 | |
| Kernel | |
| Company type | Private |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Founder | Bryan Johnson |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Website | kernel |
HI, LLC, doing business as Kernel, is an American company that has developed a non-invasive neuroimaging technology. It is a privately held company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The company was founded in 2016 by Bryan Johnson. [1] [2]
Johnson founded Kernel in 2016 with a $54 million investment and began researching neuroprosthetics, devices implanted into the brain that mimic, substitute, or assist brain functions. [1] [3]
In May 2020, Kernel introduced two brain-activity monitoring devices, Flux and Flow. [3] [1] The Flow device can both see and record brain activity. [4] [5] [3]
Kernel also introduced "Sound ID," a software that can tell what speech or song a person is listening to just from brain data. [1] The company was featured in the 2020 documentary, I Am Human, about brain–machine interfaces. [6] Kernel raised $53 million in 2020. [7]
Kernel Flow is a wearable time-domain functional near-infrared spectroscopy (TD-fNIRS) system. [8] [9] fNIRs uses infrared light to measure changes in the oxygenation of blood, which is a proxy for neural activity. Kernel Flow can achieve a 200 Hz sampling rate. [10] The spatial resolution of f-NIRS is strongly limited by scattering, with most existing f-NIRS systems having resolutions > 2 cm. [10]
Kernel plans to read and write the underlying functions of the brain. [11] [12]
As of 2019, the company is researching neurological diseases and dysfunctions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, depression and anxiety. [13] Kernel is one of several companies researching links between the human brain and computer interfaces, including Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, Synchron, and Facebook. [14] Kernel also offers neuroscience as a service to scientists and businesses, conducting subject testing at their office. [1]
Functional neuroimaging is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure an aspect of brain function, often with a view to understanding the relationship between activity in certain brain areas and specific mental functions. It is primarily used as a research tool in cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and social neuroscience.
A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a brain–machine interface (BMI), is a direct communication link between the brain's electrical activity and an external device, most commonly a computer or robotic limb. BCIs are often directed at researching, mapping, assisting, augmenting, or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. They are often conceptualized as a human–machine interface that skips the intermediary of moving body parts (hands...), although they also raise the possibility of erasing the distinction between brain and machine. BCI implementations range from non-invasive and partially invasive to invasive, based on how physically close electrodes are to brain tissue.
Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a spectroscopic method that uses the near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Typical applications include medical and physiological diagnostics and research including blood sugar, pulse oximetry, functional neuroimaging, sports medicine, elite sports training, ergonomics, rehabilitation, neonatal research, brain computer interface, urology, and neurology. There are also applications in other areas as well such as pharmaceutical, food and agrochemical quality control, atmospheric chemistry, combustion research and knowledge.
Neurotechnology encompasses any method or electronic device which interfaces with the nervous system to monitor or modulate neural activity.
BrainGate is a brain implant system, currently under development and in clinical trials, designed to help those who have lost control of their limbs, or other bodily functions, such as patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord injury. The Braingate technology and related Cyberkinetic’s assets are now owned by privately held Braingate, Co. The sensor, which is implanted into the brain, monitors brain activity in the patient and converts the intention of the user into computer commands.
Neurohacking is a subclass of biohacking, focused specifically on the brain. Neurohackers seek to better themselves or others by “hacking the brain” to improve reflexes, learn faster, or treat psychological disorders. The modern neurohacking movement has been around since the 1980s. However, herbal supplements have been used to increase brain function for hundreds of years. After a brief period marked by a lack of research in the area, neurohacking started regaining interest in the early 2000s. Currently, most neurohacking is performed via do-it-yourself (DIY) methods by in-home users.
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an optical brain monitoring technique which uses near-infrared spectroscopy for the purpose of functional neuroimaging. Using fNIRS, brain activity is measured by using near-infrared light to estimate cortical hemodynamic activity which occur in response to neural activity. Alongside EEG, fNIRS is one of the most common non-invasive neuroimaging techniques which can be used in portable contexts. The signal is often compared with the BOLD signal measured by fMRI and is capable of measuring changes both in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin concentration, but can only measure from regions near the cortical surface. fNIRS may also be referred to as Optical Topography (OT) and is sometimes referred to simply as NIRS.
Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Increasingly it is also being used for quantitative research studies of brain disease and psychiatric illness. Neuroimaging is highly multidisciplinary involving neuroscience, computer science, psychology and statistics, and is not a medical specialty. Neuroimaging is sometimes confused with neuroradiology.
Event-related optical signal (EROS) is a neuroimaging technique that uses infrared light through optical fibers to measure changes in optical properties of active areas of the cerebral cortex. The fast optical signal (EROS) measures changes in infrared light scattering that occur with neural activity. Whereas techniques such as diffuse optical imaging (DOI) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) measure optical absorption of hemoglobin, and thus are based on cerebral blood flow, EROS takes advantage of the scattering properties of the neurons themselves, and thus provide a much more direct measure of cellular activity.
Neuroergonomics is the application of neuroscience to ergonomics. Traditional ergonomic studies rely predominantly on psychological explanations to address human factors issues such as: work performance, operational safety, and workplace-related risks. Neuroergonomics, in contrast, addresses the biological substrates of ergonomic concerns, with an emphasis on the role of the human nervous system.
Brain-reading or thought identification uses the responses of multiple voxels in the brain evoked by stimulus then detected by fMRI in order to decode the original stimulus. Advances in research have made this possible by using human neuroimaging to decode a person's conscious experience based on non-invasive measurements of an individual's brain activity. Brain reading studies differ in the type of decoding employed, the target, and the decoding algorithms employed.
Laura-Ann Petitto is a cognitive neuroscientist and a developmental cognitive neuroscientist known for her research and scientific discoveries involving the language capacity of chimpanzees, the biological bases of language in humans, especially early language acquisition, early reading, and bilingualism, bilingual reading, and the bilingual brain. Significant scientific discoveries include the existence of linguistic babbling on the hands of deaf babies and the equivalent neural processing of signed and spoken languages in the human brain. She is recognized for her contributions to the creation of the new scientific discipline, called educational neuroscience. Petitto chaired a new undergraduate department at Dartmouth College, called "Educational Neuroscience and Human Development" (2002-2007), and was a Co-Principal Investigator in the National Science Foundation and Dartmouth's Science of Learning Center, called the "Center for Cognitive and Educational Neuroscience" (2004-2007). At Gallaudet University (2011–present), Petitto led a team in the creation of the first PhD in Educational Neuroscience program in the United States. Petitto is the Co-Principal Investigator as well as Science Director of the National Science Foundation and Gallaudet University’s Science of Learning Center, called the "Visual Language and Visual Learning Center (VL2)". Petitto is also founder and Scientific Director of the Brain and Language Laboratory for Neuroimaging (“BL2”) at Gallaudet University.
Arno Villringer is a Director at the Department of Neurology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany; Director of the Department of Cognitive Neurology at University of Leipzig Medical Center; and Academic Director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Mind&Brain Institute, Berlin. He holds a full professorship at University of Leipzig and an honorary professorship at Charité, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From July 2022 to June 2025 he is the Chairperson of the Human Sciences Section of the Max Planck Society.
Bryan Johnson is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, writer and author. He is the founder and former CEO of Kernel, a company creating devices that monitor and record brain activity, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage science and technology companies.
Stentrode is a small stent-mounted electrode array permanently implanted into a blood vessel in the brain, without the need for open brain surgery. It is in clinical trials as a brain–computer interface (BCI) for people with paralyzed or missing limbs, who will use their neural signals or thoughts to control external devices, which currently include computer operating systems. The device may ultimately be used to control powered exoskeletons, robotic prosthesis, computers or other devices.
Christian T. Wentz is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur. He is recognized for his work in engineering authenticity in electronic devices and the use of these primitives in distributed systems, developing neural interface technologies and innovation in optoelectronics, low power circuit design, wireless power and high bandwidth communication technologies.
Rebeccah Slater is a British neuroscientist and academic. She is professor of paediatric neuroscience and a senior Wellcome Trust research fellow at the University of Oxford. She is also a professorial fellow in Neuroscience at St John's College.
Neural synchrony is the correlation of brain activity across two or more people over time. In social and affective neuroscience, neural synchrony specifically refers to the degree of similarity between the spatio-temporal neural fluctuations of multiple people. This phenomenon represents the convergence and coupling of different people's neurocognitive systems, and it is thought to be the neural substrate for many forms of interpersonal dynamics and shared experiences. Some research also refers to neural synchrony as inter-brain synchrony, brain-to-brain coupling, inter-subject correlation, between-brain connectivity, or neural coupling. In the current literature, neural synchrony is notably distinct from intra-brain synchrony—sometimes also called neural synchrony—which denotes the coupling of activity across regions of a single individual's brain.
Keum-Shik Hong is a South Korean mechanical engineer, academic, author, and researcher. He is a professor emeritus in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Pusan National University. He is also a Distinguished Professor in the Institute For Future, Qingdao University, China.
Precision Neuroscience is an American brain–computer interface (BCI) company based in New York City and with offices in Mountain View, California, Addison, Texas and Minneapolis, Minnesota.