An Interview With Blackrock Neurotech’s Taryn Southern
Taryn Southern has always been a creative with an interest in new technologies. She first gained notoriety on YouTube, co-directed and produced a documentary titled I AM HUMAN, and created the first AI-composed pop album.
Now, Taryn serves as the Creative Director of Blackrock Neurotech, a company that has pioneered the use of Brain-Computer Interfaces ( BCIs). BCIs are implantable devices that use precision electrode technology to help patients with central nervous system injuries and disorders restore their movement, senses, and even speech.
Currently, 36 patients in the world have been implanted with BCIs - 32 with Blackrock-created devices. To see these incredible devices in action, watch this video of paralyzed patient Nathan Copeland, who uses his BCI to control a robotic arm to fist-bump former President Barack Obama.
Of course, innovative new technologies bring new communication challenges. We sat down with Taryn to learn more about the misconceptions that come with communicating in the neurotechnology space and the life-changing applications of Blackrock’s BCIs.
JORDAN TAYLOR: What drew you to Blackrock and how did you become Blackrock Neurotech's Creative Director?
TARYN SOUTHERN: It's certainly not been a straight path. With each new role, I go deep with a technology then form a picture for what stories are imperative to tell.
I take a technology experiment with each role, and I see what kind of stories I can tell as a result of that experimentation.
Blackrock Neurotech had that.
I became intimately familiar with BCIs while co-directing and producing I AM HUMAN, a documentary about the future of the brain. In that film, we followed three people with implantable BCIs.
By way of background, I got my bachelor's in neuroscience and was trying to figure out how do you take a complicated science, one that has a lot of misconceptions and public-facing fears around it, and tell a story that is true and authentic. A story that reflects what is happening in the space. I wanted to put human faces to the story and make it emotional. I AM HUMAN made it to the Tribeca Film Festival and we are now on Amazon and Apple.
Blackrock Neurotech reached out, saying “We're a bunch of scientists and we’d love to apply storytelling to our company.” They needed help telling a broader story to partners, investors, and the general public. It was an interesting opportunity for me to go in-house, learn what it’s all about, and apply my creativity. I also joined at an important inflection point in a company’s growth — there were only 50 employees, now, we're now more than 200. It's been a fun ride.
KARL SCHMIEDER: How do you communicate a very complex technology that most people don’t understand to different audience, whether it's investors or the general world?
SOUTHERN: There are a number of challenges you face in communicating these stories to the public.
Number one, you're trying to translate a really complex science that has a lot of nuance. Scientists are accustomed to providing context and details. You can't do that when you're writing headlines or making YouTube thumbnails. Communication experts like things to be very straightforward and simple.
There can be some friction between storytellers and scientists on how to share information.
Fortunately, at Blackrock, I've been working with people who really get it and who educate me on why some part of the technology is important. They’ve taught me why it’s important say things in a certain way because we have a responsibility to patients. But even if you can get away with simplified, more general headlines, that might have unintended consequences.
You have to constantly balance patient safety, clarity, and accuracy, with brevity and clarity to a general audience.
Number two, we're dealing with real people. A company like Blackrock Neurotech works with real people and has a responsibility to our academic institutions, partners, and to the patients in our clinical trials. We're not Neuralink. Neuralink has implants but not patients, so they can say a lot more about their technology.
For me, I'm no longer wearing my independent filmmaker hat where I get to break a lot of things and say sorry later. Personally, that's been an interesting challenge. But I also get access to the patients and the institutions in a way that is fascinating and exciting. I would’ve never had that as an independent filmmaker.
TAYLOR: What are the ethical concerns you've encountered regarding neural implants? How do you respond to those?
SOUTHERN: There’s a lot. If you’ve ever watched a Black Mirror episode, you can tick off a handful of ethical concerns.
Most people don't even know that there are people walking around this earth with implantable brain-computer interfaces. And they certainly don't know what an average human can achieve with an implantable brain-computer interface.
Some people might be able to infer ethical concerns around privacy, data ownership, and safety risks. So my job is equal parts responding or proactively telling the stories that are important to tell and responding to the ethical concerns. The reality is I am not an ethicist, nor a scientist.
The main ethical issue that I hear about from the everyday person is data security and privacy. People want to make sure that doesn't happen with their neural data. That makes total sense. That's the number one thing that I get asked when I'm at dinner parties.
We’re all very aware of what's been happening with our data, as firms like Facebook and Google have come under fire.
The other ethical concerns that get broached are: Who owns the technology? Is it a private enterprise? Is it governments? How do we have a say in how it's used or in where it's sold? Do individuals own their own neural data? Then, of course, safety. How safe is this for humans to put neural implants inside our bodies? Do we take issue with the fact that one day this technology could be used to enhance human abilities? Not just solve or ameliorate a neural disorder.
There are also ethical questions around how clinical trials are conducted and what that means for the patient. We're just at the beginning of companies in the space who've been raising money getting into human clinical trials. So there are just certain aspects that are really important for people, and clinicians. Have people in academic institutions and of course, the commercial entities and government to be really taking a close look at.
At BlackRock, we started an independent ethics advisory board by bringing together a handful of people that are outside of Blackrock’s experts in a handful of different fields. We have a multidisciplinary team that gets together every quarter to discuss near-term and long-term ethical issues that these companies are facing. Most of the issues are things that people think are ethical issues and are not things that are immediately relevant to tackle. But they will be in the future and they must be on the dashboard.
To my knowledge, I don't know of any other company that's started an ethical board like ours to ensure there is an independent governing body giving advice around issues during commercial development.
SCHMIEDER: Could you describe the Blackrock Neurotech platform? What are the benefits for patients?
SOUTHERN: Sure. Blackrock Neurotech has been pretty open about our vision to help people move again, see again, hear again, and communicate again through a brain-computer interface. There are [other] devices on the market, for example, for Parkinson’s disease. But technically, those are not brain-computer interfaces - they are deep-brain stimulation devices. They stimulate one-way communication into the brain, targeting neurons that are communicating dysfunctionally. The Blackrock Neurotech devices are two-way. They send information into the brain and transmit information out of the brain to a digital device. Our devices create a number of commands based on the neural data being fed into them.
Over the past 14 years, we’ve conducted dozens of research trials at universities. Those trials have examined how the neural implants can restore movement, function, a sense of touch, communication, and even treat depression.
In 2021, we received FDA breakthrough status for our MoveAgain device which is an application for people with paralysis (link to press release). The device enables patients/users to use their brain signals to operate any digital device - a computer, cursor, wheelchair, or robotic arm. MoveAgain is an assistive technology that we aim to commercialize.
SCHMIEDER: Taryn, you created I AM HUMAN, a documentary about neural interfaces, in 2019. How has that technology advanced since you did that film? How do you think it will advance in the future?
SOUTHERN: The biggest change is awareness and investment dollars. A massive amount of funding has poured into neuroscience and neuro-technology. In large part, I believe that stems from Elon Musk’s starting Neuralink, putting a flag in the sand, and saying this is important. Millions of dollars have poured into the space. That has translated into innovation, the application of the Silicon Valley mentality, and a much faster pace. In the past, neural technologies were relegated to academic institutions, which move more slowly with different incentive models.
TAYLOR: I’d imagine that with more awareness comes more misconceptions. What are the biggest ones that you've encountered regarding neurotech and BCIs? How do you counter those misconceptions?
SOUTHERN: That’s a great question. I’ll do my best to answer it because honestly, as a non-scientist I get nervous speaking about these things. I’m lucky that I can rely on a scientific team to back me up, so I’ll answer with a big asterisk that I might be wrong.
I’ll start with channel count as one of the biggest misconceptions. You hear companies touting the number of electrodes they have, whether it's 1,000, 10,000, or a million. The reality is a higher channel count does not necessarily improve the functionality of the device. When you’re trying to impart movement in a patient who has lost movement functions, you only need a handful of neurons to make that task work and work well. There’s an argument that a smaller channel count allows you to parse data faster. And honestly, we’re still working through the computer systems that can process 10,000-plus channels of neural data.
Another misconception is the pace of innovation. When you have new entrepreneurs who are used to building things very quickly entering the space, it creates a notion that in five years everyone will be able to download their brain to a computer. We’re not even close.
People also think that we’ll be able to sign up for brain implants in the next five years and that will allow us to do all sorts of crazy things.
The brain is incredibly complex and we’re just at the very beginning of figuring out how to extract the information that has high utility for the patients that need it.
Finally, not all brain-computer interfaces are the same. For example, there’s a company that started U.S. human trials and they are an endovascular BCI. Blackrock Neurotech is a direct-to-neuron BCI. We’re recording inside the brain, not in the peripheral nervous system. So, we’re talking about two kinds of BCIs. It’s like comparing apples and oranges though the media see them as the same thing. My team and I have been doing our best to help clear up those misconceptions.
SCHMIEDER: Could you describe the way patients use the devices today?
SOUTHERN: In our research studies, we have people with different types of paralysis using these devices to control external devices.
We also have patients who use the devices to reanimate their fingers, hand, or arms -- which means they can move their fingers, hand, or arm again.
We have a number of patients who have done this successfully.
That works because they have electrodes implanted in their hand or arm that correspond to neural signals sent by the brain to the device, and from the device back to the brain. So, the patient can have some kind of sensory input as well.
Patients who have implants in their sensory cortex can operate a robotic arm. The sensors in their robotic fingers send signals back to their brain so they can tell whether the robotic hand is touching something hot or cold, which is mind-blowing.
We have patients who train on these devices and after a few days can do detail-oriented work on a computer - Photoshop, digital art, and so on. It’s very exciting to see how patients are using the devices creatively. In fact, one of the patients we work with just auctioned a piece of art for a fundraiser this weekend. He’s created more than three dozen digital paintings.
We have another patient who is using a digital software program to train a motorized vehicle so he can drive it. We have many patients who play video games. There are lots of applications that work with our devices and we’re just getting started.
TAYLOR: What are the most important brain-computer interface applications?
SOUTHERN: Typing and communications are important applications. Patients who are completely paralyzed can imagine handwriting. Their motor cortex sends signals to a digital device that runs an algorithm and decodes that information. They can think of handwriting and the digital device will type it out at about 90 characters per minute. We have a European ALS patient who was completely locked in and could no longer use eye-tracking software. He started using our BCI and is now able to communicate with his wife. It’s mind-blowing.
TAYLOR: You’ve mentioned several incredible therapeutic applications of BCIs. What are the benefits of integrating AI into the BCI software?
SOUTHERN: AI is critically important because neural data is so complex. You need finely tuned algorithms to decode that data and ensure the action that results from the intention is accurate. We have licenses to the best algorithms from Stanford and Columbia University. Those [algorithms] power a lot of our devices’ communications and spatial movements. Stanford’s algorithm gives us some of the fastest typing speeds. In real-time, the accuracy is close to 90 percent. Post-processing, the accuracy is like 98 percent. That’s insane when you consider someone is just thinking about something, the algorithm interprets it, and drives the robotic arm.
SCHMIEDER: What is the question you wish consumers would ask you?
SOUTHERN: I’d like people to see what Blackrock Neurotech’s technology enables. Most people have no reference. The only framework they might have is some version of the show Black Mirror.
They should watch a video of a patient using the technology. You probably think you’re going to see someone manning a cursor or typing with their hands, but it’s just a person staring in the distance. It’s like telekinesis. Seeing this technology at work is magical.
These magical things are happening. Only by seeing it at work can you appreciate the power of this technology.
At the same time, I would like consumers to ask us what is possible with this technology. My reality, as a storyteller, is to show you.
Learn more about Blackrock Neurotech by visiting their website. Follow Taryn on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
