A new approach to brain health, one neuron at a time
4/15/202613 min
Neuroscientist Paul Nuyujukian likens the brain to a stadium full of people. To eavesdrop on the crowd you could put a microphone in the middle of the stadium. But to understand the conversations you need to record individual people. He thinks about the brain the same way. To understand brain disease, he studies neurons—one at a time. And his insights are shedding light on a big global issue—stroke. The World Health Organization predicts one in four adults will have a stroke in their lifetime. Strokes can cause death, or lead to paralysis or speech problems. But there’s still a lot researchers don’t know about how the brain recovers from an event like a stroke. Nuyujukian directs a lab at Stanford University that studies how the brain controls movement, including after neurological events like stroke. We get into how he does this, and why he hopes his research could eventually help people who’ve been paralyzed.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Rachel Carlson· Host0:23
Short Wave-ers, we know your day doesn't stop, and neither do we. Whether you're starting your day or finishing a commute, we're right there with you. The NPR app has global and local news, plus hours and hours of this podcast ready and waiting for you. Download the NPR app today. Okay, back to the show. You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. Hey, Short Wave-ers. Producer Rachel Carlson in the host chair today with a story about brain-machine interfaces, brain implants. Paul Nuyujukian studied this for a long time. He's at the Brain Interfacing Lab at Stanford University, and you guys, [laughs] Paul does so many things. He's a medical doctor, an engineer, a neuroscientist.
Paul Nuyujukian· Guest1:13
I have a lot of hats.
Rachel Carlson· Host1:15
Around 10 years ago, Paul was at a point in his research where people who'd been paralyzed from the neck down could get one of these devices implanted in their brain, and then they could sit next to a bunch of computers- And just think