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You are here: Home / Guest Appearance / #248 – An interview with Greg and Tim of Backyard Brains – Boethetic Bug Brainwaves

#248 – An interview with Greg and Tim of Backyard Brains – Boethetic Bug Brainwaves

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TimAndGreg

Welcome Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo of Backyard Brains! (hereafter annotated as “BB”)

  • The focus of BB is to make simple to use electronics so that neuroscience is taught sooner in students’ lives.
  • The Spiker box is a signal chain with bio instrumentation amp, then bandpass filtering, then an amplifier to output through a speaker
  • It turns out that plants also have electrophysiology (action potential firing). Especially
  • The cortex is done in layers, so the polarity lines up and the signals are detectible
  • The human brain initiative is part of a push from the Obama administration. It’s meant to increase the understanding of the brain.
  • Tim did some predication of the future:
    • 2035 neuromotes, silicon wrapped in biocompatible material.
    • 2165 is the completely controllable to the single neuron layer.
  • There is a bluetooth kit to control bugs by manipulating their antennae. It’s called The Roboroach; it uses similar science as to the experiments by Luigi Galvani on frog legs.
  • Greg gave a TED talk about the human to human interface
  • Chris knew what the Myelin sheath is; a coating over neurons that allows signals to travel faster.
  • Squid giant axon and the entire equation is governed by the telegraphers equation. 
  • Communication between axon of one neuron and the dendrite of the next is done via neurotransmitters. Check out the diagram of a neuron on wiki.
  • The Spiker box can also act on the output of electromyograms.
  • Chris had a chance to meet Greg and see some of the electronics in action (with bugs) with Hackaday in Ann Arbor, MI.
  • On the educational front, BB’s goal is to make more experts via their tutorials and kits.
  • For neurological disorders, doctors are starting to look at using electroceuticals instead of pharmaceuticals.
  • Ben Krasnow did a video about creating his own TMS.
    [tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUW7dQ92yDU[/tube]
  • Chris confused DBS (where they install an electrode) vs TMS (where there is an external magnetic field).
  • BB has done some educational based research papers.
  • They have been working with marine biology in Woods Hole. Aneonomes and jellyfish have loose neural nets and there is very little understood about them.
  • BB got a fellowship from Chilean gov’t (Startup Chile). They also have worked with folks from the Santiago Maker Space.

Comments

  1. Bullari says

    May 8, 2015 at 5:16 am

    Perfect line of work for sociopaths

  2. KansQRP says

    May 8, 2015 at 2:08 pm

    Great interview. Many plants have neurotransmitters in them like dimethyltryptamine. Greg & Tims studies are phenomenal. Keep up the great work guys.

    73

  3. Cody Tudor says

    May 10, 2015 at 6:51 pm

    Detecting stray voltages used by utility companies is a technology that may be promising for neural reading outside of the body. The system treats objects as antennas and uses a very sophisticated receiver and DSP techniques to capture objects with as little as 1V rms from 6 meters away. Since it is configured for line voltage frequencies (whose power frequencies is very close to that of neural pathways apparently…) I would image the tech would be a good start. Namely the concept and DSP algorithms.

    The company is called Power Survey Company and the truck equipped device is the SVD2000.

    Thought I’d pass on the knowledge.

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