Kernel launches Neuroscience as a Service (NaaS) built on non-invasive brain recording technology

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Ker­nel Sound ID is designed to help decode and visu­al­ize what a per­son is hearing

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A Neuroscientist’s Thoughts On Ker­nel’s Announce­ment:

“Ker­nel, the neu­rotech com­pa­ny found­ed by Bryan John­son, just released a wave of new infor­ma­tion about the tech­nol­o­gy they have been build­ing over the past half-decade. With this announce­ment, we final­ly get a glimpse into the secre­tive company’s plans. We knew that they had ditched their inten­tions of pur­su­ing inva­sive brain record­ing tech­niques, leav­ing that all to Neu­ralink, a sim­i­lar­ly mind­ed effort launched by ser­i­al entre­pre­neur Elon Musk. There were rumours of a NIRS (near-infrared spec­troscopy) based sys­tem, but noth­ing con­crete … The vision Ker­nel out­lined in their post is that of a mul­ti­modal record­ing sys­tem based on MEG (mag­ne­toen­cephalog­ra­phy, a mouth­ful) and NIRS (near-infrared spec­troscopy). Both of these tech­nolo­gies are already avail­able and wide­ly used in research set­tings (and clin­i­cal set­tings too in the case of MEG). What’s new here is the pack­age, minia­tur­iza­tion and ease of use. Far from triv­ial, these advances could allow both record­ings modal­i­ties to move out of the lab and into more “eco­log­i­cal” set­tings (e.g. use dur­ing move­ment, dai­ly activ­i­ties, etc)…

It’s excit­ing to live in a time where neu­rotech­nol­o­gy receives so much atten­tion and fund­ing. One of the things extreme­ly well-fund­ed com­pa­nies can achieve that researchers can­not (and have lit­tle incen­tive to), is build­ing inte­grat­ed and pol­ished sys­tems. Both the Neu­ralink and Ker­nel announce­ments have that in com­mon: they take state-of-the-art research tech­nolo­gies and turn them into actu­al prod­ucts … But there remains a long and windy road before this vision can become a real­i­ty for every­day con­sumers, and how eas­i­ly these com­pa­nies can sus­tain them­selves until that day is still to be seen. Get­ting there will require more than stream­lined and opti­mized ver­sions of tools researchers already have. The sci­ence isn’t quite there yet, and some fun­da­men­tal break­throughs will need to hap­pen before many of the promised sci-fi sound­ing appli­ca­tion can see the light of day. The fan­cy tools Ker­nel and Neu­ralink are build­ing will help get us there faster. Here’s to hop­ing they’ll have the patience to stick around and con­tin­ue build­ing them while Sci­ence mean­ders along its slow and steady path to the future.”

The News:

Ker­nel Announces Neu­ro­science as a Ser­vice (NaaS) Plat­form (press release):

“Ker­nel today announced the avail­abil­i­ty of its Neu­ro­science as a Ser­vice (NaaS) plat­form, which enables orga­ni­za­tions to con­duct sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous stud­ies more quick­ly and eas­i­ly than ever before, using Kernel’s world-lead­ing, non-inva­sive brain record­ing technology.

Just as main­frames became PCs, and the cost to sequence a human genome went from near­ly $1 bil­lion to under $1000, Kernel’s brain-record­ing and engi­neer­ing break­throughs will ush­er in a new era for neu­ro­science, psy­chi­a­try, and health and well­ness by cre­at­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve our under­stand­ing of the human brain and mind.

Ker­nel makes quan­tifi­able, at a pop­u­la­tion-lev­el scale pre­vi­ous­ly impos­si­ble, what have until now been most­ly qual­i­ta­tive efforts to under­stand, fix, and improve the brain and mind … “We can con­tin­u­ous­ly mea­sure and quan­ti­fy almost every­thing in the uni­verse except for our brains and minds,” said Bryan John­son, Founder and CEO of Ker­nel. “The brain remains most­ly a black box. Just as you can’t self-intro­spect to deter­mine your cho­les­terol, much of the high­est-val­ue infor­ma­tion about our­selves and each oth­er sits out­side our con­scious awareness.”

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