences or many people are watching what you're talking about or what would you say? Not just yourself but in the ecosystem. The ecosystem I would say Europe is still focusing more on numerical neuroscience rather than on these experimental approaches like the US is doing. So I would say a more balanced approach would be better and one has to convince the decision makers, EU policy to convince people that a balanced approach is a better approach. We can't let those Americans be the brains. We tend to think that we are smarter than them in Europe so we should be the brain. Okay. Hopefully. Alright, thanks a lot. Thank you.