Ask most people what a brain chip does and they will tell you it reads your mind. Dr. Michael Lawton implants these devices, and he says that is not what comes off them. He is President and CEO of Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, the hospital where Neuralink's first human implant was performed, and he has completed more than 10,000 brain operations and clipped around 5,500 aneurysms. Louisa sat down with him inside Barrow to find out what the electrodes actually pick up, how far the technology has come, and where it stops.

He walks through the surgery itself. The device goes into the hand knob, one small lobule of the motor cortex, where 64 electrodes have already become 108. The threads carrying them are about a tenth the thickness of a hair, so a robot inserts them while avoiding every arteriole on the surface. You'll hear what Nolan Arbaugh, Neuralink's first patient, can now do with a cursor at world record speed, and why Lawton can't keep up with him in a head to head. Then the correction. The data coming off these electrodes is a train of spikes, the same electrical language every neuron in your head is already using, and decoding it tells you whether a person meant to move a cursor left or right. Reading an emotion, or what someone thinks of you, is nowhere close.

The second half turns to the brain Lawton has spent 29 years operating inside. He describes cooling a patient to 15 degrees Celsius and stopping their circulation completely, which shrivels a giant aneurysm like a raisin and opens a short window to repair it. He explains why the hardest cases will still need a pair of human hands, and what he tells trainees who think their craft is disappearing. On brain aging he is direct about what works. He predicts alcohol will be viewed in 20 years the way cigarettes were viewed in the 60s, he takes zero supplements and no peptides, and he says exactly what he can and cannot see when he looks at a living brain on the table.

You'll also hear about Barrow's Mindgenuity Labs and its six mysteries of the mind, why he ranks movement as the first one to fall and consciousness as the one that may never be solved, what he believes consciousness physically is inside 86 billion neurons, and the ground underneath all of it. His sister died of a brain tumor. Louisa's father had a stroke in 2019. Both of them have watched this from the other side of the table.

*Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+:* https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/youtube-sales-page

Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance.

_____

*TOPICS DISCUSSED*

00:00 Intro: The Brain Surgeon at Neuralink's First Hospital

00:39 The Guy Who Does the Cases Nobody Else Wants

02:17 A Day in the Life: 5:30am Starts and Three Surgeries

03:20 "Game Tape": Reviewing Every Operation Like an Athlete

04:24 The Surgeon Athlete and Why Surgery Is a Physical Skill

05:32 Fifty Years From Now: What Happens to Neurosurgery

06:11 The ROSA Robot and Mapping a Seizure Focus

08:16 Deep Brain Stimulation and Hitting an Exact Target

08:52 Will We All Be Operated On by Robots?

10:02 The Brain AVM: The One Case a Robot Can't Take

11:18 Why Bleeding Breaks a Robot: The Waymo Problem

13:15 What a Brain-Computer Interface Actually Does

14:49 The Hand Knob: 108 Electrodes in One Small Spot

15:50 Cursor Control at World Record Speed

16:31 Inside the Implant: Threads a Tenth the Width of a Hair

17:27 "No, the Chip Cannot Read Your Thoughts"

17:58 What the Device Really Reads: A Train of Spikes

19:18 From Movement to Sensation: What Comes Next

19:48 Why Restoring Sight Is So Much Harder

20:58 The 1943 Paper That Predicted All of This

22:37 Elon, Telepathy, and What's Actually Possible

23:00 Boosting Creativity and Intelligence in 50 Years

25:10 "When I Retire, We'll Be Treating Depression and Addiction"

26:04 Alzheimer's: Light Therapy and the Blood-Brain Barrier

27:11 Treating the Disease vs Preventing It

28:25 10,000 Operations: How He Feels About Robots Taking Over

29:54 Neuroplasticity: How Nolan's Brain Learned the Device

31:34 What Actually Changes at the Neuron Level

32:04 Patient Two and the Robotic Arm

32:42 5,500 Aneurysms: The Cases That Stay With Him

33:16 Cardiac Standstill: Cooling a Brain to 15 Degrees

35:46 What Separates a Great Surgeon From an Average One

36:17 Traits of Greatness: The Formula Nobody Has Cracked

37:21 The Phone Call in the Middle of a 16-Hour Surgery

39:35 "I Must Have Been Born for This"

41:26 Can You Tell How Old a Brain Is Just by Looking?

43:12 Why Alzheimer's Is Invisible in a Living Brain

44:14 What a Neurosurgeon Does to Protect His Own Brain

44:40 "Alcohol Will Be Viewed Like Cigarettes in the 60s"

45:13 Peptides, Injectables, and Zero Supplements

46:52 The Last Generation to Operate With Open Hands

48:10 How Louisa Found Him on Twitter in 2021

48:53 The Six Mysteries of the Mind

49:14 Which One Gets Solved First, and Which May Never

50:03 Is Consciousness in the Tissue?

51:39 Memory: The Circuitry We Still Can't Explain

53:18 Why Consciousness Is Harder Than Memory

55:12 Louisa's Father's Stroke

56:02 Advice for Anyone Watching a Parent Decline

56:21 His Sister's Brain Tumor and How He Carries It

57:38 A World Where Stroke Is an Outpatient Repair

58:40 Forty Years On, Finally at the Dawn

_______

*Thank you to our sponsors*

Timeline (Mitopure): https://timeline.com/neuro Mitopure now starts at $79

Ogee: https://ogee.com Use code XXXXX for a discount on the Crystal Contour Collection

Kion (Kion Aminos): https://getkion.com/neuro Use code XXXXX for a discount

Function Health: https://functionhealth.com/LouisaNicola Use code NEURO25 for a $25 credit

_______

I'm Louisa Nicola - clinical neurophysiologist - Alzheimer's prevention specialist - founder of Neuro Athletics.

My mission is to translate cutting-edge neuroscience into actionable strategies for cognitive longevity, peak performance, and brain disease prevention. If you're committed to optimizing your brain- reducing Alzheimer's risk - and staying mentally sharp for life, you're in the right place.

Stay sharp. Stay informed. Join thousands who subscribe to the Neuro Athletics Newsletter → https://bit.ly/3ewI5P0

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louisanicola_/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/louisanicola_

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices