Hi, it's Bryce Dallas Howard here, guest hosting today on TED Talks Daily.

Here's a talk from the TED Fellows community, given by medical hacker Khalil Ramadi,

who is inventing the future of medicine with cutting-edge non-invasive technologies for gut and

neuromedicine.

Do you know what a bio-nudge is? You will in five minutes.

For decades, scientists have tried to use brain modulation to treat neurological disorders.

Techniques usually involve sticking wires onto our head and 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

as 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 scalples.

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 bio-nuch. Simple techniques

that target specific circuits in our bodies to achieve a certain outcome,

like using light to slow degeneration in Alzheimer's.

Bionoges don't need to be shocking or jarring.

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