Frank Zanow: Non-invasive brain research technology, robotic neurostimulation, and neonatal monitoring products

And we are live with Frank Zanol uh for another CEO Wisdom podcast. Frank is CEO at Neuro Motion BV. Uh he's in the Berlin area. I'm in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Neuro Motion develops, sells, and services equipment and uh for the for the study of and treatment of human brain function in a clinical and research applications uh context. It's a pretty cool company.

We're going to talk about EEG, here BCIs if we're lucky, and everything between. This podcast is brought to you by some of your LinkedIn content and write a beautiful book that you can publish on Kindle, you can go to bookwritegpt.com. We have a free credit for you to have your own AI-written book. Frank, welcome to the pod. Tell me a bit more about yourself and what you're up to nowadays.

Hi Charles, and thanks for having me. Um now, about myself, um I was uh born and raised here in Berlin. Uh actually in a small town uh in East Germany. Um I was I went to study electrical engineering and um was lucky enough to uh be in the middle of my study when the wall fell. So, I had the chance to go to Holland to do my PhD in uh town called Enschede in Eastern Holland.

Did my PhD in applied physics and this way ended up with brain research. And why the brain specifically? Is it uh the most complex challenge to solve? Why have you picked that area? It's certainly a complex challenge. Yes, in terms of uh say the the physics behind electrical brain activity, but also yeah, simply the complexity of the brain as an as an organ.

The brain anatomy, but brain brain physiology is super complex. So, for me as an engineer, it was interesting to study uh you know, the physics behind electrical brain activity and uh to get in computer modeling of that. You've been CEO of Neuro motion for for more than a decade now, I believe. What What's What's been challenging in that specific field of business and why also start your specific company and not go in the academia field, for example?

That's a very good question, Charles. So, I went into computer modeling EEG and MEG, which is electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography, and together with my friend Thomas Knöschel, we thought about making the software available that we developed during our research to others who are applying this to their field of application and that's typically neuroscientists of all sorts, psychiatrists, psychologists, cognitive researchers.

And so, we got excited by the idea to to to write not only software for our own use and research, but also to make it available to others. So, already during our PhD, we started sharing that software with others. That was called the advanced source analysis software. And yeah, with that in mind, both of us, my friend and I, we started a second job as postdoc at the Max Planck Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Got engaged in Yeah, cognitive neuroscience and human brain sciences working with MEG devices and all that. And at that time, I decided for myself I want to become an entrepreneur and you know, get exposed to to something I'm totally unfamiliar with. And and that came along with giving up on the idea of continuing with my academic career. So, I was 29 when I finished my PhD, defended my thesis and I started a company.

And what has been challenging so far? What have you built and yeah, how much sleepless night, how much uh brain breaks did you need to have to build what you had today? Yeah. Um just back then um you can imagine uh coming That was eight years after the war fell. So my my background in in market economy was not uh very deep going. So um no one told me how to run a company.

And uh I was I was proud of the skills I had, but I was very much aware of those skills that I don't have. And uh yet we found uh my co-founder and I back then we found we have an cool innovative attractive piece of software that is worth uh being shared with others. Um it was uh in the early days it was very much a one-man show and it was learning by doing.

So by traveling to seeing how others operate in this uh area of application uh I learned how to how to you know how to find my own role in this. And uh after a while um I learned that you know do you have to make your product you know you have to deliver a story behind the product. And people not just buy what there is but also what they will be. So uh there's a lot of trust that people gave me to continue with what I started with.

And software is never finished. So I also learned that. Uh you develop you develop a version one and then uh uh you know you you simply work with the feedback you get and with that feedback you can make a better version of the same. And improve and innovate and keep innovating and that's very important. And right now you have imagine and ant neuro. These are your your two like sub companies and products, right?

If you could describe what these are about. Yeah. So the story began with ant neuro in fact. So in '97, uh, we started that company as a Dutch limited liability company. Uh, I went to Berlin in 1999, uh, after 7 years in Holland, and together with another friend and co-founder, we started eemagine Medical Imaging GmbH, so another limited liability company, but here Berlin.

And, uh, we wanted to, uh, kickstart a company for clinical analysis of these data. So, there's a lot of clinical EEG, and we found that, you know, much of the knowledge we have collected, you know, or we we've had back then in the field of modeling electrical activity, could be translated to clinical use. So, brave as we were, we started a second company.

And that was the time for me to seek, uh, investment and try to find partners. And, uh, with another co-founder, we then started to put this under a holding called Neuro Motion. And, uh, and started building these companies. So, ANT back then was focusing on the science market, if you wish. eemagine here in Berlin, uh, went on with, you know, getting under quality regulation, under ISO norms, then, uh, start producing software that is CE marked and then FDA approved.

So, to bring this into clinical market. And, uh, and this, yeah, drove us into into interesting adventures. Uh, so, how to, you know, how to keep innovating, uh, in the neuroscience market and at the same time, you know, be under regulatory compliance for for medical products, but we kept running two companies. And you you have so many uh, products, uh, just like in ANT Neuro, you have EEG solutions, EEG amplifiers, EEG caps, neural navigation solutions, and neonatal monitoring.

Uh, which of these categories have been like the most exciting, the most profitable for you? Uh, trust you, all like my little babies. And one that I'm really proud of is product that is called Neo. Neo is a product for critical care monitoring of prematurely born babies. So, we are brave people. We bring a product into the market for neonatal intensive care units.

And these products are being used 24/7 in intensive care. And it's very very far away from delivering a product to a neuroscientist. So, we have 10 years ago actually we started with that product thanks to inspiring discussions with neonatologists. And and on that basis we developed that thing. But at the same time we have high density EEG for cognitive researchers.

And and we are also very proud of that. One of our systems has been in space 2 weeks ago with a SpaceX mission. We've had systems and and you know very interesting challenging measurement recording situations for EEG in the Amazon. In sports science and various types of sports at the sport. So, you know this is this is not boring work. I'm I'm really privileged with seeing leading neuroscientists, sports clinicians, psychiatrists and having discussions with them about what drives them in their field.

And how to help be the best in in what they do. And do you manufacture these at scale or what does the production and supply chain looks like? Well, look making complete solution in any of these fields requires hardware and software. It's always you know we we have to be complete in that sense. We have an engineering team here in Berlin of 50 60 people.

And we rely on a vast network of suppliers. and partners. And so suppliers are also, you know, important and valuable partners in that sense. Uh this electronics for amplifying EEG and digitizing that this electronics is relatively complicated. And uh we deliver clinical products so all this is under, you know, medical regulated uh compliance. So talk about round about 2,000 suppliers that we work with.

So a lot of supply work logistics behind that. Whereas the actual assembly within within our factory is minimal. Interesting. And tell me about your ICP. Is it like a different uh client persona for every single of your products? Is it hospitals? Is it research? You also target business? Tell me a bit more about that. Um no. I think much of our business is generated through um neuroscience and cognitive research.

So say here at Charité Berlin, which is the biggest university hospital in Germany, uh there's research ongoing on rehabilitation after stroke. Uh we use a hand exoskeleton and brain computer interface to do real-time analysis of EEG and then control a robotic arm or robotic hand movements, stuff like that. So that's very much in the research field but applied to a clinical problem.

At the same time we have high-density EEG work going on in say early detection of Alzheimer's dementia. Uh but also we have uh hyper scanning of multiple uh uh um participants in uh sports activities like juggling or table tennis. And then we want to study competition and cooperation. Interesting. Yeah, tell me let's double click on the robotic arm thing.

That's quite interesting. How far are we in that space? Let's say that I'm missing a limb, an arm. Um is it possible nowadays to actually control it with a robotic arm? Um impossible is nothing. And uh we have been working for a decade and a half, I think, on uh on brain-computer interfaces. Uh our start was made in 2010 when we were part of a European project called MindWalker.

And MindWalker was had the ambition to uh help um wheelchair users to be back and and and and walk thanks to to exoskeleton. And uh we developed the EEG component to deliver real-time data about the brain activity that reflects your intention to stand up and walk. And we came came quite far in those 3 years. Uh but I wouldn't call it a finished project.

So, back then we were very happy with the intermediate results. And uh yeah, as it is with the funding, we had to, you know, stop at a certain point. But these intermediate results, especially on the exoskeleton side, also were very impressive. And look at the uh uh look at the the progress now made with AI, it's huge. Yeah. Right. And is that what stops research?

Is that like the brakes normally, like the lack of funding? Uh I would uh make a difference between research and product development. So, so typically with all these funding programs, uh you you're incentivized to to research development. Uh the end point is a working prototype. But as you know, that's not that's not a product. So, um you know, any um say design will not be funded.

Uh regulatory or testing, compliance testing, safety testing, and so on will not be funded. Any marketing activities will be your own investments. So, it's, you know, how serious are you about, you know, bringing it from the prototype to a product? That depends on more deep going analysis and typically after 3 years of doing a research project, you also learn more about the market.

So, it's still is a gate to say, "Hey, it's worth doing that and investing in it or not." So, it's not always automatically a product. And how do you determine which product would be next, which category you'd be bullish about investing more resources in? My wish list is very long. And uh we see that we can do a lot now uh uh in within with our own resources in our own company.

Uh we are currently busy with another robotic arm solution that deals with magnetic uh stimulation. You may have heard of transcranial magnetic stimulation. It's a a form of non-invasive brain stimulation and we have a robotic arm solution that automatically places that TMS coil over the head with high precision and that's a that's a very cool project and uh ambitious.

We we have shown that I think 2 months ago in uh in a big international conference in Japan with a good success. Um but not everything we can do with our own resources. So, we have to be mindful about what can be done in feasible, you know, timeline with a feasible timeline. So, we also, you know, found that it's it's really worthwhile to partner with others.

Others in the industry or to start up uh companies. So, we have a number of Neurotech startups that we participate in and those startups then, you know, have a dedicated fixed, you know, a clear business plan for that product and and and and become investable for just that and then we support these companies with technology or engineering services to to kick it off.

Right. And the robotic arm actually goes over my head to stimulate some parts of my brain. Uh that's pretty much rocket science. So, like, how does it know what um what parts of my brain needs to be stimulated? Give me a bit more info about that. Yes, so that that is uh a very hot topic and ongoing in your science and research. Uh the um idea is to to learn from uh functional connectivity measures where in your brain is uh you know, certain activity that may need to be stimulated.

And uh the the area of application where this uh you know, finds its place is likely uh the treatment of uh major depressive disorders, MDD. And in here there were um um very interesting findings based on anti-correlation and fMRI fMRI resting state experiments, you find uh the best possible spot to stimulate with magnetic uh fields. You find that more or less automatically through analysis of these fMRI data and then translate that to a target for stimulation for the TMS system.

And that's uh that's exciting. Yeah, it uh relieves the the you know, it it's it answers the question actually where to stimulate. Then there's some other other parameters need to be adjusted and uh we hope to use uh EEG for that. And uh with that we can more or less automate the the task of uh non-invasive uh brain stimulation in in this field of application.

And is the future non-invasive because ideally I think if we had like nanobots uh which are incredibly complex, right? And it to be medically regulated, we could go invasive and the effect could be greater. Non-invasive has less barriers, but probably also left less efficacy. Uh is that right to say? No, that's the underlying assumption that uh you know, the closer you are to the brain the more um effective you can be and the more information you collect.

But it comes at the cost of you know, being invasive. Invading the body. And we here at ANT and NeuroMotions have decided to stay non-invasive and get the best out of that. And looking at the progress made in machine learning based on non-invasive EEG data, we are quite confident that this is a good path forward. But you know, different solutions may be required for different problems.

Right. What do you think of Nudge? I think they launched a week or two ago. You know, like they're this whole brain interfaces for everyday life by ex-Coinbase founder. Have you checked into that project? Do you think it's promising? I cannot comment. I didn't check it. Okay. Yeah, they look they look pretty ambitious. I'm just going to tell you real quick what they what they look like.

Um This is their device, right? And they're also like non-invasive. Oh, I did I did check it. Thanks for reminding me. I did check it. What were your thoughts about that? Isn't there Isn't that a focused ultrasound device? Uh yes. This year. technology is a very cool technology, also relatively new in this field. So called focused ultrasound and we also have collaborators uh in that field.

Um so look at magnetic field simulation is called non-invasive brain stimulation because we don't need to invade the body with you know, instruments. Obviously, we deliver energy. And yeah, I remember this. Thank you. And with focused ultrasound, we follow the same route. So we deliver energy but in a very focused way, in a very focal way and we can go to deep structures.

So we are excited about this. And what I just said about robotic arm and navigating to a certain spot in a certain target, all this technology can be one-on-one applied to transcranial focused ultrasound. And we see a lot of a lot of future in this, yes. Right. And what do you think about Neuralink's invasive approach? Are you bullish about what they're doing?

They do what they have to do. We we we do believe that accessing the brain in a non- in a non-invasive way with high-density EEG has value. There's upcoming technologies such as OPM, optically pumped magnetometers. So, another new form of MEG, also non-invasive, also high-density. They are all this has high value for collecting, you know, rich information rich information in real time.

I don't see a hard need for for invasive techniques. But in in certain cases it may make sense, but you know, future will tell. Are you using EEG on your own brain to to analyze it and optimize it on a daily basis? No, you know, we have an optimization process called learning. So, you know, I've been through a several years of learning without any technologies added.

But I've been using EEG and and brain stimulation techniques many times on myself. And and that's yeah, you know, it helps you understand. So, you know, measuring your own brain activity tells you something. You you do understand different brain states. Yeah, also, you know, enhanced states of consciousness, sleep, changes in EEG due to substances of all sorts, Uh, exercise, concentration, cognitive load.

So, all this, you know, everyone's got a brain every this all of this is visible in your data. It's in the data, literally. And studying the brain for so long, have you understood things about humans and their thinking processes that most uh would never understand? That's a difficult question. Uh, understanding is a big word, but uh I think we keep trying to understand.

And what insights have you got from like studying so many brains? What deep insights that most humans wouldn't think about that did you get from your experience? Yeah. Now, there were several studies that I was was involved in and uh and not as a as a as a investigator, but uh supporting the study. Uh, one that intrigued me was uh 6 years ago uh I supported the group at the National Institute of Mental Health in Prague in Czech Republic uh who were brave enough to go to the Amazon and study um um the use of uh psychedelic substance ayahuasca in traditional indigenous ceremonies and the role of set and setting in these ceremonies.

And uh we did that uh with high-density EEG in the middle of nowhere in the Amazon. And uh and and we're trying to understand what is the role of of the setting in using such substances. And uh that was a very interesting study. Uh we now learned quite a bit with that. We repeated the study also in a natural environment, but also in the laboratory. So, so the experimental approach to studying the brain and and uh and the nature of you know, what is consciousness is uh what excites me.

That's uh And what happens to the brain? Do we see massive activation in some uh zones? Do we see a suppression of uh I don't know, the amygdala? Like what uh what happens in the in the frontal lobe once you take ayahuasca, for example? Yeah. Now, what we see that a lot of is that a lot of things happen in your occipital cortex to start with. So, you know, all the visions, all the um you know, the the fascinating scenery that uh opens up in your mind is uh linked with a lot of occipital active activation in your occipital cortex with your eyes closed.

And uh what we also can see is your your default mode network is uh is suppressed and reduced. And that gives room to other activity popping up. Tell me about default mode network. Are you referring to habits, thinking patterns, like normal normal mindset, routine mindset? rational thinking, you know, your mind rattling through your rational thoughts, planning activities, and so on.

That's your default mode activity. And isn't ayahuasca invasive? Well, it's a plant medicine, so um just like any other substance, you have to drink it in this case. And that's how it does it work, but it's it's not the medicine as a medicine, it's an experience. So, it's it's embedded in an experience. It's part of the sound. Very cool. Well, Frank, thank you for coming on today.

Tell me about where we can find out more information about you. Yeah, now I'm found on LinkedIn under my name, but our company ANT-Neuro is found under ant-neuro.com. That was Frank Zano and Charles