Juan Benet Podcast

Ben Rapoport — Treating Paralysis and Digitizing Neural Data

Ben is co-founder and CSO of Precision Neuroscience, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Scientific Director at Mount Sinai. Previously, he co-founded Neuralink and Simbionics (acquired by Apple). Precision is building a minimally invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) that reads from thousands of points on the cortex without penetrating it. The Layer 7 device is implanted through a one-millimeter slit in the skull rather than the larger borehole other approaches require. It is also fully removable. Precision seeks to help the 5 million people living with severe paralysis in the US (including 800,000 new stroke cases per year). In March 2025, Precision received FDA clearance for a temporary wired version of the system. Over 85 patients have been implanted with and used the device in clinical studies. Wireless implants are planned for 2027. We go deep on the history of Neurotech from the 1980s to the ML inflection points that triggered Neuralink's founding, why surface ECoG was a contrarian bet that's now paying off, the path to treating paralysis and stroke at scale, and why Ben believes neural data is at the same inflection point genomic data was in 2000 — a whole class of biological problems about to become tractable as computer science problems. Sections 00:00:00 Introduction  00:04:39 Paralysis as a lens to understand the brain 00:05:36 The 1980s breakthrough: population encoding and the birth of BCI 00:14:36 Google Translate, ML, and the founding of Neuralink 00:23:08 What is the long-term vision of Precision Neuroscience 00:31:56 Layer 7 and why transformative technology always looks impossible at first 00:50:21 The surgery: a slit in the skull, not a borehole 00:55:19 The clinical program: who are the patients 01:04:16 FDA clearance and the path to wireless implants in 2027 01:08:32 The patient population: paralysis and stroke at scale 01:16:26 Neural data as the new genomics 01:30:06 BCIs, AI, and the future of the human-machine interface 01:31:22 From medical necessity to lifestyle technology 01:40:36 Precision as a platform — and an optimistic vision Links from the Podcast Precision Neuroscience [https://www.precisionneuro.io] Layer 7 BCI [https://www.precisionneuro.io/our-technology] Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai [https://icahn.mssm.edu] Links Juan Benet on X [https://x.com/juanbenet] Juan Benet Podcast [https://juanbenetpodcast.com] Protocol Labs [https://protocol.ai] PL Neuro [https://plneuro.xyz] Disclaimer⁠ [https://bit.ly/PodcastDisclaimer]

Max Hodak — Restoring Sight, Growing Neurons on Silicon, and Expanding Human Intelligence

Max Hodak is the founder and CEO of Science Corp (previously co-founded Neuralink and Transcriptic). Science is building PRIMA, a retinal prosthetic that’s restoring meaningful vision for patients with blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration. The team is also developing a biohybrid brain implant that grows living neurons directly onto a silicon chip, then interfaces that system with the cortex. In this conversation, we go deep on how both technologies work, how PRIMA restores vision, how the biohybrid BCI connects to the brain, what the next milestones are for neural interfaces, and what it would imply to add a new functional brain area to a human. We also dig deep into how Max built and leads Science: his founder story, how the team drives Fast R&D, and how the team is able to speed through high-uncertainty, high-impact projects. Hope you enjoy! Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 00:52 What counts as neurotech? 01:45 History of brain-computer interfaces and the iPhone dividend 07:25 PRIMA - How Science is restoring vision in blind patients 10:10 Why stimulating bipolar cells works when the optic nerve doesn't 30:30 Are we bottlenecked by biology or engineering? 32:40 Expanding the brain's bandwidth beyond 10 bits per second 37:00 Can we add new areas to the brain? 37:46 Biohybrid BCIs: neurons growing on a chip 39:20 What could neural augmentation look like? 01:13:20 How Science drives Fast R&D 01:44:00 How founders learn and level up Links Woman hearing for the first time [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOo3jzkhYA] PRIMA Visual Prosthesis [https://science.xyz/technologies/prima/] PRIMA patient filling out crossword puzzle [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XQOgCn2WDs] PRIMA a global mission to restore vision [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_qTLT8kJPU] Biohybrid BCI [https://science.xyz/technologies/biohybrid/] Patrick Collison FAST post [https://patrickcollison.com/fast] iPhone launch keynote in 2007 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7qPAY9JqE4] Pantheon on Netflix [https://www.netflix.com/title/81937398] Links Juan Benet on X [https://x.com/juanbenet] PL Neuro [https://plneuro.xyz] Protocol Labs [https://protocol.ai] Disclaimer [https://bit.ly/PodcastDisclaimer]