Short speaker transcript describing effects of vagal nerve stimulation (increased brain coherence) and a proposal to use focused ultrasound beams to precisely stimulate millimeter-scale brain regions — including deep structures in the brainstem — as a safer, more targeted alternative to TMS and potentially a replacement for deep brain stimulation implants.
Like a 100% coherence means my entire brain is firing at the same rate, which doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be more relaxed or less, but it's your brain's working more efficiently. You can process emotions cognitively, you know, process thoughts better. And that's what we saw with vagal nerve stim was coherence went up most of the time. This is super cool because with the ultrasound beam, it stimulates at the point where the sound waves converge. So it's like a tiny little, you know, a couple millimeters, you know, long. And I can target any region of depth in the brain and stimulate any region in the brain, including deeper brain structures in the brain stem. And that's cool because it's a little safer than tms. You're not just bombarding it with these massive energy waves. It's very precise. And so the theory is that could replace deep brain stimulation implants.
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