Our Mission, Technology, and Approach

At Nudge, our mission is to develop the best technology for interfacing with the brain to improve people's lives. We're starting with an approach that we believe can help the most people the fastest, and also allow us to learn as much about the brain as possible: developing a non-invasive, ultrasound-based device that can stimulate and image the brain at high resolution and depth. This is a vertically integrated effort building cutting-edge hardware, software, and research capabilities to create products that can benefit millions — and eventually billions — of people.

Focused ultrasound has the potential to deliver anatomically precise, personalized treatments, engaging deep regions of the brain that were previously only accessible through invasive surgery. But unlike surgery, focused ultrasound provides the flexibility to more easily adapt our treatments, refining them over time to reflect what works best for each individual.

Our first milestone is demonstrating that focused ultrasound delivered to the deep brain can be safe and effective as a treatment for medical conditions that are a source of immense suffering, including addiction, chronic pain, and anxiety. In the longer-term, we see the technology being used by everyone for applications as wide-ranging as improving mood, focus, and memory.

The scale of our mission means we'll be exploring and developing multiple technologies over time, and building a world-class engineering and research organization capable of executing on the most ambitious ideas for improving the way humanity interacts with and relates to our brains.

Background

For more than a decade, researchers have been exploring the effects of ultrasound on modulating brain activity, in both animals and humans, mostly using relatively simple hardware and software. The simplest versions of these devices use a single transmitter (called a transducer) that produces an ultrasound wave. That transmitter is physically moved around the head in order to target a desired location in the brain with the ultrasound wave, using simulation software and visual tracking systems for feedback.

Adding more transmitters allows you to change the shape, size, and placement of the focus (the region where the intensity of the ultrasound is highest). Without moving the transducer physically, the focus location can be changed electronically by delaying transmitted signals so that the peak of each wave arrives at the target location at the same time. This approach of aligning multiple signals at a single point by controlling their phases is called a "phased array".

Studies using ultrasound technology have shown the capacity to modulate brain regions in humans like the thalamus¹ and the nucleus accumbens.² Other studies using the most advanced available hardware have been able to precisely modulate brain circuits to reduce tremor³ and activate visual regions of the brain.⁴

Increasing evidence suggests that ultrasound-based neuromodulation has potential to be a powerful treatment for mental health and neurological disorders. In a recent double-blind, randomized, controlled trial,⁵ active ultrasound was shown to substantially reduce chronic pain, and participants reported the pain decreasing within seconds after the ultrasound was applied. In another study involving patients with opioid use disorder, cravings for drugs of abuse such as heroin and methamphetamine dramatically decreased after a single session of ultrasound, and these effects persisted out to 90 days.⁶ Notably, all of these results were produced by academic groups with access to devices using phased-array technology rather than simpler, single-element transducers.

While these early results are extremely exciting, most studies in this field have been small and have had limited ability to invest in the testing and development needed to better understand and optimize ultrasound-based therapies. Through better technology enabling new research, we're working to make these effects reliable and generalizable for everyone. Better hardware and software will allow us to more precisely and consistently target the desired brain regions, and breakthroughs in research will help us better understand how to target the relevant brain circuitry to produce the strongest effects.

Our Devices

The mission of building the best technology for interfacing with the brain means accessing structures across the whole brain, improving our understanding of the functions of different regions, and eventually being able to interact with those brain regions in increasingly precise ways. We're taking an approach to the product that starts with access to nearly the whole brain, with a level of accuracy that lets us target millimeter-size subregions, and that works at the functional circuit level to help tackle the problems that affect the most people.

The first architecture we've developed is a high channel count, ultrasound phased array, packed into a helmet structure that can be used in an MRI machine. This form factor allows us to use advanced imaging techniques while the device is in use, creating the optimal environment to characterize the accuracy and efficacy of our treatments. In addition to using structural and functional MRI to visualize our targets and understand the impact of ultrasound delivery on brain function, we've developed an MR imaging technique based on acoustic radiation force imaging (ARFI),⁷ which allows us to reliably see the ultrasound focus in the brain.

This is not just an idea — we developed the first version of this device in six months and have already iterated on a significantly improved version.

Having the best hardware — that you can upgrade easily — is essential, but to actually deploy effective treatments also requires the best software that can make use of such a powerful tool. We've been pushing on state-of-the-art simulation, modeling, and imaging algorithms to provide complete control over how our device interacts with the brain.

Our initial device is built to ensure we can drive the most robust and powerful effects and is not designed for portability. In parallel, we're building the foundation for another architecture which is meant to be used at home and in everyday life — as easy to use and as ubiquitous as headphones are today. Bringing this technology into the home requires miniaturizing the electronics, using more advanced fabrication techniques for the transducers, building the imaging capabilities from our MRI-guided approach into the device itself, and solving the difficult technical challenges required to personalize stimulation.

Looking Ahead

Helping people who are suffering from medical conditions will be enormously impactful, but the best brain interface for improving people's lives necessarily means technology that can be used by everyone. We are ultimately building a generalized device to be as simple, portable, and affordable as a smartphone, with the capability to both treat disease and augment cognitive functions such as focus, sleep, learning, and memory. Anyone can benefit from a better state of mind.

To make this a reality requires the world's best engineers, researchers, and specialists across a variety of domains working together in one place towards that shared goal. If you're an exceptional engineer or researcher and want to contribute, please apply to join.