Neurotechnology on Display at 2017 South by Southwest Conference in Austin
by Jennifer French, senior editor
March 2017 issue
The South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) became popular as a music festival but has morphed into a pop culture mecca featuring film, technology, and health. It is known for attracting early adopters to the scene and technology companies know this. It was on the SXSW stage that the likes of Wikipedia, Instagram, and Google+ were launched. Fast forward to 2017: neurotechnology and brain science are coming of age. At this year’s event, more than a dozen sessions featured technology and the brain or human interfaces.
Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer for SXSW, blogged that “MedTech Experts Rock at SXSW” and later mentioned the “extremely, extremely popular” session about artificial intelligence in his Medium blog reflecting on the 2017 experience.
The topic of brain health and technology was among the popular sessions. A session called “Mind the Machine: Neurotech and AI for Brain Health,” had a star-studded team including Walter Greenleaf of Pear Therapeutics, Mimi Winsberg from Stanford, and Jordan Amadio, cofounder of NeuroLaunch. Their discussion about brain interfaces, digital health, and machine learning referenced new developments in this “Neuro-Revolution.”
Tan Le of Emotiv presented during a session called Brain Wearables and discussed how her company’s BCI technology can be used for control of external devices and also for early detection of disorders such as autism and epilepsy.
There were also sessions focused on using brain stimulation to train elite athletes. David Putrino from Burke Medical Research Institute discussed his team’s findings from the Red Bull Project Endurance, which applied transcranial magnetic stimulation to elite cyclists. Putrino’s colleague at Burke, Dylan Edwards, highlighted clinical trials using TMS and tDCS for stroke recovery. Their discussions were coupled with personal experiences from high-performance managers and athletes.
A similar format ensued at the session titled “Unlocking the Brain’s Full Potential in Athletes” directed by Daniel Chao of Halo Neuroscience. This session featured Olympic gold medalist and track star Natasha Hastings along with her coach Darryl Woodson, who described how they used the Halo Sport tDCS system in her preparations for competition. Lance Walker described how his team uses this technology for a variety of athletes at the Michael Jordan Performance Center in Texas.
There were also more traditional neurotech sessions such as a panel featuring Chad Bouton of the Feinstein Institute, Polina Anikeeva from MIT, and Doug Weber from DARPA, who discussed the future of neuromodulation and bioelectronics medicine. A session moderated by PBS NewsHour’s Miles O’Brien, who lives with a single arm amputation, discussed future developments in neurotech and neuroprosthetics. That session featured this editor as well as Ali Rezai and Chelsea Kane from Ohio State University, who described their latest developments with the BCI and implantable technology to treat migraine headaches. They also discussed some new developments in neuroprosthetics.
There were also sessions focusing on systematic healthcare and the impact of technology. A panel discussion explored the obstacles and opportunities of using self-directed care through technology and the efficiencies of the emerging telehealth system. Health system entrepreneurs touched on the evolution of best practices led by the NIH directive of patient-centric healthcare. A panel of entrepreneurs recognized the vast unmet need of people living with mental illness and how state of the art technology can be used to improve diagnosis and treatment.
It could not be a pop culture festival without some mention of fashion with a technology focus. As we are wearing more technology on our bodies, how will that translate to the world of fashion? A session called “Beyond the Interface” discussed the intersection of technology wearables, consumer experience, and looking good with panelists Pauline van Dongen from the Crafting Wearables program at the University of Technology in the Netherlands and user experience designers Syuzi Pakhchyan and Steven Holmes. A different approach was taken during the “Elastic Interfaces for Your Body” discussion, where the conversation centered around the development of biointerfaces in clothing to connect with cortical activity. Also discussed was the merging of neural implants with soft electronics applications to tackle paralysis being developed in Switzerland.
From the first event in 1987, SXSW has evolved from a music festival into a powerhouse cultural event including film, interactive, health, and technology. This year’s event, attracted thousands of creative people from around the globe who were eager to meet, learn and share ideas. Neurotech was definitely one of the major attractions.
But all wasn’t roses and butterflies. During the session with the seemingly innocuous title “End of Disability?” Neurotech’s Future Frontier,” an audience member voiced her strong discontent with the effort to “take away” her disability from which she hones her identity. This discontent later translated into a string of tweets from the disability community with the hashtag #EndofDisability. It later surfaced in a New York Times opinion piece titled “Cure Me? No, Thanks.”
Pushback from the user community is not new in neurotech. In the early days of the cochlear implant industry, some in the deaf community rejected the device as an assault on the deaf community culture and its language, ASL. That response forced vendors to take a moment to listen to the community. The backlash from SXSW 2017 raises issues such as care versus cure, the right to choose, and truly understanding unmet needs in the disability community. There is often a fine line between what is seen as educating a patient population vs. hyping a product. Though the neurotech industry should not be reticent to step into the public eye, it wouldn’t hurt to take a moment and listen to the user community.