While the ultimate goal of the BRAIN Initiative and Bioelectronic Medicine (Galvani Bioelectronics, NeuraLink, Kernel, etc.) is to understand brain function and treat neurological disease, the critical hurdle on basic neuroscience is placed on the unreliable neuroelectronic interfaces over relevant time scales and the limited understanding in the neural interfacing field. A quick search in google.scholar shows 2,450,000 articles in “neuroscience” and 1,140,000 in “MEMS”, whereas “neural interfaces” only yields 20,600 articles. Lack of research productivity reflects the shortage of scientists, engineers, and clinicians who have been given specialized education and multidisciplinary training.

Consequences of lack of researcher also translate into limited diversity of opinion and perspectives, as well as the blind spread of popular theory and the quenching of minority views. For example, a prevailing dogma in the field is “that it is impossible to activate a set of cells restricted to a small spatial volume” (quoted from Neuron 63, 508-522 (2009)). While this dogma is rooted in a decade old seminal study, we demonstrate that the dogma is based on results that were evaluated under a limited stimulation parameter space. This demonstrates issues in diversity as emphasized by NSF, “Diversity – of thought, perspective, and experience – is essential to achieving excellence in 21st century science and engineering research and education.” (NSF 16-048). Multi-disciplinary training in science and engineering are necessary, as well as diversity in the perspective to understand the problem and the approach for solving the problem, which is often rooted in diversity of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.

Supported by NSF CAREER 1943906