A new approach to brain health, one neuron at a time

Short Wave

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🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Neuroscientist Paul Nuyujukian likens the brain to a stadium full of people. To eavesdrop on the crowd you could put a microphone in the middle of the stadium. But to understand the conversations you need to record individual people. He thinks about the brain the same way. To understand brain disease, he studies neurons—one at a time. And his insights are shedding light on a big global issue—stroke. The World Health Organization predicts one in four adults will have a stroke in their lifetime. Strokes can cause death, or lead to paralysis or speech problems. But there’s still a lot researchers don’t know about how the brain recovers from an event like a stroke. Nuyujukian directs a lab at Stanford University that studies how the brain controls movement, including after neurological events like stroke. We get into how he does this, and why he hopes his research could eventually help people who’ve been paralyzed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Shortwavers, we know your day doesn't stop, and neither do we. Whether you're starting your day or finishing a commute, we're right there with you. The NPR app has global and local news, plus hours and hours of this podcast ready and waiting for you. Download the NPR app today. Okay, back to the show.
0:19.5	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:25.3	Hey, shortwavers, producer Rachel Carlson in the host chair today, with a story about brain machine interfaces, brain implants.
0:35.0	Paul Niajukian studied this for a long time. He's at the brain interfacing
0:39.5	lab at Stanford University. And you guys, Paul does so many things. He's a medical doctor,
0:47.4	an engineer, a neuroscientist. I have a lot of hats. Around 10 years ago, Paul was at a point in his research where people who'd been paralyzed
0:56.4	from the neck down could get one of these devices implanted in their brain.
1:01.1	And then they could sit next to a bunch of computers.
1:04.7	And just think about what they wanted to happen.
1:07.7	And a little cursor on the screen of a tablet would sort of move around
1:13.0	and let them type on the screen, send emails, text messages, play games.
1:20.2	Which was so exciting for Paul. So one day, he's at a big medical conference on brain machine interfaces.
1:28.9	I distinctly remember a conversation with a director of a very prominent medical device company.
1:38.0	Naturally, he's eager to show off all the strides he's made in his research.
1:42.2	So he pulls out his phone and starts to show these industry guys a video of his work. Oh, wow. That's really cool, Paul, right? Congratulations. This is, this looks like it's, you know, clinically useful. And I jumped for joy. It's like a little victory point, right? Like, hurrah, all right. And he's like, okay, let's talk about patenting and licensing.
2:01.6	Without missing a beat, they just laughed in my face.
2:07.0	Politely.
2:10.6	But we're never going to touch this.
2:14.7	They told Paul, it would take hundreds of millions of dollars to create a medical device
2:20.3	that could be sold to people who were paralyzed.
2:23.3	And even if they sold a device to every person who needed it, they'd never make back their
2:29.4	investment.
	...

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