Why Every AI Lab Will Become a Biotech Company | Andrew Huberman
In a Nutshell
AI labs are becoming biotech companies because reading/writing to the brain non-surgically is the core technical challenge for advanced AI systems. Huberman argues that energy management—not talent or opportunity—is now the limiting factor for high performers, requiring accurate self-assessment of sleep needs, the ability to stop thoughts, and techniques like long exhales and pure sensation focus to downregulate the nervous system. Future non-surgical neural interfaces using eye masks, vagus nerve stimulation, and gene therapy will enable precise control of brain states for both clinical applications and performance enhancement.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Andrew Huberman states publicly that companies like Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic will transform into biotechnology companies. They are all interested in the brain and understand a lot about neuroscience. The goal is reading and writing from the brain in a non-surgical way.
Huberman discusses how there are restrictions in the bandwidth on the ability of the most talented people to achieve. It used to be that the rest of the world could not keep up with the most talented, creating frustration for talented individuals because no one moves at the speed or efficiency they do.
The situation appears to be flipping - some talented people will achieve much higher returns if they can generate more energy and conserve it without exposing themselves to burnout. Huberman heard this from many pioneers in the work of great men. There is expectation that truly great individuals like Elon Musk will be able to manage multiple companies, and technology unlocks lots of potential for the most talented people.
The actual bottleneck appears to be the energy of these people. Huberman is curious about what he learned in his research and studies about generating energy and conserving it, including clean versus dirty fuel and long-lasting performance.
Huberman notes that Elon represents the pinnacle of the ability to do multiple huge things at one time, with no equal in this respect. A best investor billionaire from the San Francisco Bay area, who perhaps studied at Stanford and was part of the PayPal team at that early stage, asked how Elon operates from a physiological perspective.
There are examples throughout history of people who seem to need a certain amount less sleep and have more power. Most people can lift their energy levels through many healthy ways. Huberman believes we went through a huge transformation where everyone has come to realize that sleep is essential, and you must know your private sleep needs.
Self-deception by believing you need only 4 or 5 hours because Elon needs that is ridiculous. Huberman believes honest self-evaluation about the amount of sleep one actually needs to perform well and perhaps in the best possible way, and what one can bear if they don't get that, is important to understand.
Huberman states that for most people, 7 hours makes him feel wonderful. Eight hours perhaps makes him feel a little lethargy at the start of his day. Six hours, he can manage his affairs well. Five hours for one day or a sleepless night is fine. Two nights at 4 to 0 hours of sleep, and he collapses completely. He thinks most people are similar in that.
What has really changed is that we have healthy and effective ways for increasing our energy. We know the importance of sleep. We can talk about exercises, sports, and caffeine. Some people use nicotine - it causes addiction and raises blood pressure, but it puts people in a state of focus combined with relaxation.
If you truly want benefits from nicotine, don't use it a lot. If you want the effects of cognitive enhancement or focus, you must not be a chronic user and be content with low doses of nicotine from time to time.
Huberman hopes people will conduct this self-referential assessment. He hopes people will have honest dialogue where they say to themselves: "In this stage of my life, with or without children, at this stage of my company or my career, whatever it may be, at this age, how many hours of sleep do I need to feel like in the best possible condition, or in a good state, or that's not enough."
Some people simply have more power. They can focus for very long periods of time. They have huge energy for running, huge energy for undertaking, but what we never ask about is the internal state of that person.
Huberman knows people who can do everything true, but they work with maximum possible power they have. They use many stimulants to do that, or they don't use stimulants but they still work at maximum capacity. At night, they find difficulty stopping, therefore they do not return to regulating their biological system.
Some people wake up at four o'clock in the morning, they train, complete work, deal with family, go to work, come back from work, return home, and move between tasks quickly. Huberman doesn't think these things necessarily have constant characteristics throughout our lives.
When many young people come to him asking what they should do, the best answer is what the oracle said: "Know yourself." It should be truly honest with yourself regarding what you need to be able to continue doing something for a long time.
Huberman remembers that he used to work 80 or even 100 hours per week during graduate studies, and that was very helpful to him. That led him in the end to obtain a professorship at Stanford. He thinks if you can afford that, especially in the first four years of establishing a company, or if you were in medical school, the basic rule is: "Don't die. Accomplish as much as possible, and you won't harm yourself with an injury or chronic illness."
Then it begins to move to the stage where we are actually defining what this thing called "improvement" means. Here lies the question: how can I list items for comfort during the journey, perhaps during the day or during the week or month, which really allows me to reach the best levels of focus and creativity?
Huberman would be naive and a liar if he told someone to start a company in the field of artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley or other places these days: sit down, listen, you need diamond to 8 hours of sleep, you have to do resistance training, you should do some breathing exercises. No, nothing from that.
What they should determine is the amount of energy that they actually own. Huberman has met these people. Sometimes you meet people like Jimmy Iovine or some people he met who work in the field of artificial intelligence at Meta, and it seems they have additional capacity exceeding the usual. Some people have this additional ability.
Another element we can dive into that has deep meaning is the ability to stop your thoughts, plans, and concerns at the end of your day and falling asleep. To be honest absolutely, if Huberman has to diagnose his biggest problem, it is difficult to slow down the mental pace. Sometimes it takes four hours literally to move on from a busy day with excitement and wonder to just the ability to sleep or his mind stopped thinking.
There are a few essential requirements for sleep and a set of prohibitions. It's clear you don't want to drink caffeine late. Exposure to a lot of bright light late in the day may make it difficult, but many of us cannot control that. Alcohol and cannabis impair sleep quality - they only help you to sleep, and we all know that now.
Regarding the ability to stop your ideas, that's difficult and extremely important for people. The brain wants thinking and planning, remembering and organizing itself regarding what's coming next, because a large part of brain functions are predicting what will happen next.
The first requirement is to stop your thoughts. The second requirement is slowing your heart rate - this is about the body completely. The third is that you need to forget the position of your limbs in the void.
Regarding stopping your thoughts, it is a skill. We can think, predict, remember, but we can also enter a state of feeling pure, and that is the gate to stopping your thoughts. This does not come from Eastern tradition itself, although it has been discussed for a long time in those traditions, but there is a connection of course to the nervous system.
To do that, you need to focus on pure sensation. Start focusing on the surface of your body. If you can sense the rate of your heartbeats, some people are very clever in what is called "internal sensory reception," where they can get accurate measurements of the heart rate without pressure on a vein or artery, rather just by listening to their breaths and sounds in the room.
Directing full awareness towards their bodies helps in general on slowing down the heart rate simply by a long exhale. Huberman wants to be very clear that this is not meditation, because meditation makes you focus on everything, paying attention to your breathing or on a specific area behind your forehead, or on your hands, or anything else.
In this type of practice, what you do is transfer your actual attention to your feet, your legs, and your breathing, and the sounds in the room, then it returns again. This might seem like intangible words, but you shift from thinking and planning to just sensation and perception pure. You literally bring your awareness to the present.
Remember that this is one of the doors to stop your thoughts. In order for your thoughts to actually stop, the rate of your heartbeats should decrease by a specific amount. Those longer sighs reduce the heart rate through what is called "sinus respiratory irregularity." The word "irregularity" may seem dangerous or bad, but actually it's a very good thing.
As you breathe, your heart literally changes size based on the area available to it due to the movement of the diaphragm and the lungs becoming full. When we breathe air in, the heart rate accelerates a little. When we exhale, the heart gets smaller a little in terms of size, therefore the blood moves what's in it faster per unit volume, and sends the brain signals to slow down the heart.
When you exhale, you slow your heart rate through what we call the vagus nerve. Therefore, if you want to slow down the rate of your heartbeat at any time during wakefulness to alleviate stress or to lower the level of your activity, or if you wish to sleep, then getting up with a few long sighs until the lungs are empty, followed by passive inhalation, helps a lot.
Usually, when we are in a state of high activity, we rely on repeated inhalation and we do exhaling passively.
The last part is that you will be able to stop your awareness of your limbs for you. This is something we call deep sense. There are three ways to do it: a traditional method that everyone accepts, a method that seems strange in a way, and a new technique now appearing.
Believe it or not, studies were conducted on what makes children sleep and what makes adults sleepy without using drugs. It turned out that the oscillation rate which we use with children at a certain rate, which parents discover by themselves, helps them to sleep. It turns out you can build a bed that oscillates at a certain frequency, and adults will sleep very quickly.
The matter relates to the fact that when you move from side to side, your eyes are born under your closed eyelids compensatory movements. Our eye movements continue throughout time across the brainstem with the cerebellum to control balance and perception of proximity. Therefore, when people are swung in this way, they sleep in a way faster somehow.
Huberman doesn't own a swinging bed and doesn't know which person big enough to swing him and carry him. Even if they did, he doesn't know if he will feel comfortable with this. He can't imagine you will feel that too.
There are two ways to deal with this. One of them looks a bit strange but effective, and it is a simulation of eye movements under closed eyelids that helps you forget about the position of your limbs. Huberman was talking much more about this in public awareness recently, and he admits that this makes him feel strange truly as a neuroscientist.
He will begin by saying please do not publish part of it. These eye movements confuse the neural circuit between selected cells according to direction in the retina, and optic nuclei attached to the brainstem, and the cerebellum. So you forget the position of your body.
What it does simply is move your eyes under your closed eyelids to one side then the other, slowly or quickly, it doesn't matter really, then upwards downwards. You could move them in the opposite direction counterclockwise and clockwise direction. You can exhale long, but you actually do this confusing order.
The reason that made Huberman care about this matter, the reason for his research in the related literature about rocking babies and adults to help regarding sleep, is that a group from MIT continued. She said to him: "We would like you to try this eye mask."
The eyes are two parts of the brain. They are just not inside the skull, which makes them two exceptional comparisons with other parts of the brain. Therefore, the eyes are an amazing gateway for the rest of the brain. Everyone knows masks for the eye that block the light, but these people developed eye masks that measure movement of the fast eye, because devices like Oura or Aura or Eat Sleep which you use currently, do not measure the stage of rapid eye movement directly.
This mask can measure rapid eye movement directly. They designed this mask specially to help people on sleep faster. Huberman personally would like in acquiring it. He tried it and it works well very much, whether during the day or the night.
What it does is generate movements of slow-moving eye backwards and upwards and below, through simple stimulation behind your ears, where it turns out you can access to the eye muscles externally sufficiently from that location. It is a phrase about an eye mask with straps. Sometimes you feel a certain amount of simple stimulus then fall asleep. And once you begin the movement phase of the fast eye, it does indeed help in amplifying that stage, then it happens on a much larger scale than rapid eye movement.
Huberman wishes he had a share in this company, but he doesn't have that. This is amazing technology, according to his expression, it's about 7 to 12 months from launch. He's excited very much so.
Huberman is also very excited by the fact that people can do this themselves, and from it is clear that children are calmed down by shaking them. You could adopt an approach that does not require a mask, or you can use a mask.
For those interested in emerging technology and artificial intelligence, especially neurotechnologies, Huberman thinks reading from the brain and writing to it during sleep will become a huge field. But of course, he's more interested, or should he say also, by reading from the nervous system and writing to it in states of wakefulness.
You could imagine within 12 months to a year, the launch of the technology that he just described, to develop someone has glasses like these that stimulates part of the involuntary nervous system, so that at the top of his focus at certain times of the day, when he walks returning home, he is in a more relaxation to recover some of that energy.
We will begin in brain transformation to focus and learning patterns, and we will begin in doing so using these technologies. At the time currently, we rely on bathing in cold water, caffeine, and exercise. We practice breathing that focuses on inhalation versus breathing that focuses on exhale to become more alertness or tranquility.
If Huberman thought about it, the possible summary of all breathing exercises is focused either on the inhalation or on the exhale. So yes, we can do these things done intentionally, but you can imagine that soon there will be non-stimulating devices surgery will allow people by doing so, he will begin the matter during sleep because we have all become somewhat accustomed to the idea of measuring our physiological functions during sleep, and to a lesser extent while awake. But this is the path we are heading to.
Going back to this in sequence, you need to learn how to stop your thoughts. You have to forget your body position and slow down your heart rate. And the arrangement you make that doesn't really matter. Ideally, you want to combine all three of them.
Huberman thinks this will be a significant achievement for humanity, because if you looked at recovery from illness, and recovery, learning and controlling tension and psychological burnout, if you are going through a period of sadness or psychological stress or recovery from shock, or if you are trying to establish a company and you have children, or even if you are trying to work for the maximum number of hours you only have 4 hours to sleep, and you are someone who needs up to 6, you want to be able to place your head on the pillow and separation from the world.
We don't have good roads to do this except the tools Huberman described. So he thinks we've started dealing with things in a healthier way. But what he's talking about is that people with accurate self-assessment because they need to sleep, and their ability to stop ideas, then training themselves on these things.
In reality, many come to him ambitious people asking: "What is the exercise that you should do?" Huberman tells them: "Look, how long do you have it?"
At a certain stage in graduate studies, Huberman was training twice a day the week. He is not speaking about this, but he was lifting weights and running for long distances because he just wanted to keep his fitness while he was working seriously, to publish the largest number possible from the papers of excellent research.
Then later, he started practicing three exercises weekly using weights. And he practices three cardio exercises times a week, with durations long, medium, and short. As you know, he takes a day of rest, perhaps he uses the sauna and exposure to cold. His routine life is a little different now, or perhaps different a lot.
Huberman thinks you really are in those early years trying just not to die while adopting this thing. Then it begins to move to what is called balance and improvement. Then there are the people who achieved truly a level of skill or mastery in their profession.
You can actually evaluate how accurate are their schedules with their true physiological nature just by looking at them. Their condition appears bad. They suffer from chronic diseases, and they look older ten years from what is assumed that they should be upon it.
Or there are certain people who consider phenomena exceptional, like Elon Musk, or when you look at some of the people say in astonishment: "Oh my God, they have additional energy." But Huberman thinks, and he's just guessing here, that Jack Dorsey was always a calm and balanced person. This is what people tell him about him. This is something he experienced himself also in his dealings with him.
But Huberman thinks he made an effort to achieve that also. He realized that staying alert and calm throughout the day and sleeping good at night is key to getting a career long and successful career truly.
Huberman feels that public discourse about health and longevity is a disaster in every sense of the word. They are a group of clowns, and people multiply and they review two-thirds of their review and their clowning around. He's not saying he's injured in everything, or that he has all the answers. He certainly wouldn't say that.
He entered this field in due course, but the downside is that it was completely free of anyone else. There were people who only talked about health within the scope of their laboratory work, not widely, to the point that standards entering the discussion of the year is almost entirely about health will be zero.
It's like showing off your abdominal muscles, and you acknowledge that you are using steroids, then you will find someone who follows you. A man appears showing off his abdominal muscles, or a woman flexes her muscles, claiming to be natural absolutely, so we believe them. And suddenly they have followers. So if these were the standards enter, for Huberman coming from a field where it is not sufficient.
Obtaining a degree, even a PhD, is essential but never enough to claim contribution to understanding the brain. Tim Ferriss is praised for discussing biological piracy and self-improvement early, while remaining authentic by sharing both successes and regrets about interventions. A growing gap exists between established public health educators and what Huberman calls second-tier intellectuals, with the gap widening due to increasing extremism from individuals lacking scientific or health training who promote self-improvement based solely on personal experience.
It is very easy to attract attention. But it is very difficult to maintain respect.
Public health discourse becomes damaged when it turns into theatrical display. Huberman references figures including Brian Johnson ("Mr. Brian Eli"), Gary Brecka, and others, emphasizing the need to evaluate personalities based on alignment with ideas rather than entertainment value. He predicts a retreat from over-optimization, with people reducing daily interventions they perceive as excessive or approaching madness.
Huberman expects serious colleagues with training in health, science, or medicine to emerge and provide education from a rigorous scientific perspective rather than TikTok-style content. This will lead to a decline in general education around learning, health, and longevity, followed by an influx of qualified individuals.
The biggest problem in neuroscience is developing non-surgical methods to read from and write to the nervous system during sleep and wakefulness. Huberman references his childhood friend Eddie Chang, head of neurological surgery at UCSF and a bioengineer, who performs awake brain surgery to remove tumors while mapping speech and language areas. Most people resist skull penetration unless medically necessary for tumor removal or epileptic focus treatment.
The major development needed is non-surgical stimulation or calming of brain regions with precise spatial and temporal selectivity. This includes helping individuals with speech inability and spinal cord injury patients regain walking ability, technologies pursued by Neuralink and others.
Every major AI company—Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic—will become a biotechnology company. All are interested in the brain and share the goal of non-surgical reading from and writing to the brain. The core challenge involves stimulating or calming brain areas with spatial and temporal precision, and raising or lowering activation thresholds. The nervous system uses gates and gradual signals rather than simple on/off states.
This is the essence of the real arms race for artificial intelligence.
Huberman envisions non-pharmacological, non-surgical devices that dynamically modify nervous system activity, with AI adjusting activation levels for specific brain regions during learning or work tasks.
Current technology like the Eight Sleep device changes temperature throughout the night to optimize REM or deep sleep through indirect methods. The goal for AI companies is direct, dynamic measurement and modification of nervous system states. Reading from the nervous system has been the focus for 30-40 years, but writing to the nervous system non-surgically represents the current frontier.
Neurons communicate through electrical signals following an all-or-nothing principle once activation thresholds are reached. Recording methods include extracellular recordings using electrodes near cells, intracellular recordings requiring cell penetration, and non-invasive approaches like functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography, though these only capture cortical surface signals.
Ultrasound waves and transcranial magnetic stimulation are used for treating depression but lack excellent spatial control. The major challenge lies in understanding normal activity patterns in detail before attempting stimulation through writing.
Two primary writing methods exist: pharmacology and direct stimulation. Most drugs either increase activation thresholds (alcohol, barbiturates, sedatives) by enhancing inhibitory transmissions or decrease thresholds (Adderall, caffeine, nicotine, modafinil) by increasing excitatory neurotransmitters. The fundamental question involves achieving better reading and writing capabilities with spatial and temporal precision, and willingness to place devices subcutaneously.
Vagus nerve stimulation, contrary to common belief that it promotes calmness, actually increases alertness. Current depression treatments involve implanting a coin-sized device under neck skin to stimulate the vagus nerve for overcoming depression-related lethargy. Huberman references colleague Karl Deisseroth demonstrating real-time effects, where increasing vagus nerve stimulation transformed a suicidal depression patient into discussing job applications.
Matt MacDougall, a Neuralink neurosurgeon who spent time in Huberman's lab, has a small implanted receiver under the skin between thumb and forefinger that opens his house door. His wife has the same device. Huberman predicts that within 12 months, 20% of entrepreneurs will consider vagus nerve stimulation if it requires only a small skin penetration.
Commercially available vagus nerve stimulators show promise, though surgical colleagues prefer placement under skin and skull. Huberman notes that 10 years ago, wearing a ring or bracelet to measure sleep and heart rate would have seemed extremely imaginative.
Three essential components are needed: good inputs, good reading methods, and a brain model. Peripheral sensory organs (retina, cochlea, tongue, olfactory organ, skin) and neural muscular control are well understood. Deeper brain structures including the hypothalamus, which controls hunger, anger, sexual desire, and hormone secretion through switch-like circuits, are understood to varying degrees.
GLP drugs' effectiveness stems from understanding their connection to subthalamic regions and appetite-suppressing neural circuits. However, prefrontal cortex functions involving contextual learning, strategy development in different environments, and top-down motivational braking are understood, while memory and idea formation remain mysterious areas without textbook explanations of mechanisms.
A study from Mark Mayford's laboratory at Scripps Institute and Susumu Tonegawa's work reveals concerning findings about memory circuits. Animals can learn complex tasks including shock avoidance, reward location, mazes, and lever combinations. Reading methods from the hippocampus have become sufficiently advanced to identify signal patterns during learning and recall.
The traditional model assumes specific cell groups activate in sequence during memory formation and recall. However, experiments showed that activating the same neural cells in reverse order or simultaneously (like striking all piano keys at once) produced the same normal behavior, challenging the assumption that temporal sequence matters for memory circuits.
This finding suggests that writing to the nervous system might be simpler than expected, as activating the same neural cells regardless of activation order could produce desired behaviors. However, challenges remain in activating selected cell groups with high spatial and temporal precision, and these neural cells participate in multiple perceptions and behaviors beyond single functions.
The nervous system recruits different cells for different circuits based on attempted perceptions and behaviors. Current brain models work at peripheral and deep structure levels, but memory and thinking processes become complicated because temporal sequence importance remains unclear, contradicting textbook assumptions about information flow directionality.
Current neurotechnologies face significant limitations in spatial accuracy when stimulating nerve cells. While this reduced precision may alleviate some problems by not requiring extreme accuracy, there remains a substantial gap in understanding how targeted interventions affect broader brain systems. When stimulating cells in the motor cortex to generate movement, these cells are closely connected to structures involved in thinking and planning, which could create system-wide disruption.
Despite the challenges of precision, the brain demonstrates remarkable flexibility in finding solutions when given specific goals, such as drinking a glass of water. Researchers working with brain-damaged patients have found that targeting brain regions that generate signals to guide action outputs can achieve good results, even without directly accessing speech production areas.
Eddie Chang's research enables patients with locked-in syndrome to communicate via computer interfaces. Rather than measuring signals from speech production areas, his system accurately measures signals from speech planning areas. Since patients cannot access their pharynx and larynx for actual speech production, these planning signals are converted to electrical signals that allow computer-based communication. This approach demonstrates both advantages and disadvantages of current neurotechnology limitations.
Ramp has launched operations in the United Kingdom, offering AI-subsidized finance platforms for commercial businesses. The platform combines card management, expense tracking, bill approvals, and accounting in a single location, saving companies an average of 5% annually while allowing focus on growth.
Vanta automates compliance processes, reducing security review time and audit setup by 82%. The platform provides immediate, up-to-date proof of trust without manual work, enabling faster deal closure. Customers achieve 526% ROI, with over 16,000 companies including Ramp, Harvey, and Snowflake using the platform.
Rogo serves tens of thousands of bankers and investors across hundreds of leading global companies. AI agents independently execute major portions of company processes including deal checking, information model drafting, buyer contact, and due diligence in data rooms, all with security and compliance guarantees. Each procedure feeds into Rogo's intelligence layer, creating institutional memory with governance that strengthens subsequent transactions.
OpenAI, Cursor, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Vercel all use WorkOS to achieve institutional-scale accreditation. The platform provides essential capabilities including SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and audit logs from day one, eliminating the need to build these features internally. This allows AI teams to focus on product development while maintaining institutional readiness.
Ridgeline provides the first comprehensive record system with built-in AI for investment management companies, unifying portfolio accounting, settlement, reporting, trading, and compliance. Investment managers are divided between those uncertain where to begin with AI and those believing they can build their own order management systems quickly. However, investment management requires governance, controls, and a single reliable data source that cannot be replaced by AI enthusiasm alone.
Concerns about neural technologies include fears of losing humanity or identity when brain activity can be precisely controlled. The philosophical implications of crossing the cyborg threshold raise questions about what humanity will possess in 5-10 years and where the technology is heading.
Born and raised in Palo Alto with connections in technology and medicine, the speaker notes that many people are terrified of AI, though similar fears existed around computers. Public acceptance has grown regarding nervous system reading, with people now comfortable having phones record everything they say. Self-driving cars represent another example of technology acceptance that occurred more readily than anticipated.
Current health monitoring relies on heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), and limited other metrics rather than direct involuntary nervous system readings. These indirect measures provide information about stress levels, recovery, and sleep quality but lack direct nervous system access.
Melis Yilmaz, a former Stanford and Harvard researcher now working in biotechnology, is developing a small collar-like device that measures direct involuntary nervous system activity. The device provides readings about how various activities, speech patterns, and breathing relate to distress versus positive stress levels, revealing that nervous system activation during enjoyable activities can actually prepare the body for better sleep and focus.
The nervous system measurement devices have been provided to police departments and response teams, with technology eventually becoming widely available. These tools can distinguish between nervousness and actual distress, potentially changing perceptions of stress levels and their duration after specific interactions.
Pupil size changes offer a method for monitoring focus levels, similar to how this is measured in animals. This capability will likely be integrated into glasses, providing substantial data collection through wristbands, glasses, or sleep eye masks that people will find comfortable to use.
The critical question concerns how willing people will be to subject their entire brains to external control. Current limitations prevent implanting wires in brains except for clinical problems, and even then, full access to all nerve cells remains impossible. The goal is reaching all nerve cells to upgrade or reduce activity while maintaining personal control over the device.
Rather than electrical stimulation, modern approaches involve developing genes not normally expressed in cells, typically genes expressing channels from algae or other non-human microscopic organisms. These genes are introduced locally via single injections, though this requires skull penetration. Viral vectors, including adenoviruses, can express stable genes in targeted cell types including nerve cells or immune cells.
While gene therapy has been performed in humans for other purposes, applications have been more localized, such as eye injections. The direction involves viral injections that introduce channels into the brain, allowing a wearable device like a woolen hat or baseball cap to direct stimulation through unspecified light cones or ultrasound waves that can penetrate the skull.
Light or sound packages can activate specifically tagged nerve cells, with intensity and flashing patterns allowing conversion from inactive to active, hyperactive, or calm states. AI will likely manage these controls rather than manual adjustment, enabling precise motivation increases for those with stimulation problems or healthy individuals seeking enhanced motivation.
Caffeine and methamphetamine represent existing crude versions of neural stimulation, with over 90% of the global adult population consuming caffeine daily. Future systems may require multiple factors for activation, such as genetic susceptibility combined with viral introduction and pill ingestion, creating logical "AND" gates for safety. People receiving neural stimulators can also have them removed.
Despite fears, the speaker predicts these technologies will definitely occur for those who want them. Public resistance to full-body MRI imaging persists despite examples of lives saved through early tumor detection, with some medical sectors concerned about increased public access to private health data. Dermatologists and eye doctors embrace AI and increased measurements, while other medical fields resist.
Genetic testing faced similar resistance in the 1980s, with concerns about discovering Huntington's gene and 60 Minutes episodes questioning whether people would want such knowledge. Now genetic testing is simple and optional based on individual preference, similar to blood tests. The speaker predicts whole-body MRI will become commonplace within 20 months as costs decline.
The trajectory moves from primitive tools toward direct, high-resolution technology with increasing specificity. Early neuroscience relied on causing lesions or studying patients like Phineas Gage, whose frontal cortex damage revealed its role in contextual decision-making rather than morality. HM's hippocampal lesions demonstrated inability to form new memories.
Modern approaches use genetic, chemical, light, or sound markers to manipulate specific neurons involved in particular memories or behaviors. Health applications connect public health with neuroscience through reading and writing in the nervous system, including morning sunlight exposure for circadian rhythm setting and cortisol elevation through specific retinal circuits.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors increase serotonin and allow greater neural flexibility, helping people with clinical obsessive-compulsive disorder but being overprescribed for depression. Psilocybin dramatically increases serotonin, reveals side links in the brain, and allows new connection formation within extremely intense timeframes. MDMA creates enormous neurotransmitter increases in specific therapeutic contexts.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation combined with pharmacodynamics will address clinical problems related to emotions and mind, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder treatment using stimulants increases prefrontal cortex activity for improved focus. Sleep plus caffeine can approach Adderall effects, though with different safety margins.
All current medications and electrical stimulation lack precision because receptors exist throughout the brain, causing side effects including sexual dysfunction, weight gain or loss, and excessive sexual desire. The goal is greater spatial and temporal precision in neural intervention.
Dario's work recording from eye networks in Mike Berry's lab, typically salamander retina, registered as many nerve cells as possible while knowing visual signals given to the retina and responses at photoreceptor and ganglion cell levels. The goal was obtaining maximum information about the total set of nerve cells responding to images to move from image to brain perception.
While electrode placement can make animals enter anger states or begin mating, understanding the nature of transformations from exploration to actual mating or aggressive reactions in real life remains limited to very low-level behaviors and motivations. The cyborg question of increasing creativity remains distant since the relevant circuits and even IQ mechanisms are not understood.
A researcher completed postdoctoral training at Stanford before establishing a laboratory in China and announced CRISPR modification in twin children, deleting future HIV immunity. The father was reportedly HIV-positive and wanted to protect the children from AIDS infection. The medical science community faced uncertainty about appropriate response, including whether the researcher would receive the Nobel Prize.
He Jiankui's gene editing of human embryos raised questions about whether he would receive the Nobel Prize or face imprisonment. The scientific community had a strange social situation where previous collaborators searched their email correspondence looking for evidence of cautionary messages. The correspondence revealed a complex mix of warnings like "be careful" alongside curiosity about whether the experiment would succeed. Many distanced themselves from the work once it became clear the world decided it was ethically wrong. The Chinese government announced his laboratory would be shut down and he would face punishment, though the exact form of punishment was unclear. The current status of He Jiankui remains unknown - some reports suggest he may be in Austin, Texas.
The He Jiankui case raised broader questions about where the field of human genetic engineering stands. Amniotic fluid testing of fetuses is now common practice, and people can opt out but generally it occurs. Companies like Harracite and Orchid conduct genetic testing for IVF embryos. Some focus on detecting diseases while others attempt to link genetic patterns to autism, intelligence, height, and other traits. Partner selection already occurs in many contexts, including sperm and egg donation where donors are chosen based on criteria like height, education, and appearance.
Future HIV immunity is related to certain neurological circuit configurations associated with memory. Another layer of the He Jiankui experiments that the neuroscience community knew about but didn't discuss publicly was whether he was attempting to make the children immune to HIV while also giving them superior intelligence. No one could answer this question definitively. Genetic engineering of humans for enhanced cognitive or physical capabilities is possible. The follistatin gene has been modified in animals, and people are undergoing follistatin gene therapy to build more muscle.
William Gibson's quote that "the future is already here, but it's not evenly distributed" applies to current genetic technologies. Social media ensures nothing stays secret for long - once more than two people know something, digital footprints inevitably remain. The core theme appears to be control: gene control, brain state control, and technological control over biological processes.
Social media platforms like X serve as a "university campus" where people learn about their own fields and adjacent areas, enabling unpredictable breakthroughs. A charismatic gene therapy expert with genuine understanding could rapidly advance the field. The problem with He Jiankui was that he went "off-script" without consulting others. Early laboratory experiments were run at night to avoid protocol violations, but now everyone is more cautious.
Neurotechnology for reading and writing from the nervous system in wakeful states is an area of active consideration. Current understanding of sleep includes slow-wave sleep, deep sleep, and stages N1, N2, and N3. Temperature changes affect sleep stages - heating the bed or room in the morning increases REM sleep. However, guiding and precisely adjusting sleep states using tools like eye masks and temperature control is still primitive. The goal is understanding brain states during wakefulness to eventually "write" to the nervous system to generate specific states with precise timing and spatial awareness.
The problem with neuroscience as a field is that people tend to work on things slightly different from what they actually practice. Dario Amodei comes from a neuroscience background and works in artificial intelligence. Sam Altman is very intelligent in neuroscience terms. Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk also understand neurotechnology applications. Neuralink's investigation is intelligent in terms of current capabilities and future directions. Engineers who previously just engineered things are becoming neuroscientists, which benefits the field since neuroscience has historically benefited from bringing in people from other disciplines.
A better definition of alertness in the brain is needed - this is considered the most important thing to resolve. When fields achieve major leaps forward, there's always a pattern where people push boundaries, things get crowded with attention-seekers, then settle into a surge of genuinely useful available technologies. The years 2027 and 2028 are predicted to represent "low-level noise" in health technology. The thesis presented in the associated book contains things known with certainty.
There is strong interest in reading and writing from the alert nervous system, with conversations occurring three times weekly with Eddie Chang about neuroscience directions. The best people are working on these problems. Traditional media tries to hinder progress by demanding public statements that these technologies won't destroy the world. Ethics and safety guarantees are needed, but the primary feeling is excitement about the possibilities.
The kindest thing someone ever did was when Barbara Chapman, who ran a successful laboratory publishing in scientific journals, approached during graduate studies. Despite not joining her laboratory initially, she observed the genuine passion for the work being conducted there. She said the only thing that determines success is how badly you want to know the answers to the questions being worked on. After leaving the other laboratory and joining hers, eight first-author papers were published, launching the career. This required significant humility and boldness from her side, showing faith and understanding that the mentee lacked sufficient self-understanding.
Success is determined by the accuracy of matching true curiosity to the work being done. Every experiment is extremely difficult, building any company is difficult, and creating any podcast correctly is difficult. The tragedy occurs when people don't follow their genuine curiosity because they're trying to "succeed" according to external definitions. The lack of following genuine curiosity represents a kind of slow death.
The greatest tragedy occurs when people don't follow their genuine curiosity. A conversation about what tech leaders should do prompted the response that Metallica is Metallica because they play the music they love, and the Grateful Dead is the Grateful Dead because they play the music they love. People must be themselves rather than following trends of what they "should" do.
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