Nuanced. - 33. Dr. Ryan D'Arcy: Neuroscientist & Entrepreneur

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Ryan D'Arcy is an entrepreneur, neuroscientist, father, and husband. He is the co-founder, President, and Chief Scientific Officer of HealthTech Connex a brain health technology company. He also holds Professorship appointments at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, where he serves as a BC Leadership Chair in neuroimaging and neurotechnology. As well,  Mr. D’Arcy has spoken for TedX three times, speaking frequently on brain health innovations around the world.His work is driven fundamentally by the interface between neuroscience and non-invasive biomedical imaging. The work blends basic studies of complex neural systems with clinical work that uses functional imaging to improve the treatment of brain diseases and disorders.Watch the video interview: https://youtu.be/8PeWYibbc-ESend us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Mr. Darcy, it is an absolute pleasure and honor to sit down with you. I'm incredibly grateful that you are willing to take the time and I'm hoping we can do just a brief introduction from your perspective. For sure. What do you want to know? Let's start with some of the work you've been involved in. Well, in general, the work I'm involved in is about pushing the envelope in brain health and unleashing the potential of our brains.

And I take not only a scientific, but a technological approach to that to sort of, a lot of times people, I think we're all in, we all have a sense that there's more potential in our brains, and we try to use science and technology to really make that happen. That's awesome. And I think that a great place to start is with the Green family, because seeing that story, it was incredibly inspirational to hear your TED Talks and to see the work that Trevor Green went to and just kind of his whole life story. But could you tell us how that all came about? Because it sounds like you were watching a documentary and that's how it all kind of got started for you. Yeah, you know, a lot of things I think in my life and my career, I've had this incredible fortune to just cross the past with amazing people.

And certainly, you know, the collaboration and the partnership and the friendship with Trevor and Debbie Green and the family, which is now almost, I think it's over 10 years. it's just been it's been one of the most amazing and impactful and valuable things I've had and not just my professional career as a neuroscientist but also I really I think you know I really want like all of us you want to make a difference in this world and this definitely is on that list absolutely so you were watching the documentary and then you chose to reach out because you thought you could do something and I think that that is so inspirational because so many of us watch documentaries

and maybe some of us don't watch documentaries, but for you to see that you could play a role is, I think, inspiring of itself. So could you tell us how it came about that you met the Green family? Sure, yeah. So for those who aren't aware, Captain Green served in Afghanistan for Canada, and he served in, it was, the year was in 2006, and they were at the tip of the spear, his particular platoon and group. his job was basically a military liaison officer. So his job was to basically, they would go to

villages in Afghanistan on, you know, that were sort of around the Kandahar area. And they would meet and sit with the village elders. And as a sign of respect, they would take their helmets off and lay their firearms down. And then it was actually Trevor's job specifically to initiate a conversation around how we as Canadians could help. And more often than not, one of his major objectives was really around empowering women in that country. And so he had to prepare for a little bit of a challenging conversation around saying, you know, we'd love to provide resources, but we'd also in return, it's important to do things like educate your women. And of course, that was always met with either, you know, laughter or resistance. And so it's tricky.

sort of conversation and one day they're sitting down on March 4th 2006 and it was they weren't even going to do this meeting but they decided to do one more in a village called Shinkay and as they started the conversation a young 16 year old insurgent who was under this way of the teleman was sort of had come up quietly behind Trevor and from his robe underneath pulled an axe and with two hands and all his strength, buried the axe into the top of Captain Green's head, which the neurosurgeon at the time said it was the largest injury that he'd seen. Certainly, it's the largest I've seen in my career. From there, it could have been one of the darkest moments, and actually, instead of that, this story has become probably one of the brightest stories about hope

and unleashing brain potential that I would say safely the planet has ever seen. Yeah. That is incredible. And I think that you saw that he was working to try and get, we'll start walking again. And that I think showed in the documentary you saw. And then it was from there that you said, they're focused on the feet. They're focused on the legs, but they should be focused on the brain. How did you know that? When you were watching that, was that just plain as day? Or how did they not know that? Like, is that just too much specialization that they didn't consider the brain? Well, I think I had a unique perspective as a neuroscientist for sure, and I ended up, I remember the day really crystal clear because I got drawn into this amazing documentary called The Peace Warrior, which was actually a love story about, as the documentary Sue Rideout, who did the documentary, we'll tell you. It was a love story about how Debbie and Trevor fought through this incredible journey, and it was just so compelling. And there's a moment where you can see they're starting to get hope. They're, you know, some amazing moments. Trevor forgave his attacker in spite of, you know, PTSD that I can't even conceive, right? And still to this day, he works through that.

And his goal becomes to walk again, right? And there's this just incredibly powerful moment in that documentary. where they're meeting with a clinical specialist who is specialized primarily in orthopedics around his feet, which his feet were not, they were basically pointed because of the injury, and he was wondering, how can I get my feet flat so I can just walk and I want to walk again. And the information he was given was basically to manage false hope to say, you won't walk again. And that's where I yelled at the TV, and I, you know, was, you know, not my, you know, my greatest moment by any stretch. I was like, it's not his feet.

It's his brain. And so I just, I've always decided, you know, if there's something in the world you think needs to be changed, change it. So I picked up my laptop and I sent a note to Sue Rideout. I just said, it was actually absolutely the case. It was a very short email that said, I think I can help. Yeah. And from there, that went to Debbie. and we started a research collaboration that started in 2009 and continues to this day.

Wow, I think that that is so inspirational because a lot of people wish they could help. They have this mindset of like, if I was in this circumstance, I would help, but I don't know if we always commit to that. I think a lot of people think, yeah, like I would be the person to save someone from a burning building, but they don't actually pull the trigger in that moment to take that action. But it's clear that you saw that you could play a role and chose to reach out and see. what you could do. What was that initial meeting like to offer this type of hope? And I'm also interested to know your thoughts on false hope. Do you think that it's right that we approach things in that way to discourage people from getting too much hope? Or do you think that perhaps

we should have more confidence in the patient and try and encourage the patient to at least reach their full potential? Well, yeah. So that's a great question. I think, first of all, the initial conversation was amazing. I remember speaking to Debbie. Of course, at this point, Debbie and Trevor themselves, they get all the credit. They were already driving past all limits that the world had set on them. And so they had lots of people and interesting kind of, you know, conversations that were going on that the documentary was drawing some publicity and awareness. And they certainly weren't thinking about becoming scientific researchers at that time, right? So it was, It was a fun conversation because they had really gotten to understand this concept of neuroplasticity,

which is a fancy science word. It basically really is the ability to rewire your brain and either regain functions or gain new functions. Another word we think about it commonly would be learning, right? So in Trevor's case, relearning the abilities he lost. So they were pretty savvy there. And I think they really got that, you know, in their minds they were like, yeah, there's no upper limit. to this so we're going to keep going and so our science experiment became i think for all of us a way and we really did agree on this and it has stayed this way since to prove to other people that this

was possible so we all i think were really jazzed up by the concept of yeah let's do this because we can show the world um that you know there's far far greater potential than what we currently accept yeah now always make a point that it's really important not to fault the, you know, any clinician or any hospital health care system if the experience is to manage the outcome around false hope. And the reason for that is, is quite simply, people don't realize that brains are very, very delicate, and they're not like getting, like, you know, a broken arm or, you know, a Charlie Horse or something where you can just shake it off, right?

an injury to your brain can be quite devastating and when somebody comes aware of that the first time is more often than not when they've had a brain injury so it is really important and responsible to try and get them to sort of understand that this is a very serious and could be chronic situation and what their new reality has become so I think it's always important to manage that the challenge becomes really allowing them to get to that place, but then moving through to say, okay, but what can I do? Because this incredible hardship is now what I'm dealing with. What can I do? And that's where, I think that's where we're making new strides and new advances in saying, well, actually, these are some of the things you can do. And this is the way you can move forward in a, you know, a positive and constructive and optimistic way. And the reality is, like, you just look at Trevor's

example, he has absolutely positively, in an innovative way, impacted countless people across this planet and created unbelievable impacts in his life. And I think that's a message of hope for all of us. Right. And I'm interested to know because I think that that's a really good point about false hope. And the reason I ask the question is because I also think it likely comes down to the patient. It seems like Trevor and Debbie, they had this determination. They had this willpower to to try and push beyond what everybody was saying. When people put limits on them, it sounds like they wanted to see if they could go beyond it,

and not every patient is like that. Some patients are just waiting for whatever their doctor tells them, and then they go home, and perhaps don't have that motivation. So I'm interested to know your thoughts on how the patient kind of plays a role in their own treatment, because you ask somebody to do rehabilitation. Maybe they don't. Maybe they're not interested in putting in that work. So what is that like in those circumstances where the patient

also plays a role in their journey. I think we face all, we all face that in life, right? It's not specific to whether or not you're a brain injury survivor or not. It really becomes a challenge that we all face in the sense of what your mindset is. And if you take a mindset that you say, okay, yes, I've encountered hardship. And this is what I choose to see this hardship. I don't choose to be passive. I don't choose to take, you know, feel like a victim.

Instead, I choose to really decide this is the way I'm going to, you know, address this and emerge. And yeah, for sure, Trevor and Debbie are amongst the best examples I've ever had the privilege to know, to demonstrate that. And it's definitely the case, like, you know, if I have to do something bad, you know, like I've got a bad day or I've, you know, I have to do something that scares me or whatever. I always, in the back of my mind, I'm always like, yeah, well, if Trevor could do that, I can do this. Yeah. Right. And I've heard and, you know, read some media and that people that were in his platoon, I think all of us who live this experience, we all, actually, it's as it turns out, have that mindset, right? If Trev could do this, I can do that.

Yeah, that is incredible. And I'm interested if you could tell us more about their relationship because we see a lot of movies about relationships and not all of them are that high quality. But it really does sound like Trevor and his wife worked together through it and that she was there to support him in taking all of those steps. So what was that like for you to watch their supportive network and how they process things together? Oh, Debbie's unbelievable. She's amazing. One of the things that the lessons that I've taken forward from this, there have been a number that I can now take to people who have survived brain injury and are looking for inspiration. But for sure, one of the predictors of a good outcome is you have to have at least one person in your corner, right, who's, you know, incredibly strong and intelligent and, you know, capable of advocating when, you know, you need them to.

And Debbie is, you know, I think at one point I've been quoted as saying that she said she got her superhero back. But I would also equally say she was, she's always been and always will be Wonder Woman, right? She's fiercely intelligent. She's a very, very strong, strong leader and has been, you know, the two of them together, I think they've really helped to change the way people think about devastating brain injuries or devastating things that can happen to you in life in general. Absolutely. And can you walk us through a little bit of the work you guys did together in order to get Trevor to a better position?

What were the main big steps that went on? Oh, well, we kicked it into science in short, right? What we did is they were already making these incredible gains. And we took, to be simple, we used advanced technology to take pictures of it so the world could see. So we used, you know, advanced MRI imaging and other forms of brain imaging to actually show that his brain was rewiring itself and that you could see this neural class. And that was incredibly powerful. I mean, you know, I've often said they say a picture's worth a thousand words. In this case, a medical imaging picture is worth, you know, way, way, way more words. When you show that the brain is rewiring itself and you've been working at that, and you know that that's going to happen before the function comes back. So you can say, so instead of getting, oh, it's not working, you're like, actually it is working. I can see it in my brain. So that would get them to work even harder and drive you. even more. But to the clinical teams, it was medical grade quality imaging that they'd have to say, okay, we have to pay attention to this. This really is happening, right? And so, yeah,

it's, it was the primary way we've done it. It's the way we continue doing it. And now, of course, we're at a stage where we're having fun with it because we're crushing limits. We're getting as ERC set up for full out rowing. We've used the most state-of-the-art technologies on the planet for neuromodulation, this device called the pawns, which stimulates his brain and helps them break through when he hits limits and barriers. So at this point, yeah, it's just, it's really up to how much, you know, we can do. Yeah. And it also sounds like you had such confidence in them because I saw that they, I think, co-authored some of the papers. And I don't know if that's common. It doesn't seem like it would be common to have the patients be able to be involved in writing the

paper and I think that that's a huge statement of your confidence and belief in the work they did because it sounds like you trusted them. So how did that all come about? You know, yes, it is confidence. I won't say it wasn't. It's actually more, I think, humility. It felt, first of all, to just confirm what you just said, at the time when we contemplated that they weren't the patient, they were part of the science team and they were on the papers and this has all been true and that continues to be true. And in the experimental settings, Debbie was better at a lot of things than I was. So I benefited greatly from that. But I had to go to consult sort of at one level, you know, people who knew a lot about how research has done in Canada. And I believe it wasn't the first

it was ever done, but it was the second time, according to, you know, this one particular expert who really did know. But we all felt it was also critically important. to do and it has turned out to be an incredible journey where it it I think it was our or it was really organic because when we were designing the study and we and I was like okay we're going to track your changes but we need scientifically something that's a control it's not like I should as some you know know-it-all scientists say I think the control should be this you guys were the ones that are changing your brain, you tell me what's the best control. And Trevor actually came up with mental imagery. And as soon as he said, I thought, that's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant.

And what turns out why it's brilliant, I didn't realize at the time, but we did after. Trevor was doing that all along. In the morning, the first thing he'd think about is, this is what I want to do. Just like elite athlete will imagine their task. He would imagine walking. And he does to this day. And the lesson he gave medical communities around the world in perpetuity was that you can actually start rewiring your brain just by imagining where you want to go. And that doesn't cost you anything and you can do it any time and you don't need any specialists. And what we could show in our science results was he was activating the exact same areas that we were rehabilitating. And so that's been a very, very powerful scientific lesson. And if we had never included Trevor and Debbie, we could well have done some, you know, experimental control that would have never shown that.

Yeah. That's so interesting because it almost sounds like it makes sense in hindsight. Like it seems clear that when you're sitting there and you're like, well, if you focus on something and you think about it all the time that you're going to have, your brain is working when you're thinking about those things. But it wasn't clear at the time, if I'm not mistaken, like believing that that could have that drastic impact on neuroplasticity. that wasn't known at the time was it oh no not at all i mean so much of what's come out of this um we we could have never predicted the magnitude of the of the impacts um it's it's i struggle to even put it into words yeah and it sounds like a lot of athletes now do this they go back home they think about the game they were doing it before okay um that's actually where we drew from

that science to realize it would make a good control but the concept that you could use it in rehab Because one of the big barriers to rehabilitation is access to expertise and money. And this is completely breaks that barrier down. Absolutely. And moving forward, I think that this is so applicable to people's lives that Trevor had this dedication, regardless of where he was, he was trying to think of a way to do better the next day. And I think that that sets such a strong example for other people to try and do better in their own lives and try and figure out how can I do better tomorrow.

If you're an artist, how do you paint? to the better painting tomorrow. If you're like a neuroscientist, how do you learn more research so you can apply it in the next study? What did you gain and what did other people around you gain from that knowledge that thinking about things, concentrating, and like kind of planning that out has such a dramatic impact? I think the big difference was that we'd actually understood that the brain had neuroplasticity in the science and research labs for a long time. But it hadn't made its way into clinical translation, or even just our ability as human beings on this planet to use it on a daily basis. And that was, when we were doing this was right in the era

where from a clinical medical point of view, when I was trained as a neuroscientist on a stroke board, the term neuroplasticity was a dirty word. You wouldn't do that because of false hope. And I saw firsthand the acceptance in the clinical worlds about the power of neuroplasticity. Wow. And that was, I think that was pretty cool. Yeah. That is amazing.

And I'm interested to know how the Poppy Fund came about and how that started because I didn't know that there was a Poppy Fund, but it sounds like it had a huge impact on Trevor's ability to walk. Oh, it's a huge story. For those who are listening to this

and, you know, I love your podcast, because it's about, at the heart of it, I think we all have aspects of hardship in life, and we're all looking to say, okay, look, you know, how do I get inspired so that I go change my life? Like, your story is amazing. This is one of those examples where if you have, if you just have belief that if you keep powering on,

good things will happen. The way this, the Poppy Fund came was Trevor and Debbie were out, and there was they were giving talks and a young girl came up they were actually competing for an exoskeleton so these are these robotic sort of exoskeletons that help you assist walking and that sort of thing and there was a competition a global competition and they were they ended up competing for that and coming second however so they didn't get it because a large part the field had developed it for spinal cord injury and they said, oh, well, we couldn't use it for somebody who survived a brain injury. And this young girl came up and she said, well, I saw your story. I was moved and she had connections to the Legion. And so she took the story to the Royal Canadian Legion. And the head of the Royal Canadian Legion, an absolute dynamo named Inga Cruz,

basically launched a poppy campaign to fundraise for an exoskeleton. cost about $125,000. And they had to hit stop right away because they surpassed that target. And the donations just kept coming in. Wow. So the problem was then that they had the money for this technology, but it wasn't straightforward how you could use it in Trevor's case. So again, in comes our science and engineering teams.

And we had to spec the best one, which took me on a flight to Israel to go find the top one on the planet. Bring it back to here in Vancouver. Drive it over to their place on the island. And as we're doing this process, it's actually, Inga is with another key member of our healthcare innovation team, Rowena Rosati. They're talking about the future of the Legion. And, you know, it was, you know, the update was things aren't, there are challenges, financially or otherwise. The Legion was needing to understand what's it going to look like in the future.

How is it going to go forward? And out of that very conversation, well, Trevor and I are fitting exoskeletons came a concept and a bold vision to completely revolutionize the Legion, which, well, it didn't have a lot of money. It had lots of great locations in all our communities. And so that was kind of its asset. So this vision came to create a center of excellence for PTSD, mental health, and rehabilitation for our veterans and our first responders. And as I sit here, that was in 2015, and as I sit here today directly behind me, I think it's about 11 or 12 stories out of the ground, is a $312 million, $312 million, which is doing exactly that.

Wow. Right? Like, can you conceive that that 16-year-old was acting under the influence of the Taliban and was absolutely trying to, you know, end Trevor's life? And as a consequence of all the science and innovation, we are revolutionizing how we can provide care for all of our veterans and our first responders. Yeah. Which is head spinning.

Yeah. Right. Oh my gosh. What was that like to go and look at exoskeletons from your perspective as a neuroscientist? Because I think all the listeners, they're like exoskeleton. I don't even know what this word is. And yet to go to Israel and to go look into these and try and choose the correct one, What was that process like?

Well, as always, I love Israel. It's the most innovative country on the planet. I've served for Canada as a scientist to represent us, and so it's taken me to Israel many times. But on this particular occasion, it was interesting because it was a little more dangerous than normal. And it was one of those times where I remember thinking if Trev could do what he did, I can get here and get the exoskeleton. And so it was definitely, it was definitely an adventure that I won't soon forget, but it was really critical. And the exoskeleton itself became an assistive device.

There was a couple of funny stories that came out of it. One was, this is actually when Debbie said she got her superhero back. We strapped the exoskeleton on, Trevor's big guy, six foot five. and when he stood and he hadn't stood like that in a long time and he walked in his living room that's when Debbie said I got my superhero back and he looked over to his youngest son Noah who wouldn't have been born right if you know the health system had put him in a hospital and got on with you know just thought he was going to be vegetative or or just in long-term care and and he said daddy's bionic which was super fun we got it on camera it was really neat

But that was the moment, too, where the journalist said, well, what is, what is it like? You know, I remember at a big event we had, the journalist was like, so what's it like? And Trevor is, you know, he's so sharp and he publishes books and, you know, read his journalism, read the books he's written. They're just incredible. But he sort of thought about it and he said, like being dry humped by a robot, right? So his goal was never to have to rely on it. His goal was, I'm using this temporarily and I'm moving through it. And he did.

You know, it's now downstairs as a piece of the adventure and the journey. And we're using it now, I think, for other first responders and veterans and that sort of thing. So it's incredible, right? The poppy campaign, the money you gave because of your poppy created that outcome. That is so hard to believe. Is that stunning? Not the story you hear when you're picking up your poppy, though, but I'm sure one that should be told more often. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

You've also talked about how you have, like, newspaper articles in a lot of your rooms where you're working with clients as, like, an inspirational story. And I'm interested to know your thoughts on the impact Trevor's stories had on others, but also what listeners can get out of Trevor's story. What should they be taking away from Trevor's story in your view? Oh, I'll answer your second one first. We're working on the book, Brains Unbroken. So I think in short and simply, we all can sort of start to figure out no matter what happens to your brain in life, how do I unbreak it? Right?

Mental health, same thing. You know, brain injury is not just brain injury. Lots of things, you know, as we go through the adventure of life, it's wear and tear on our nervous system, definitely. COVID and the pandemic are probably the best current example. And so it just empowers people to think that way. So that's for sure. I forgot your first question.

You have articles, news articles in a lot of your rooms, and I'm interested to know the impact that you've gotten to see on patients in there as well, being able to see Trevor's story. Have you seen that translate? So Trevor's impacts nowhere near that. That's for sure. I've heard some brain injury survivors quote him as the Rick Hansen of brain injury, and it's a really cute story because Rick was actually with him.

him when he got back to Vancouver and he was in the intensive care unit. And in fact, when we had the TEDx talk that we did together, Rick was also a big, you know, part of that. So huge champion. And big inspiration to Trev. I think, you know, the key thing with anyone who has something devastating that happens to their brain is they now understand and they can look to Trevor's example to really say, I don't have to accept what the reality looks like today. I can decide what I'm going to make my reality look like. Yeah. And so the inspiration comes from his story. And I always want people to know that's not a story that's over yet. We're still innovating the crap out of it. Yeah, that is so inspirational to know that there's someone out there who sets such a

strong example. It sounds like as a young person, he obviously was a hardworking individual and then moving forward, he joins our Canadian military and does amazing work as a peacekeeper in Afghanistan, and then comes back and continues to be an inspiration. Can we also move into your life? And how did you get started in this? How did you choose the field of neuroscience? What pulled you in that direction? Because I've seen a video of you talking about the neural connections in our brain being more than the atoms in the universe. So I'm interested how you got interested in neuroscience. Well, I always joke that if I think back to my earliest memory when people ask me, you know, when did you start to think you're going to be a scientist, I always used

to take apart my toys. And I figured out after that that was probably the earliest memory of my curiosity. And I always wanted to understand how something worked. And I've joked since that I was never going to be an engineer because I never really cared to put them back together. So I think I really always liked biology and physics. Those were two areas that I found really stimulating. And they ended up becoming, I ended up working at the interface of that. I ended up getting really interested in neurology and neuropsychology and neurosycology and neurosurgery. And in my textbooks, I saw these amazing pictures of, you know, MRI technologies that could, you know,

it's incredible. They could take these exquisitely complex pictures of your brain. and inside of your body and they never scratched you they never poked or prodigy right and I was just like wow that's fascinating so so I really got interested in sort of non-invasive imaging and watching the brain in action and and I I think when you make decisions in life it should always be what's going to what's going to empower you up right like there's a lot of you know there's this concept of fixed mindset versus growth mindset and people who are in a fixed mindset are thinking, okay, I've got to be an engineer like I'm going for a title or I've got to be a doctor

or a lawyer or whatever. I think it should be more, this is the impact I want to make. And what do I need to get there? And so neuroscience for me became, well, I want to impact, you know, unleash brain potential, my own around the planet and otherwise. I kind of wanted to do that because there's a lot of scary problems. And I figure there's a lot of really incredibly creative and smart people in the world that can solve those problems. So maybe what we can do is just help unleash that capability, right? And that's where it came to the functional connections and the untappable powers that reside within our brain.

From there, I think I got really interested in the technology aspects, so I really got into the physics and engineering. And most people would sort of stay in their lane, so to speak, but I was like, you know, I allowed my curiosity go, okay, I've got a sense of neuroscience. Now I want to have a sense of the underlying physics and the engineering of how we peer into people's bodies and get the technological side.

And then from there, I realized as a scientist, we're really good at studying a problem, but we don't necessarily fix it. And so that was when I realized in order to fix it, I had to learn that the solutions go out in the world as business products or services. Yeah. And so then I had to decide, okay, so I have to learn, you know, how business works.

And it turns out I'm very entrepreneurial, so that's been a lot of fun. But at the end of the day, they were all serving so that I could make a translational difference on how people's brains were able to power up. Yeah. Right? Every aspect of my story in some way, shape, or form was towards that mission. That is why I think you are a role model, because I see so many people within the legal profession struggle to see how they would start a business, even though, like, my view of what

a law degree is, is to just open doors. It just allows you to think critically about the different ways you can approach issues. There's so many different areas of law, and it's supposed to be kind of your baseline starter to go and do other things and to try and figure out how you can play a role. And I don't think that people ask themselves enough, how can I make a difference? And I think that that often comes from people's lack of confidence in themselves and this lack of belief that they could make a difference. And so I'm interested to know where that came about for you. How did you know that you could make a difference? What made you believe that that was possible? No, I never did. I still don't. I don't think it's, I would never want to say like

someone to think, oh, you're confident that you can make a difference because I don't think I feel that confidence personally, right? I feel the passion. You know, I like, I've had my fair share of hardship throughout life, growing up and otherwise. And that's, I think, in many ways, I've always turned that and, you know, the thing is that people sort of think, and like, you know, we use terms like anxiety as a negative, right? That's been my jet fuel. Like, I just, I feel like my hardship taught me life is short. And the tough stuff that happens in life teaches, I think, just motivates you and propels you to try and do something. So I I'm always in awe of the resilience of the human spirit and the ability for human beings to tap

something inside themselves when they need to, to actually do something about it, right? And I think, I think if anything, I'd just say, I don't want to, I don't want to look back and say, yeah, I didn't ever, I had the choice to act and to try and do something, and I didn't. If I fail, that's okay, right? I can live with if I tried and I failed, well, okay, at least I tried. But I'd say that almost everything I've ever done is, yeah, take a flyer. My favorite symbol, it's on, if you check some of the stuff, I've embedded it. I loved the animal, the flying squirrel.

Right from when I was a kid, I thought a flying squirrel was the most amazing animal. I watched them leap, and they had no clue where they were going to land, but yet they found a branch because they had to, right? So I think sometimes people just have to just, you know, pitch off a tree and see where you land. Yeah, that is very inspirational, and I'm interested to know how neuroplasticity has kind of impacted your life, because you're right, you started in a very scientific area, moved into the tech area, and those are all kind of like you're really pushing your brain to learn a new way of looking at things like physics and perhaps neuroscience. to me, they don't seem like they overlap very clearly. And then to move into business and entrepreneurship, these are all, at least from my experience, going from a criminology degree,

into going into law school, going into podcasting. It's like it's taken a lot of work to learn about the audio and video and sitting there for hours watching YouTube videos on how to do these things. It really pushes my brain to figure things out. What was that like for you to kind of go into new areas with very little knowledge? Yeah. So to contextualize this. this, we're sitting right now on the top of a building that's in the Health and Technology

District here in Surrey, right? Yeah. And right below us, a number of floors down is our neuroplasticity clinic. And every day when we're in clinic, we're talking to people about the concept that there's nothing magical about neuroplasticity. We all have it. It's all in us. It's just whether or not you harness it for positive or it just sits there in a maladaptive way.

And so I think for me, it's really about, you know, it's not random, right? If I just go through life, the events of life will rewire my circuits, whether I want to or not. So a good example would be if, let's say I'm experiencing chronic pain, and that's bothering me on a daily basis. And then it'll get to a place where if I even see a picture, of something that causes that chronic pain, I will feel the pain. I've rewired the circuits in my brain, right? And if I then imagine it, I visualize it, I will feel the brain. So that's maladaptive neuroplasticity, right? It's the same thing I think, I think, that we see when somebody goes from being sad to depressed or from being a little bit stressed to, you know, an anxiety disorder.

I think what happens is you have the ability to control that neuroplasticity. And so I think for the people that we help down below, for myself, for everyone, the idea is, okay, so what's my life need to be structured so that I can actually direct neuroplasticity for good? And the realization you can is hugely free, right? So that's learning, first and foremost. I can learn. That's awesome. I can learn this. I can learn that.

Yeah. You know, but you can, if you've had a concussion or you've had a stroke or, you know, you've had, you can, you can, you. the idea that, oh, I can just rewire some new circuits and create some new pathways to hope is what we talk about. Then it becomes just really, okay, I want that, and I'm willing to work for it, and I'm willing to be disciplined, and I'm willing to make the circumstance so that comes. There's no magic in it. We see it in clinic all the time. Yeah.

I think of, like, people who say, like, it's all about your mindset. It's all about your mindset. And then finding out that the science absolutely supports that in that if you do bring this mindset. mindset plus effort. Exactly. And so having that mindset and being able to carry that forward and start taking action based on it is true. It's like that conventional wisdom of the elder saying like you need to practice your mindset and meditate and think about how you want things to be translates into the science saying, yeah, that's for the most case true. So I'm interested to know what your experience has been with that conventional wisdom that we all kind of have about how to live a good life and the science kind of overlapping with that or where you've seen that those. those quirky statements that we all kind of say are true within the science. I guess a better question is how do you go about approaching your day to day and making sure you have a healthy brain so that you can go out and do things? You know, there's a common denominator I see across the Trevor Greens and the elite neurosurgeons

and astronauts and professional athletes and people who work in business and and health and otherwise, it comes down to really discipline and hard work. And when you see these people, they are incredibly disciplined. They work hard, but they don't, it's not like, you know, it's not like, you know, that's all you do. They, you know, they balance that. But I think that we see these models all the time. I mean, you can look at an elite athlete training for a marathon or for, you know,

you know, any event, really. And they apply this to improve and to maintain and to keep their performance. And there's nothing that stops you from doing that in human, in your everyday life, right? And my everyday life is like, I have to watch what I eat. I have to get my sleep. I have to keep my exercise. Like the fundamentals. Like we like as humans to complicate it. It's actually not complicated. It's hard. Yeah. You know, I struggle to be disciplined. Of course I want to I want to break from all the things I know I need to do. But ultimately, I think if you just keep, you know, if you care enough and you want to make that goal, then you just keep going back to that place. And when you slip off, you pull yourself back. But it's really not,

it's there's no magic. Again, it's everything I've ever seen from people who make massive impacts in this world, that's a common denominator. Right. They're incredibly disciplined. Can you tell us how your family, like we've talked about how Debbie and Trevor have kind of approached their adversity. Can you tell us about how your family has supported you or how you've worked together? Because in one of your TED Talks, Trevor talked about that your partner is incredibly fierce and strong and that she was actually involved in that whole process. So can you share a little bit about that and what your family dynamics are like? Sure. Yeah. So my wife, Rowena Rossotti, is a health care innovator. She's one of the key

movers and shakers in this whole equation for sure. Um, she's, uh, she's done incredible things driven, she's the, um, the brains behind the legions, veterans village revitalization. So, so, um, so, um, she's, uh, um, I always, I always say your partner, you know, I'm happy I, I'm married up in the world. Um, so I, you know, I've had massive support, uh, from very close people like herself, um, uh, certainly my, my immediate family, my kids and my, you know, my family outside of that, both on my side and her side, that's been really critical. And it's fun to have those, you know, people that are championing in your wings.

I think the critical thing for the purpose of what's always what I'd want to say in this podcast and also for in general I've said a lot, I remember when I was studying, discovering that you only needed one positive influence in your life. to, you know, I thought that was fascinating, right? I'd had a pretty, you know, some pretty big bumps along the way as I was growing up and going through your life. And the concept that you only needed to find one major positive support and influence and mentor, it's huge, right? It gives you hope. It gives you, it's inspiring.

So no matter how bad it looks at the time, you're like, okay, well, it can't, you know, I'm not, it's not a fate of complete, right? This is not going to necessarily be a bad outcome. And I would almost guess, if I asked you, you would say the same. Absolutely. And so I think that's important for people to know because that's when you start looking for who are those people really, right? Maybe you thought they were supposed to be this person, but it turns out it was this person. Well, just, you know, take it from that, right?

That's where it came from. So that might be, you know, a parent. It might be a someone in the community. It might be a mentor. But wherever they appear, I think as long as you, you know to really utilize that gift, you know, you're off to the races. And I've definitely had that. I've had the gift of tremendous support from key people in my life. Yeah, I don't know about you, but I've definitely had those moments of like, am I, should I be in this podcast? Am I the

best person for this? And when you can tell that to somebody and they're able to remind you and tell you, hey, you can do this. I'm going to be there every step of the way, checking on the audio and the video equipment and making sure that everything else is good so you can focus on the interview, that makes such a difference and it's such a weight off my shoulders to have that type of support. I'm interested to know how you met your partner. How did that all come about? And if you could tell us how you guys ended up getting married? Oh, well, we were building the Health and Technology District. We just didn't know it at the time. Yeah. So I think we had a vision at the time. She was in charge of redeveloping Surrey Memorial with the critical care tower

and everything people know Surrey Memorial to be now. And I was coming in from, coming back to the province as a BC leadership chair and health technology innovation. And I was excited at the idea that there was this big blank slate, green field, what have you in BC to really innovate technology and make an impact on health care. And there was a combination of a number of us that created a vision of putting a health technology innovative sector in the province that would be the top in the world. And everyone thought it was wild and crazy because we were going to do this in Surrey. Right? No one figured that this could happen in Surrey.

And certainly, Rowena was one of the key people who really was on the forefront of that, as was the mayor at the time, Diane Watts, and also Kirk Fisher, who comes from the Lark Group and was brought the business level. And the interesting thing is that we all, we all just kind of held that vision. And as, you know, and as a, you know, kind of component of that adventure, we are all very close. And, you know, Rowena and I discovered, you know, that this was an amazing adventure together. And we were cut from very similar cloths. And that's how we ended up meeting.

Awesome. And how did you guys end up deciding to, like, what was that first date like? Or how did you guys end up getting married? Oh, you know, I mean, I don't have to describe this to anyone. But when you meet someone who's like an angel, you know, I just try not to be stupid. You know, I want to, you know, she's amazing. And, you know, we both want each other in our lives. And we've been able to build an amazing family together and have just incredible kids and now grandkids.

And we've got just, you know, it's a really fun. But it's also people have this sort of talks about it. Like we're a power couple, which is funny. And we sort of laugh at that. But I think we compliment one another because I'm a bit of a scatterbrain scientist, right? You know, heads in the blue sky sort of thing. And she's very much, she ran hospitals. She's very organized.

She knows how to execute and get things done. And so, you know, we've always realized to play off of our collective strengths. And that's fun. It's a heck of an adventure. That's awesome. Can you tell us about some of the businesses that you've started and been involved in helping develop? Sure. I probably would tell you by technologies because those are the things that go out in the world. So when I was with the National Research Council, I was with their top medical technology commercialization entity called the Institute for Biodiagnostics.

And we got to do some pretty fun projects. I was a part of the team that helped. I wasn't the main driver in this one, but create the world's first interoperative MRI. It was a movable MRI. which I won't get into the physics of it, but that's actually technically very challenging. And it was the first MRI company to ever come out of Canada that I really know of, that was successful and pretty impactful. We got to create a number of other technologies. One that definitely was fun was through the National Research Council, the simple question of, hey, wait a minute, when I get on a plane,

these pilots were trained on simulators. But, you know, if I go in for surgery, I have to ask the surgeon, is this the first time you've done the surgery or how many times? And so we said there should be a simulator for surgery, and we decided, the group, the team, sort of decided neurosurgery was the best starting point for that because it was complex. And if we could solve it for that, then it would generalize. And so we created the world's first brain surgery simulator, which was pretty cool. and that's gone off to CAE Health Care and is now called NeuroV-R. You can look it up. It's pretty cool.

And that one you did a TED Talk on. That was your TEDx. I think Brent would, if I'm not mistaken. That was one of them, yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah. And you did that with a person. Can you share that story? Well, yeah, it was about the first year and a half in when we had a prototype. We thought it's time to take it prime time.

And this was with the head of neurosurgery, David Clark, who was a good friend and a longtime collaborator. and myself, we were doing a lot of the advanced imaging as part of this large national network. And so we had a lot of, we had a lot of ability to try this in patients. And so we tried this in Ellen Wright. And she had a brain tumor. She had grandkids. She was worried about, is this, you know, do I, do I, it wasn't like an aggressive, malignant brain tumor.

But she still was, didn't really, you know, she was like, I could have surgery to address this and take it out, but I don't want to lose my ability to speak and my important cognitive functions. And so what we ended up doing is we ended up actually doing a full surgical rehearsal, which was the first time in the history that it's ever been done where she got to ask us, how did my virtual brain surgery go? Totally relieved before brain surgery, went through brain surgery. And that became a wild ride. That was a global wild, wild story that was really fun. In great parts about it, there was a press conference after, and I remember sitting

in my vice president of research, who was a physician, said, you realize, right, not many people who do work in science get to get kissed by the very person they help, right? And I was like, yeah, like, that's the fun part about the translational part. But it was even more interesting because at the time, they were all, all the media and everyone in the room was doing, was playing with the brain surgery simulator, which was Ellen's brain. And I thought, well, that's a little weird because Ellen's sitting right there. And then it got more weird because Ellen got up and started doing surgery on herself. So science takes you in some pretty amazing directions sometimes. Yeah, absolutely.

And so were there any other innovations that you were a part of? Because I do know that you received an award. and some people on the panel included Mark Cuban and Will I Am. Yeah, yeah, that was the global technology showcase. That was when we really got to understand that we were onto something with this concept of a scanner for your cognition and that you should have vital signs for your brain, just like you do for your heart. And the first generation of that was called the HCS or Halifax Consciousness Scanner. The real goal was right now in super advanced labs, like the ones I build and run.

run. We can watch your brain in action in dizzying ways. Like the world is not even aware of the sort of power we can do in neuroimaging. But if you go to the doctor and you say, hey, I think there's something wrong with my brain, you know, I was playing hockey and I got a concussion or something like that. It's not controversial to say that the state of care hasn't changed since the 1980s. So we always felt that that was a major problem to solve. You should not be able to go to a doctor and get 1980s care for your brain. I mean, when you go, you don't get 1980s care for your heart. So in order to solve that problem,

I think we broke it down and realized that the root of the problem is, in medicine we talk about you can't treat which you can't measure. And so we needed a simple objective measurement system for how your brain is doing. And we realized that, wow, that's the gap. there's not even so much as a vital sign for how your brain is doing. I can get my blood pressure and I can manage my cardiac health and I can make sure that if somebody says this drug is a good drug,

if it's helping or not, I'll know, right? But you can't do that for your brain. And so we decided that problem need to be solved. And we created a vital sign framework scientifically and then we created the neurocatch scanner, which is in this district in Health Tech Connects. And we just figured out how to turn it into a product and get it out in the world.

And it's now on its second generation. It's deployed to, I think it's over 40 sites in North America. It's testing in hockey, football, MMA, Alzheimer's disease. We use it in our own clinic for multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, and that sort of thing. It's used widely. It's really great. So I think of like, I'm a huge fan of the UFC, and I think of them going into a fight prior. It kind of sounds like you would be able to test to see whether or not like a fight or certain brain injuries show up.

if their brain is operating differently after the fact. How does that all work? Yeah, it's exactly how it works. It turns out that when we all want to stay fit physically, but we also, I think, all want to stay fit brain health-wise, right, cognitively, let's say. So whether or not you're a peak performer or not doesn't matter, but certainly in peak performance, we can now measure you and help you think faster

and help you have more cognitive agility. And so if your performance happens to impact that negatively, for instance, you're an elite athlete and you get a concussion, we can actually also measure you and find the treatments to get you back. And we're doing that now regularly and frequently and often and trying to get it out to as many people as quickly as we can. That is incredible to hear. And you're saying that that's at 40 different sites in North America, whereas prior it was. this wasn't even an option that people could consider. It didn't exist. We'd give you a paper and pencil test or we'd take a very expensive MRI picture of you, which effectively amounted if you think of your brain as like a high performance engine in a formula one. You know, if I pop the hood and I take

out my iPhone and take a picture and your problem is you slip from first to third, that's not going to tell me anything, right? You need to have a really sensitive measure of the performance of the engine, and that's what this does. It sounds like you make it accessible, like you figure out the technology, but then it's also a process of trying to figure out how to make it scalable so that people can actually pay for it in the market. What is that process like? Are you involved in those conversations of how do we make this something that people could actually afford to buy for their hospital? Oh, 1,000%. Yeah. The good news is we picked right from the outset, so we picked an affordable technology. Brainway scanning is actually becoming increasingly affordable. And so we knew we picked ahead of time knowing that it will get better and better.

Right now, we put a cap on your head with a couple of sensors and we measure it. It's automated. It only takes six minutes. But our goal is to really continue pushing the envelope so that you can have that access. I sort of, I envision a future, right from go, I envisioned a future. We can walk into our grocery store and get our blood pressure. right there's no reason why you can't be anywhere on this planet or actually actually some cool stuff we're taking it up into space so beyond this planet and find out how your brain's doing yeah so could you elaborate on that you're working on trying to find a way that we can measure the effects of perhaps space on people's brains yeah so we're working with we're funded by the Canadian Space Agency and we're working with this amazing group of space health researchers, because as we are moving off of our planet,

there's a couple of inconvenient biological truths. Astronauts who've spent some time in space come back with symptoms that indicate that there are some damage to their brain. And so we know that when you alter your gravity or you're in a changed radiation, that that has biological effects. And so, you know, I wouldn't be signing up for long-term living in Mars quite yet. Right. But, but I think that the critical thing is that we, we've created a very lightweight, automated, and highly deployable, even in, you know, tough environments, technology. Yeah. So what we're, what we're doing now is, you know, getting set to measure the effects of, of, uh, of, uh, pre and post trips to space. And then getting,

sort of building the technology so that it could be used there. We've had it, of course, throughout on all sorts of challenging environments on the planet. So it's kind of a logical next step. What is that like to be involved in something? Like you're involved in something where that's going to be used in space? Like what is that like for you? Is that surreal? Is that just a normal day in your life?

Like what is that like for you to be involved in these projects that most people can't even imagine? It's fun. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, I mean, no matter what happens, I think it's, I always try to tell my son, like, we're all born perfect, right? You know, when you're born, you are absolutely perfect and life has not yet dealt its adventure on you. And that adventure, and, you know, I mean, if it was a, if it was like a train ride that was flat, it'd be boring. So it's a roller coaster with lots up and downs, and that's okay because I wouldn't want it to be flat. But the reality, but the reality, is that that comes with wear and tear, it comes with hardship. It comes with lots of challenges, which make it rich, but it also makes it tough. And so I think when you know, when I think about my career, I love what I'm doing so much that no matter how tough it gets, I'm up the next day and waiting for, you know, what are we doing today? Because it's going to be so much fun. Yeah. That is

really important, I think, for people to think about because I don't know about you, but I see a lot of people kind of directionless, kind of feeling like they don't know where to go. And I'm interested to know what your kind of journey through school was because it seems like it would have been a lot of work to get where you are today. And it seems miraculous that you're here today having such a huge impact, but it took a lot of work to get to here today. And so I'm interested to know what your university experiences were like. Were they a challenge?

Was it some of the best years? What was that whole experience like to go to school? because a lot of people, they kind of get bored of the whole school environment. Oh, for sure. I grew up in Williams Lake, which is, of course, a small town in the interior of BC. It, I think it was, in my family, it was always the expectation of going to university because I had a lot of people in my family have, and that was a big value. I never saw the value of school when I was young.

I used to commonly get, you know, the message that came from the report cards and my father who cared a lot about this and really invested and really made this happen was, you know, Ryan, if you applied yourself, you know, you could do, you know, the teachers know that you could do well if you wanted to sort of thing. I didn't know, I don't think I knew there believed that, so I didn't have my own self-confidence in that. But, you know, I got sent, you know, to a school that helped me to get into university. It was a private school, a boarding school on the island, Brentwood College. I'm still working with them to this. And, you know, two days from now we'll be doing concussion scanning. So that was very formative because it brought in discipline and structure and taught me at least those aspects when I wasn't necessarily.

figuring that out. When I got into university and undergrad, I almost got myself kicked out of UVIC. And that's because I didn't really prioritize school. I prioritized almost everything else you could do when you're in university, which I don't regret, but, you know, that's not a long-term strategy. So there was a big turning moment when I was in University of Victoria where I realized the value of an undergraduate education. It opens up your mind in ways you can't describe and allows you, empowers you to think in ways that you never understood before you could do it. And so I had a massive moment there and it also lit up my curiosity. And I was around some really good mentors, a world leading brain injury neuropsychologist named Catherine Matier.

And I got really interested in the concept of going into neuroscience. And I was fascinated with the brain and it was fascinated with technology. And so that took me on an adventure over to Halifax and Dalhousie. Yeah. And at Dalhousie, I was in, they actually have, and they still have, and they definitely did at the time, one of the Canadian leading neuroscience training programs that trained you in the medicine, trained you in the sort of the psychology, the physics, and all of aspects of it. The graduates have since come to appreciate that came from the same cohort I were in were incredibly talented. and have been successful.

So I was really fortunate that, you know, I always say I don't think through a lot of the decisions I make in life, and I didn't, I wasn't, I was too scared to go to the States or somewhere else, so I wanted to stay in Canada. I wanted to stay near an ocean, so I knew maps well enough to know that Halifax and Nova Scotia had an ocean. And yet I stumbled into, you know, an incredible program. that led me to really getting excited into the translational aspects of it because we were doing a lot of really good translational work

with John Connolly being my supervisor and really taught me about the importance of that. And that led me to the National Research Council where I was a neuroscientist hanging out with physicists and engineers. And so I had an incredible mentor there who was probably the top health technology innovator, Canada, unprecedented, a guy by the name of Ian Smith. And he really taught me about the value of benefits to Canada and what that really means and how we can use what we do to really position

Canada on the world stage in terms of health technology innovation. And that model followed me here back home. And that's what led to, you know, along that way, by the way, I should mention that we built a biotech cluster in Halifax, and that's led by a close friend and colleague, Stephen B.A., and it continues to do incredible world-class things. But when I finally got back here, I really wanted to do it on home soil. And we did. We are.

Can you tell us about what that means to lead Canada in something, to help bring Canada to the world stage because it's clear that you've been involved, and I'm hoping you can tie in some of the papers you wrote because we hear about how brilliant people, write papers and they do research and then they write articles about it but that does contribute to our scientific understandings and the base knowledge of society on certain issues and you've

contributed a lot you've written a lot of articles and published a lot of information and i don't know if normal people who perhaps aren't involved in science understand how important that is to develop this scientific literacy on a topic and to to share that so what has that been like to be involved in the development of our Canadian scientific understandings and to contribute put Canada on the world stage. Yeah, well, I'll take the papers first, and then I'll talk about the sort of Canadian part. Yeah, so people wouldn't realize that publishing scientific papers,

I was told early on in grad school, is like basically competitive sport. It's very, very competitive and challenging and grueling, right? And so what's great about that, particularly in today's day and age, is that that whole process, ensures that your evidence is curated. And in these days, people are getting access to information

that is simply not evidence. It's misinformation, it's disinformation, it's definitely affecting our world in ways we all know. The scientific publications are where we get our knowledge from, right? And that increments and grows and accumulates over time. And so that process is critical to humanity. And, you know, I've been active. in that process now for quite a number of years.

It's coming up, it's over 25, I'm coming up on 30 years. I still love writing papers. I think it's an incredibly tough process, it's rigorous, but at the end of it, you're contributing new knowledge, and that's a huge privilege. The papers also then sort of put you into a world stage as being a sort of a world expert in your particular area. And then you get the opportunity to do things that most people don't realize scientists do.

Similar to the Olympics, you're out on the global stage in a very, very big way. And I've had, because of my roles, I've had this incredible privilege to represent Canada for neuroscience and for innovation. through our foreign affairs departments, through our science. I think I had one thing that probably differentiated me. I always felt it was a priority to be able to explain what you did, right? Not to sort of make it jargony and technical so people couldn't understand. I always felt if you needed to do that, you weren't confident in, you know, your own knowledge of it. And if you really understood something, you could explain it to anyone and tell them why it was valuable, right?

and why you were doing it. And so I've spent a lot of time, and I think it's a big responsibility that I personally feel as important, is to communicate science to everyone. And our science and what we do and why it's important and why I love doing podcasts like this. Yeah. No, and I think that that is so valuable

because I was able to learn a lot about your role and the work you've done through your TEDx videos. And I'm interested to know how those kind of opportunities came about. Did you go looking for them to say, hey, I need to get, we need to tell people, we need to get the word out? Or was it something that you've just always kind of been involved in of just kind of communicating science? And these were just opportunities to do so. Yeah, it's a little more towards the ladder. I think one of the things that scientists, there's not, it's increasing now.

It's changing. But we're coming from a place where scientists didn't communicate beyond. the realm of publication and conferences, it wasn't a priority and they didn't, they don't necessarily have the skills to communicate in kind of a more of a general knowledge and to general individuals in a way that's accessible. That's not what they teach you in, you know, when you're trained. So by virtue of having that somewhat unique skill, I've always throughout my career, people have come to me and ask me to do these sorts of things. And I've always then prioritized it. I think you can see good examples of that. I always looked up to David Suzuki

and his ability to do it. And I think that I've always tried in the people that I've trained and influenced, I think I've given them that skill as well. And they're now, I think, far better than I am, which is awesome. So yeah, it's just one of those things that it's important for scientists to do. And as we do more of it, I think it'll stop being so esoteric. Yeah, absolutely. And I think of, because I really enjoy being able to learn from people like yourself. And I'm interested to know if you have any other neuroscientists that you enjoy listening to, because I listen to Dr. Andrew Huberman.

I'm not sure if you're aware of his work. Dr. Matthew Walker. Can you tell us a little bit about them if you... They're both really good examples of what we're talking about. Andrew in particular is doing a fabulous job. I think, you know, there are a number of people coming out who have understood the value of science communication. And it's becoming increasingly much, much more important. I mean, if you just look at, you know, the pandemic alone, we published a paper.

It's just coming out now anticipating that COVID would affect your brain, right? We're launching a brain fog initiative around COVID and other things that cause brain fog. But the concept, all of us across the globe, immediately have had to get a whole lot more educated on, you know, vaccines and, you know, the impacts on lung function and, lo and behold, brain function. But it turns out that's a positive because, you know, there's a lot of, like, if you look at our opioid crisis, if you look at our homelessness, the root cause of that, for example, is mental health, right? So how do you better empower a society than making sure that people like the Andrew Hubermans of the world are telling people how the brain works so they can take charge of their own mental health? Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And to me, it was a huge statement because I'm a person going through like elementary, middle, and high school.

My teachers doubted whether or not I would ever graduate. They doubted whether or not I was a critical thinker. And that kind of carried through my undergrad of being like, am I really a smart person? Am I really able to critically think? And then I tune into somebody like Andrew Huberman and go like, I just sat through like a three-hour podcast breaking down how to focus or how to sleep better or how to do these things. And it's like to me, I think for so long our news media kind of underestimated the intelligence of the populace that most people aren't able to understand these topics and we shouldn't

go into them because they won't understand. And I think Andrew Huberman, Dr. Matthew Walker, they kind of poke a hole in that showing that there is a huge demographic that are interested in learning even if they didn't attend university. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm hopeful that pretty quickly will almost blow up the concept of IQ, right? Because it's served its purpose. I'm not saying that, you know, that there aren't positive aspects that have come from the concept of IQ and intelligence. But what we're understanding from a neuroscience standpoint, is we are all intelligent in our own incredibly special and unique ways. And the key is find, you know, find your swim lane, right? And challenge, of course,

for schools, which I feel sympathetic for, is they can only really, because they have to teach everyone, they can only teach in a certain way. And so if you land in that sector, it's good for you. But so often, I was one of them, you weren't necessarily right aligned with exactly how you were supposed to learn in school. And when you find out after the fact that, hey, wait, that doesn't mean that I'm stupid. I have my own intelligence in this way. Then, you know, you optimize that with everything you've gone. And that's basically what I've tried to do. And that's certainly what I try to tell my son, I encourage him to do, right? You just find your superpower and go for it.

Can you tell us about how you've approached that or how you've tried to help others kind of develop that? Because I think that our society right now, we're too attached to our phones, we're not getting enough sleep. I think both Andrew Huberman and Dr. Matthew Walker make a good argument that sleep is kind of the bedrock for everything. So how do you try and take care of yourself and what advice do you give to patients trying to improve their brain health and their well-being when you're working with them? Is that like you just need an eight-hour sleep? How do you go about trying to help yourself and others? Well, I live by my kind of my trifectar or Holy Trinity of sleep, exercise, and diet. Yeah.

Right? And it's unique to what I need and I know what I need. But it's always like you're walking on a balance bean because life wants to knock you off. So you always have to just stay on the balance beam, right? Keep your sleep, you know, if you get a knock, off, work to get it back, watch your diet, and religiously make sure you exercise, right? We know now, for example, and we have actually known this for a while, exercise is incredible, like, it expands your lifespan greatly. In fact, some of the stuff we're doing

in the lab where we neuromodulate to recover people like Captain Green with technology is based off the neuromodulation effects of exercise. Right. Right. So your body really needs those things, and they're critical to maintain in a disciplined and structured way. And, you know, I don't differentiate people are people, right? You're not somebody who's a patient to me or who's had a brain injury. You're a person, and I'm a person. And I imagine I was at the bike park and took a fall and cracked my head, and I could call myself a concussion patient if I wanted to, but I'm not.

You know, I now have the ability to recover from that, make sure that I get, you know, my sleep, my exercise, my diet, I'm rigorous, I do what I need to do. All the information is out there. I think our problem, if you want me to get a little kind of like heady about it, is when we evolved and our brain kind of, because we went from all fours to walking and our brain kind of flop down like this and we grew this big frontal lobe, right? You know, and we got really an ego about it. We're like, ha ha, we're different than any other animal because you get this big frontal cortex and it gives us executive function. I think the problem is if I was other animals on this planet I'd be laughing at us right because we could

complicate things you know we're like oh goodness I need to you know I need to because I'm scared I need to not take the vaccine you know even though a six year old they'll say well the vaccine saves millions and the and COVID kills millions you know like we just overcomplicate things so if we could learn how to like utilize our frontal lobes sometimes for good and then park it and just do what any other basic living creature would do that's good for you? I think it'd be good. Yeah. You know, we overthink things too much.

I don't disagree, and I think that people get into their own heads and often lack that action that we were talking about earlier of just moving forward in the best direction and taking those small steps forward. I'm also interested to know about what podcasts or where do you get your information from? How do you go about learning new things? Because I think that it's always interesting to know what books you're interested in,

how can people learn about the field in an accessible way? Sure. Yeah, I read, well, it sounds in dishonest if I say I read. I listen to audiobooks because that's the time I can get my reading in. Always, you know, I would say on the order of at least 15 a year or so. I'm always, of course, reading science because that's part of my job. So I'm always reading science articles. I haven't done podcasts yet, but I'm getting interested in it. But again, I'm always, there's no one theme.

I'm always picking off what I feel is interesting or important for me to have to dive into now for what I'm trying to accomplish. Right. So it really depends. These days, it's about scaling a business and building a business successfully. So I'm way steep in learning how businesses grow. But sometimes it's about psychology and mindsets. It could be about neuroscience. I rarely do stuff that is, I haven't had a lot of time to do fiction.

If and when I slow down, I'll probably remember what fiction is like. Right, that is fair. And I'm very much the same way. I'm very interested in like the science of things right now. And like I lean towards the Dr. Andrew Huberman's rather than fiction story. You mentioned brain fog. My friend Jacob, he's been in a few car accidents and he's been struggling with brain fog. Can you elaborate on some of the research you've been involved in and where you're taking this new research with... Yeah, this is really exciting for us. This is what we're working on right now. So it's kind of, you know, in the hopper, so to speak. We analyze the problem around COVID and impacts. I mentioned earlier. We're publishing an article on that right now. What emerged from that was the concept that I think what's relevant to many of us right now is the concept of brain fog.

It became very much relevant because of COVID, but it existed before COVID. Concussion, your example, is one of the areas that people report brain fog. Another is actually from chemotherapy and radiation therapy. What is brain fog? It's a subjective term where somebody describes that they don't feel that, their cognitive acuity is what it used to be. Right. And we, with our technology, have an objective, sensitive measure to say if that's the case or not.

And more importantly, we have found and are finding and are implementing protocols and interventions and treatments that if that is the case, we can get you back there. So to me, brain fog is a problem to solve. Yeah. And so what's the research going on now in regards to that? We're just launching a really exciting multi-center Canada-U.S. trial with collaborators in the States, Mary Kay Ross and I. She's a functional medicine and emergency medicine physician. She's wonderful and amazing. We are going to enroll people who have reported brain fog from those different results that I mentioned, COVID and concussion and cancer. And we're going to measure them. And we're going to move the dial with the leading interventions. So I'm super, super excited about this.

I'm spending a lot of time right now really making sure this gets launched and gets underway. What are those leading interventions? So some of them are diet. We've got collaborators at Mayo Clinic who are looking at the product name, which is you can get it through Thorn, is cynically. well. Okay. But it's looking like, it's scientific name is called Nacetylcysteine. And it's been, there's been some studies done to show that that actually can be preventative, or we call prophylactic for concussion and brain injury. And so we're interested in measuring that. We're also

looking, for those who are interested, cognitive gyms are something to think about. We work closely with a company out of San Francisco posit science that's created Brain HQ. And that's basically taking your brain to the gym. And it's done based on hardcore neuroscience out of a phenomenal neuroscientist by the name of Mike Mersnich. And so we use that routinely for cognitive training and cognitive improvement. And then the final thing we're doing, which is where this is pretty sort of, you know, leading edge. we're using what's called the pawns device, which is a neuromodulator. It stimulates your tongue, and it stimulates your brain so that when you're doing interventions,

they have an augmented neuroplastic effect. And so we were the group that really did a lot of the science in the ponds and really understand how, not that anyone understands it fully yet, but we're getting a pretty good line of sight and how it works in the brain. And it's completely non-invasive. It's not a pharmaceutical or a drug. It's not surgery. And we're seeing breakthroughs in our clients and healthy individuals that are stunning.

So it's kind of going to be a combination. We'll curate, we'll find the technologies that are promising. We'll do the evidence-based studies. If they work, then we'll implement them clinically to help people with brain fog. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that last part about the neuroplastic effects of the tongue? Could you elaborate more on that? Yeah, for sure. It came out of actually Norman Deutsch's book.

The Brain That Heals Itself, which is a really great book. And he reviewed it. And then actually it was Trevor and Debbie who sort of said, hey, Ryan, have you heard about this Pons device? It's born out of hardcore neuroscience at a University of Madison, Wisconsin, led by a couple of great scientists, Yuri Danilov and Mitch Tyler and others. They started stimulating the tongue with an electrogrid to give people who were blind. a representation of the world. So they had this amazing videos where these people who were blind from birth,

you'd roll a ball across the table and they'd catch it. And it caught everyone's attention. Then they got smart and they lit up the dot in the middle of the electro grid. So it just creates some stimulation on your tongue and you could feel the dot in the middle. And they tied that to what we call accelerometers, the same things that are in here, right?

Yeah, track your steps. And so, then, that you could tell around your balance. And so people who have balance problems, more often than not, you find a lot of people that have had concussions and brain injuries have problem with balance. And so they started doing trials with people with balance and showing that when you stimulated the tongue and you did rehabilitation, when they couldn't recover before, now they could. And so that was pretty stunning.

So the U.S. Army funded a big trial. It sort of involved the championing of Montel Williams, who was using the pawns to get better from MS. And we ran, we were one of the top sites in that trial, and we helped that trial demonstrate that in a very strictly controlled trial, we could show great, great improvements in people with mild to moderate brain injury in their balance and gait. And subsequently, we've been able to show that it has a bit of a watershed effect, so there are cognition, their mood, all those things seem to get better too. Wow, and I've heard, and I could be mistaken, but the tongue is one of the first things to develop when you're born.

Yeah. Is that true? The tongue is interesting from a neuroanatomy and neuroscience point of view and historically. And the reason for that is our brain has these sort of these cranial nerves that go into the core of your brain. So the tongue is innervated by cranial nerves. And they're very old in terms of evolution, and also they're very much sort of at the core of your brain as you develop.

And they go into your brain stem where all other inputs go in. So in a way, the thinking is that the stimulation through these nerves actually stimulates other sort of relays in your brain so that you actually have more of a global stimulation. And I mentioned earlier that in fact, right now, what we're looking at is that exercise has got a similar mechanism where that does a lot of really good things for your brain. It helps in terms of your circulatory supply, your base neural activity sort of resetting it, your chemistry and all sorts of good chemicals, we call

neurotrophic factors that neurons love to have. So it just has a, it's almost like the way I describe it to people is we all have when our computer kind of hangs up and you power it down and power it up and it sorts itself out. It's sort of the biological equivalent of that. Yeah, and I've heard Andrew Huberman talk about looking at like when it's morning time, seeing the morning light actually helps reset your circadian rhythms, and seeing that in the evening helps reset your circadian rhythms and put you back on track. And he taught me that your eyes are part of your brain.

And so I'm interested to know your thoughts on that as well. Yeah, well, there's lots of really good research coming down the pipe that is opening up a massive a blind spot in neuroscience, I think we thought a lot about getting into the brain from neurosurgery and we even magnetically stimulate it. But it turns out, of course, Mother Nature has been around a lot longer and is a lot smarter, had open channels up to us the whole time through whether or not it's the sensation of your tongue or your eyes or your ears or otherwise. So there's this incredible science right now that's sending signals in on those channels. and being able to finally sort of interact with your brain in ways that are unprecedented.

And if I had to bet where some of the biggest impacts in neuroscience are going to come in the next five to ten years, it's going to be in neuromodulation. We see it in Parkinson's with what's called galvanic vestibular stimulation. We see it. There's some research that's come out in Alzheimer's in animals that if you're flashing lights and you're presenting other stimulation on other channels, it breaks down beta amyloid plaques, which is the culprit in Alzheimer's, or one of them.

And so, yeah, it's, I would say why this is something to pay attention to is it's not surgery and it's not drugs. Right. It was there all along right in front of us. This really leads into your brain vital signs work. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that work? And what are brain vital signs? So the concept of brain vital science is that, I spoke to it a little earlier, it was to simplify the complexity of neuroscience.

Yeah. Right. And I think sometimes when I mentioned brain vital science to people, they're still looking for complex. So they're like, and I'm like, no, it's simple. You know what a vital sign is, right? Yep. Blood pressure. You know, heart rate.

Right. So why don't we have one of those for brain? And I think that was the big barrier. People really struggled with, well, we can't. Why can't? Right? Why not? And so what we did is we took using blood pressure and Paul Sox and other ones, but primarily

blood pressure, we reverse engineered from existing strong neuroscience. It's been around for 100 years. How could we extract something that we could use as a vital sign? And that came from recording brain waves. So we measure your electricity of your brain through what's called EEG or electroencephalography. And we ping your system, you know, your supercomputer brain. We just basically presents stimuli. We present it now through headphones, but we can do it on any way, right? And we elicit incredibly well-known responses, and then we turn those responses into something simple that you can look at, just like 120 over 80 is your vital sign for your brain.

Yeah. What has that been like? What it's, like, it just seems hard to believe that that wasn't something that was already kind of being developed and pushed, and it feels like it's such an important innovation that, like, hearing you say it, it makes so much. much sense that we would need this. But what do you think of the development of this and that other people weren't working on this or trying to make this happen? Well, all science innovation comes from a group of people working on similar problems at the same time. I think we were fortunate to

break through in turning it into a simple vital sign framework. I think what it's been like is been fascinating and amazing because we've had incredible collaborators, clinical collaborators who have really been like, wow, this is so important and we need this. And that's from the highest level. I mean, we've had, you know, from the outset, we've had support from the Mayo Clinic, both their sports concussions teams and their neurology teams. And they've held guide this, and they're the top hospital in the world. We've had incredible support in pediatrics from Alberta, from neurologists who are close friends and colleagues, from Toronto, from Vancouver, over here, from Cornell, around patients that are thought to be vegetative and using this to

show that they're in there. The list goes on from Florida around, you know, elite athletes going into the NHL from concussion. The clinicians are driving this now. They're saying, this is critical and this is how we need it to look to be most effective. So with all humility, our job is to be, and I'm not a very good listener, so it's a challenge for me. But it's, is to be really good listeners, to listen to the people who need the tool, and just do the best we can to develop it along those lines. Right. And what do you think the long-term implications? We obviously have heart rate monitors on.

Where would you like to see this go over the next 50 years? You just pointed to it. Yeah. I envision a world where it's not only that you could get it at a doctor's office or at a shopper's drug mart or a drugstore, and any clinical point of care on the planet, it. But I actually envision a world where you can do it at home as easy as you can listen to your favorite music on iPods. Wow. And what would that be able to do? Or not iPods, pardon me,

AirPods. AirPods, I just dated myself. What do you envision that the benefits would be of knowing this information? Like, how could someone apply this to their day-to-day life if they had this type of information on their brain vital signs? Well, I don't have to speculate about that. I see it in the clinic every day. It's transformative. What we can do because it's objective, so it's not air-prone and it's sensitive, is we can measure where someone is in terms of a benchmark. If you are somebody with a brain injury, we can measure your return back and find out what works. If you're somebody with a neurologic disease like Alzheimer's, in our care homes,

we can measure the difference between those that have to mention those that don't. And the goal is to really pair that with how they're doing on a day-to-day basis so we can properly treat them with medications. Rather than just sort of right now, it's very scary how the problems we face there. And then in mental health, we've tracked it with Trevor to show that his cognitive functions got better and so did his PTSD. So that's huge. And then in just performance optimization, we've employed it with leading. athletes and across a number of sports and also are excited to bring it into special forces and into space and and executive health and that sort of thing right will

this be able to help people who are like just really interested in learning things and optimizing their brain for focus and studying and doing stuff like that absolutely yeah it's um the goal is is on the front page of health tech connects the question is do you know how your brain is doing and the goal is to give you the ability to get the answer to that question That's awesome. Can you tell us about the building that we're in and how you approach things because I had the pleasure of coming in and seeing your amazing workspace, but I also saw people working out right in one of the main areas and they were like, we take our health seriously. And so it seems like you guys are really good at not only understanding the science, but applying it. So can you tell us about the building that we're in and how you guys approach things? Yeah, for sure. We're sitting on the top of City Center 1, which is the first building of the Health and Technology District. The building behind me is City Center. two, the one over there that's just been built to City Center three, there are care homes.

It was slated to go to eight buildings. It looks like we're going to expand. It's a, it's a ecosystem for health technology innovation. And it's pretty simple. The hypothesis is we face some pretty wicked problems in terms of our health care and technology innovation can make more immediate impacts. And so let's create an environment here in BC that does that. And it's, I think we're well on our way to over a million and a half square feet of space where sort of clinicians and scientists and businesses come together to solve problems. And, you know, that's what you saw. You know, it's like, just like if you were in Silicon Valley, you know, we've got fitness,

we've got yoga for your brain, we've got all sorts of events that go on. It's a super fun place to be. The goal is that we'll be able to really not only make a difference in, Science. Oh, cool. Hey, buddy. This is fun to do a podcast outside. But also, we're kind of driving Canada's economy. And you'd ask me earlier, and I'm a big, I'm fiercely sort of patriotic around Canada's position in the world around translating brain science and health technology. And so that's a big thing for me. And, you know, when this is, it's well on its way. And we've estimated its completion of the more than 1.1 billion into our economy every year alone and

employ 15,000 plus high quality and high-tech jobs. And, you know, we work closely with universities, so we got incredible students. And we have this just ability to innovate here. Like, you know, the only place, I haven't seen any real place on the planet, but what I've loved is other places in Canada, the States. and around the globe are following this model. And that's really heartwarming to see. So that actually leads into a question. I'm just interested to know how you see the stage for neuroscience around the world.

Are we leading the way? Are we number two? Like how do you kind of envision how... Well, historically, Canada would be in the top five, if not top three, of top of neuroscience countries on the planet. Right. We have incredible, incredible legacy in neuroscience. I could sit here for another half an hour and tell you all the amazing neuroscientists

that are absolute pioneers in this field that are Canadian. Can you tell us about a few of them just because I think it's important people have respect for the field? Everyone's probably heard about the I Smell-Burned toast. Wilder Penfield did that in Montreal. The Montreal Neurologic Institute is world-renowned. Jasper, Herbert Jasper, who created, you know, some of the mapping systems we use in EEG. For sure, probably I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Donald Heb. Almost every computer scientist now, not neuroscientists, but computer scientist knows Donald Heb because he's the

father of basically neurons that wire together, fire together. So he wrote some seminal work around the concept of neuroplasticity and is, you know, right out of Nova Scotia. So he's really amazing. The list really truly goes on. I'd say if I listed that, you know, historically the top countries, certainly Canada's in the mix, the states and Russia are also really big. Of course, Europe has come up. But I think where Canada's goal and role needs to be, and it's one of my missions, is now in the translational part. So I think that there, we're in good company. You know, the Israel's of the world are incredibly innovative. We see a lot of translational work coming out of a lot of the top centers now. And the shift is focusing, like I said earlier,

we're now really focusing from not just studying the problem, but figuring out what we can do about it. Right. And I'm hoping you can just describe, I think that people really struggle with self-confidence. I think that that's something I see all the time is people don't seem to feel like they have a role, but we all have a brain. And we all have this mechanism. And we all have this mechanism inside us that is capable from how you've described it of immense change and adaptivity and so I think that it can be really inspiring to know that we come with hardware built in that is just incredible so can you tell us just your perspective on the brain what is it can you tell us about some of those neural connections and how important it is and how it kind

of opens the door for everything else for us yeah okay well how about if I link your self-confidence to your brain potential. Sure. Okay. So you mentioned earlier, and I've often thought of us, I got called into when, in Jeopardy, when IBM built the computer to beat the Jeopardy champions, I got called in as a neuroscientist to debate against computer scientists whether or not computers would ever over, like, be smarter than humans.

And I remember doing my research, and I was looking around, and I came across a really interesting thought that stuck with me, which is, it seemed absolutely ridiculous at the time that there's possibly more sort of neural connections in the human brain than there are atoms in the observable universe. So, of course, like, I had to take a big rabbit hole on that one and go dive into it and see what that was all about. Roughly, atoms in the observable universe are like 10 to the 70, 10 to the 80s. So that's a pretty big number. Yeah. Right? And there can't be that many. We have, you know, the estimates are going between 80 and 100,

but let's call it 100 billion neurons in the human brain. So that's not as big a number. It's big. But it turns out that when you think about it in terms of functional connections, which is basically the engine of brain potential, right, that that's an infinite number. Because you can take a neural circuit of, like, let's say four neurons, and that neural circuit can have more functional connections

than the atoms that compose it, which by definition means that you can have more functional connections in your brain than you can atoms in the observable universe. And what's really cool about that is when you start to think about it that way, you don't even have to do the math to realize the awesome power that's within you that you can unleash um right now you are rewiring my functional connections and i'm rewiring yours right so we have this capacity as humans to absolutely do incredibly powerful things um and every individual has that capacity within them um i think the key thing is can we do them for positive good um because we know of lots of examples where we've done them, and it's not been for positive good.

And I think that as long as we as a society, you realize that the outcome of that, everyone loses, then if we unleash that, then we don't have to be so worried, I think, about what's going to happen with our life. We're going to surround ourselves with good people. We're going to find those good people and let them take our time and not worry so much about the ones that aren't positive good in our life. We're going to try to tap positive neuroplasticity. So rather than feeling like a victim and poor me, we're going to say,

okay, I can rewire my brain. So let's do it. Let's get disciplined and structured and work hard for that and stay at it. And then I think we're going to set sort of a purpose in life that we want to impact. And those people, their purpose might be coming up with why we don't have to rely on internal combustion. engines and cars anymore. Yeah. Or something else amazing that automatically, drastically changes a very scary problem.

I think that that's brilliant because I think of our court system and our court system treats every individual like they're sovereign. We treat them as if they could do good. We treat them as if they did commit a crime that they could move forward and not commit any more crimes. We have that implicit assumption that we're all created equal and that we all have this intrinsic value and we allow people to vote and we create. this environment where we really try and maximize the possibility that people could reach their

potential as whatever it is. And I think of my circumstance as somebody who felt like certain people were discouraging them, but having that confidence within myself to say, I don't have to fit the mold of other people in my circumstance who check a box. I can turn this around. And I think that that is where the science, the law, and the individual all kind of come together where it's like you can reach an insurmountable potential if you put your mind to it. Yeah, you remember we were talking about sometimes our prefrontal cortexes are too big, and they complicate things too much. I think what you just said in your example demonstrates that at the end of the day, it's as simple as it's up to you. Yeah.

Right? Like, you've got to show up, and you've got to, no matter what cards you've been dealt. And, you know, I say this, and I've alluded to it, but I got dealt tough cards. but I always chose to see that as an advantage, not a disadvantage. Yeah, can you tell us about some of those experiences, just a few? So people, because I think at this point in time, likely listeners are very intimidated by the role you've played in our society and the impact you've had. So it would be interesting to know some of those challenges you'd take.

Yeah, you know, I don't like to spend too much time on it because I think that we all have the capacity to dwell in kind of the sad stuff that happens and the tough stuff that happens. I've, you know, I lost my mom to alcoholism when I was seven. I had a lot of really tough, legitimately very hard things happened to me. But the reality is I get to choose how I respond to that. And as part of that, it's not that I pretend it didn't happen. I just really try to turn it into some positive. So I'll tell you about it because I want you to know that, yeah, that has.

happens. I want to validate that that is legitimately, you know, a horrible thing that happens to people. But I also don't want, I believe, all too often I even could be in a place where I want to feel sorry for myself or I want to give up or I don't have confidence. And at the end of the day, I just have to remember like, you know, that's your choice, right? And I can take another choice. And I, you know, in losing my mom, I figured out, that, you know, life is short. And so I always look at when I look back, what am I going to look back on and say, yeah, I'm proud I did it that way. So whenever it's, you know, it's always a tougher path, right, to take the route you took or the root I took or all we all take. But at

the end of the day, I'm going to look back and say, I'm glad I took the tougher path. Absolutely. And I think that that is such a strong example for people to be able to say, like, is my problem as bad as this other person? Probably not. So I can go and try. harder and put in that work and like people learn through the experience of hearing how hard other people's lives are like Trevor Greens is an excellent example of his situation was so much harder than the average Canadians so they can likely go forward and do even better as a average everybody on the planet yeah um and and i um every time i want to feel sorry for myself i think about you know if trev could do it i can do it yeah and i know um the person i just read a

a story in the news by Rob Dolson, who was a person who actually fired the rifle that killed the 16-year-old before he could take a second blow and kill Trevor. And he struggled through tremendous stuff. And he says exactly what I say. If Trevor could do that, I can do this. Right. And so I think when you look for some, you look for inspiration on podcasts like this or, or they're, it's all around us, right? You don't have to look far to find inspiring people and to, you know, to have positive people in your life. Yeah. You just have to do it. Yeah. I'm also interested to know you, I think another way that you're a role model is that you take this information and you bring it

to the front lines. You've mentioned that this organization works with UBC and other prestigious universities. Can you tell us about how you went about becoming a professor and sharing that knowledge with young people? Everything I've done, I mentioned this earlier, I don't really think too much about titles, right? So I didn't ever say, oh, I want to be a professor. Never. And fact, I actually sort of get uncomfortable if somebody calls me a professor. But I always, it was always, you know, that expression, form follows function. I wanted to impact the world through science. And I loved the brain and neuroscience.

And that path didn't actually take me right to be a professor. I was the head of the NRC Institute for Biodeagnostics Atlantic for 10 years, and I had professor titles, but it was not until I came back here that I took a job in a real way at the university, at Simon Fraser University, and there I enjoy the people the most. I love the students. I love the teaching and the ability to just get excited, you know, around. the number of people that you can have a positive impact and help their careers and be a mentor for them. And I take that incredibly seriously. And yeah, that's the value of that. But to be

honest, I often, I probably get myself in trouble for this. I often forget I'm a professor. Just like, you know, I don't go around thinking about anything I am in titles. I just, I'm just Ryan. Can you tell us more about that? Because I don't disagree with you. And one of my goals with this podcast was to not focus on just the career, just the person and their titles. Because I think that that's somewhere our society's gone a little bit too far,

where we miss out on the value that other people can play in our communities. And so I'm just interested to know how that philosophy, that mindset came about. Yeah, well, you said it. And I think there is a practical value that you need to be aware of. You have to be pragmatic, right? And you mentioned that there are certain things that allow you to do things. So I got my training and I got my, you know, anything that would get in my way. I just got it out of my way. So I wanted to perform at a high level on science and that's a PhD. You know, I wanted to continue to do research in Canada, which I do both as a professor in university and I do it as the head of my own company. One thing that's interesting, people all think that research just happens in universities. The bulk of research actually happens by companies. Right. But important research goes on at university and important teaching goes on there. So those were both things I felt were really critical to move things forward.

And so they became things that I needed to put into my tool belt. Right. Can you tell us about how you bring those two together? Because I think most people would be shot. Right. It's not easy. So how does that come about? because I know that most people think that all research,

when you hear about research in like news on CTV, you hear like, oh, Harvard did a study on this. So can you tell us about the background of how corporations and how business can get involved in research? Well, I first say that, again, to my point, corporations and business are probably some of the biggest leaders in research. You know, the quickest way to know that's true is ask the thought experiment of where did the vaccine come from?

Yeah. It wasn't a university. Yeah. And so it's really important to think about research in a broader scope. But the reality is that I think there are roles to play in innovation. And the businesses have a more direct and obvious role. I think that I've had the fortune of being involved in Canada's effort to really bring our universities and our publicly funded research organizations into the concept of valuing commercialization

and business and industry. And that's improving. But it's not necessarily a given, right? You can't just say, dear university, you should think about working with business and industry. Universities, people who are at universities are rated on their performance based on the number of publications they create

and number of students they teach and or train. and and and that is a you know a fundamental direction that they have that has um you can't you know if you're paddling the boat that way and then all of a sudden you say but you've got to do this and this is about you know developing a successful company it's obviously going to take some growth um and some time to get there yeah and and there are some places in canada that have that are further ahead and there are some places that are just out embarking on that adventure. But the good news is, and this is a little shout out to politicians, by and large, our politicians have got it right that we have to start competing in that. Because

internationally, innovation-wise, Canada's not doing well and hasn't ever in what we call the OECD ranking. So we would not be winning or even getting to go to the Olympics in innovation in this country. And that has to change, in my opinion. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that? because I think that that is really interesting to hear that we aren't leading the way in innovation. And how do we go about doing that? Or how have you been involved in bringing that about from Canada? I think we're doing it. I think now there are strong pockets throughout the country. I think we're starting to understand effective models. You're sitting on top of one of them right now, thankfully. But I think it's like turning a large boat. You can't think of it as a dinghy, right? It's not going to turn fast.

It's going to take time, and I think it's going to come out where there are going to be, we will reward people who want to do that, and we won't force those who are better at just being purely academic for being good at what they do too. And we'll just get a little more sophisticated in how we implement it. I think that's important because I hear a lot of insults towards universities and perhaps that academic mindset from being disconnected from business. Oh, they go both ways. Yeah.

Yeah. If you do translational applied, in the university worlds, you're not as smart. Yeah. Right. So I'm apparently not that smart because I do translational applied. But I trick them back because at 25% of what I do is high, hardcore foundational science, head spinningly, stuff, stuff. And so I'm always like, oh, well, there's that part, but there's this part. Yeah. And so you can do both. Yeah.

Right. So I think we just got to challenge the way we think and our automatic perspectives and just not an aggressive, you know, sort of critical and sense. snide way, but just in a fun and positive way of saying, hey, look, we all agree that this is, you got into this to help people, right? You didn't get into medical science research to not try and solve the problem. So if you agree with that, then let's just understand that's the critical role you play that you're specialized and then we'll get better at, you know, building teams that get that out the door. That was one of my questions was, do you find that it's hard for scientists or people who work with patients a lot to see them as people still.

Like you said, you still view everybody as a person. Do you think that that's something that the industry struggles with, or do you think that that is over? No, I don't think the industry struggles with that. I think it's an important thing because people forget in care or otherwise that, you know, if you come into my, you know, hospital-based medical imaging unit and you're coming in because you, you know, these would be a typical patient example that I can think of off the top of my head.

You've just been newly diagnosed with the brain tumor and you're contemplating surgery, which is brain surgery, which is really scary. You're not really too impressed by the fact that I have a four Tesla or a three Tesla MRI. You don't, for you, it's just an MRI. You're not going to say I got good quality care because I got the latest MRI scan. it's how people treat you that gives you a sense of equality care if they had time for you if they treated you as a human being and if you had it you know you felt you had a truly embracing and caring experience then then you're going to feel like you got better care um because you did

yeah but the challenge is and certainly um you know my wife romewina reminds me of this all the time and advocates for this our health care systems we have to understand that they, you know, all these people got in, particularly today with our first responders and COVID, they came into this business to help people. But the system is so incredibly overloaded that they could never help anywhere near the people that are there in the time that is available. So they're in a constant moral crisis of conflict, right? And that's not their fault.

It's not, there's no fault to be had. it's a problem that we need to solve by innovating our care systems. And we are. I love when people talk about, you know, there's no private or there shouldn't be private in Canada health care. There's been a mix of public and private and Canadian health for a long, long time. And it's helped to improve this problem. The problem is we're still not getting the level of health care in this country we need. And so we have to keep innovating and we have to keep opening our minds and we have to get out of sort of a fixed framework of, you know,

it's we must protect our public health system our public access to health care has to maintain but when access gets you know when your your health care workers are so overburdened and so taxed that we're worried about losing nurses and not having enough nurses and you're not good it doesn't matter if you have a public health care system you're going to have no access to health care yeah so i think people just they like to sort of polarize problems and that's not the solution the solution is to understand the problem, and then find a way to supportively affect some sort of improvement in that. That is true, and I'm interested to know your thoughts. I think of my friend Jake, and I'm interested to know how the client can be involved, because I think of people like

Debbie and Trevor. Oh, there's a shift. Yeah. The shift from kind of medicine with a paternalistic where you're patient and I'm doctor and, you know, we see each other on the other side of the desk, that's shifting. It's shifting with, you know, a lot of younger clinicians and practitioners coming through. It was shifting ahead of that. It's shifting with the digitization of our health care and medical data. Whether we like it or not, and this goes, you know, you should be your best advocate. The people who care for you should be the best advocates.

The problem now we're seeing is you still can't confuse that with expertise, right? Like three days of studying Facebook and Google does not make you an expert in, you know, unsafe, safety issues around vaccines. Yeah. Right. So I think the key part that we're struggling with this shift is how to still engage with experts to get that information and then utilize that as your own advocate rather than just say, whatever you say, doctor, I'll listen to whatever you do. Yeah, I think that that's so important because thinking of him and thinking of how well, it sounds like, Debbie and Trevor came to you, not as expert, but as honest people who were able to say... I came to them. Yeah, right. But the communication was honest in that they did their best to try and

understand kind of what was going on with Trevor and listen when doctors would explain things to them so that they could communicate that back to you. And I think of other doctors who don't let somebody come in with them when they're going to see them. Like I know people who, their doctor doesn't let anyone else in the room when they're seeing this one patient. And to me, that limits your ability to have a third party say, hey, I've watched this person. I've watched what they've been struggling with. And this is my individual perspective on how they've been approaching things. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they were in charge of their own health care. You know, when Debbie was told by a doctor that, you know, Trevor would go in a care home, she said, you don't know

Trevor. They took matters into their own hand, and that's very empowering and important. But they did it in an educated way where they relied on experts. And I was just one of the many. There were incredible experts that have helped them out along the way. And they just found the people they needed to help them continue along rather than feeling like they were a passive participant on a journey that they were not in control of. Yeah. And then I think of the fact that they approached that all honestly and then they connected with you and you sought them out because they were approaching things honestly. Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate you being willing to take the time and share such an important story and really show how one person can make a difference because I think

through all of the projects you've been involved and you've always approached it honestly and really brought about significant change and made improvements in the field and put Canada on the world stage in a meaningful way. And so to have this opportunity, it was just an absolute pleasure. Oh, it's great, Aaron. I love your story. I think the mission of this podcast is just so important. and so cool that, you know, I think to the degree that, that, you know, number one, it's a privilege to just sit up here and chat with you, but also that any of what we talked about is helpful or inspirational to people, I think that would be amazing. I will hopefully have positively impacted their functional connections in some way.

Yeah, I'm absolutely sure you have. Thank you again, Ryan. Awesome. Thank you.