Khalil Ramadi: Electronic pills that could transform how we treat disease | TED Fellows

[SHAPE YOUR FUTURE] For decades, scientists have tried to use brain modulation to treat neurological disorders. Techniques usually involved sticking wires onto our head, then helmets that immobilized our head and zapping our brain with magnetic or electrical pulses. Given what we now know about the millions of circuits that our brain has, this was much like trying to fix a pothole by resurfacing the entire road. Brain modulation can actually come in different forms. The brain connects with all organs in our bodies through neurons, much like an octopus' tentacles. This means that diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disorders can all be induced, affected and exacerbated by the brain and the nervous system. This also means that brain modulation can be achieved through different parts of the body by zapping organs and limbs with electrodes that have usually been implanted with drills and scalpels. Today, however, brain modulation doesn't have to be so invasive. Some of my colleagues at MIT have discovered that a potential therapy for Alzheimer's could be watching light of a certain wavelength flash at a particular frequency. This is an example of something I like to call a bionudge -- simple techniques that target specific circuits in our bodies to achieve a certain outcome, like using light to slow degeneration and Alzheimer's. Let me show you an example of a really simple bionudge. In 10 seconds, I'm going to cause neurons in your pretectal area to light up and then I'll stimulate your amygdala and hippocampus to surprise you. Finally, your arcuate nucleus to make you feel hungry. Bionudges don't need to be shocking or jarring, They just need to be designed to activate or silence a specific brain circuit. Combining bionudges in a certain order can allow us to use them for a more targeted purpose. My team and I at MIT developed microdevices similar in shape and size to a pill that can be swallowed like we do pills and contain electronics to deliver little bursts of electrical or chemical stimuli -- bionudges -- to our gut. Our gut is the largest interface of our body with the outside world. It has an incredible combination of tissues all working together. It houses enteroendocrine cells that sense what we eat and induce the release of hormones that can regulate hunger and metabolism. It houses immune cells that sense the microbiome while preventing bacteria from entering our body. And neurons -- lots and lots of neurons. This is why certain sugary or salty foods can ramp up dopamine levels in our brain and make us feel quite good after eating them. Our electronic pills can be designed to reside in the gut for days to weeks, delivering bionudges to neurons along the GI tract. Depending on the shape and strength of these electrical impulses, they can either affect hormone levels in our blood or travel up to our brain where they can activate or silence specific brain circuits that control hunger, metabolism and arousal. Much like we did just a few minutes ago. Using our devices, we could stimulate the stomach to tackle nausea or influence satiety or the intestine to change the way we digest things like glucose by affecting absorption of nutrients in food. This could mean new, noninvasive therapies for the 34 million diabetics in the US and 650 million obese population worldwide. We could even affect things like inflammation in the brain, slowing down degeneration for the almost 60 million patients with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's around the world. By being super specific, we can avoid side effects, unlike most of our drugs. And in this way we can control appetite, nutrient digestion, hormone levels, even happiness and reward. This is exciting. Bionudges are more targeted than medicines and less invasive than surgery. Neuromodulation therapies could be a new gold standard in health care. I'd like to leave you with an image: a single pill, not filled with drugs or chemicals, but with electronics and microdevices that deliver little bursts of energy to our gut. This pill can treat Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes or obesity, all without any chronic drugs, completely noninvasively. No drill, no surgery, no hospital stay. This is how medicine could be. This is how medicine should be. Thank you.