Juan Benet Podcast

The Mission to Get Breakthrough Brain Treatments to Everyone | Jacques Carolan of ARIA

Juan Benet — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:20:33 -0400

Episode 3 of my new podcast features Dr. Jacques Carolan, a founding Program Director at ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency. He directs two neurotech programs aimed at one of the most important opportunity spaces: developing tools and systems to interface, at scale, with the human brain.

One program is built on the idea that brain disorders are circuit problems, and funds tools to target those circuits with molecular precision across the whole brain. The other aims to deliver high-performance neurotech to the brain non-invasively or at most in a 30-minute outpatient procedure.

We dig into the engineering and biology behind both programs, potential scaling unlocks for the field, how ARIA programs drive breakthroughs, Jacques background, the role of media in shaping the future, and much more. I hope you enjoy the conversation!

Other links to this episode and references below.

Sections

00:00:00 Introduction

00:01:22 Why 20 years of neurotech breakthroughs haven't reached patients

00:04:08 The two variables that determine whether any medical technology gets adopted

00:09:17 Brain disorders cost the UK £100B/year and we're barely treating them

00:16:15 Using stem cells and gene therapy to build better brain interfaces

00:21:40 Self-regulating gene therapy that helps the brain quiet its own seizures

00:24:03 The non-technical reasons transformative neurotech fail to reach patients

00:31:34 Watching a 30-second brain ablation stop severe tremors

00:38:11 The case for delivering brain implants and therapies without opening the skull

00:50:56 Why high technical uncertainty makes distributed teams better than vertical integration

01:02:55 Why the UK keeps producing world-class neuroscience but not world-class neurotech companies

01:11:04 What AI-driven hypothesis generation means for breakthroughs per pound

01:20:40 From quantum computing to improv comedy to running £119M government brain programs

Links from the Podcast

Jacques Carolan

Website: https://jacquescarolan.github.io/
On X: https://x.com/jacquescarolan

Jacques’ Programs at ARIA

Research Papers + Technical References

Videos + Demonstrations

References Mentioned in Conversation

Harvard Designated Driver Campaign partnered with more than 160 TV shows, including Cheers and Dallas, helping popularize designated driving before Friends premiered in 1994
Mahnaz Avarneh — Neurotechnology Is Inequity

Books + Media

Links

Disclaimer⁠: https://bit.ly/PodcastDisclaimer

Ben Rapoport — Treating Paralysis and Digitizing Neural Data

Juan Benet — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:50:08 -0400

Ben is co-founder and CSO of Precision Neuroscience, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Scientific Director at Mount Sinai. Previously, he co-founded Neuralink and Simbionics (acquired by Apple).

Precision is building a minimally invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) that reads from thousands of points on the cortex without penetrating it. The Layer 7 device is implanted through a one-millimeter slit in the skull rather than the larger borehole other approaches require. It is also fully removable.

Precision seeks to help the 5 million people living with severe paralysis in the US (including 800,000 new stroke cases per year). In March 2025, Precision received FDA clearance for a temporary wired version of the system. Over 85 patients have been implanted with and used the device in clinical studies. Wireless implants are planned for 2027.

We go deep on the history of Neurotech from the 1980s to the ML inflection points that triggered Neuralink's founding, why surface ECoG was a contrarian bet that's now paying off, the path to treating paralysis and stroke at scale, and why Ben believes neural data is at the same inflection point genomic data was in 2000 — a whole class of biological problems about to become tractable as computer science problems.

Sections

00:00:00 Introduction

00:04:39 Paralysis as a lens to understand the brain

00:05:36 The 1980s breakthrough: population encoding and the birth of BCI

00:14:36 Google Translate, ML, and the founding of Neuralink

00:23:08 What is the long-term vision of Precision Neuroscience

00:31:56 Layer 7 and why transformative technology always looks impossible at first

00:50:21 The surgery: a slit in the skull, not a borehole

00:55:19 The clinical program: who are the patients

01:04:16 FDA clearance and the path to wireless implants in 2027

01:08:32 The patient population: paralysis and stroke at scale

01:16:26 Neural data as the new genomics

01:30:06 BCIs, AI, and the future of the human-machine interface

01:31:22 From medical necessity to lifestyle technology

01:40:36 Precision as a platform — and an optimistic vision

Links from the Podcast

Precision Neuroscience

Layer 7 BCI

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Links

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

Juan Benet — Tue, 05 May 2026 05:00:00 -0400

Max Hodak is the founder and CEO of Science Corp (previously co-founded Neuralink and Transcriptic). Science is building PRIMA, a retinal prosthetic that’s restoring meaningful vision for patients with blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration. The team is also developing a biohybrid brain implant that grows living neurons directly onto a silicon chip, then interfaces that system with the cortex.

In this conversation, we go deep on how both technologies work, how PRIMA restores vision, how the biohybrid BCI connects to the brain, what the next milestones are for neural interfaces, and what it would imply to add a new functional brain area to a human.

We also dig deep into how Max built and leads Science: his founder story, how the team drives Fast R&D, and how the team is able to speed through high-uncertainty, high-impact projects.

Hope you enjoy!

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:52 What counts as neurotech?
01:45 History of brain-computer interfaces and the iPhone dividend
07:25 PRIMA - How Science is restoring vision in blind patients
10:10 Why stimulating bipolar cells works when the optic nerve doesn't
30:30 Are we bottlenecked by biology or engineering?
32:40 Expanding the brain's bandwidth beyond 10 bits per second
37:00 Can we add new areas to the brain?
37:46 Biohybrid BCIs: neurons growing on a chip
39:20 What could neural augmentation look like?
01:13:20 How Science drives Fast R&D
01:44:00 How founders learn and level up

Links
Woman hearing for the first time
PRIMA Visual Prosthesis
PRIMA patient filling out crossword puzzle
PRIMA a global mission to restore vision
Biohybrid BCI
Patrick Collison FAST post
iPhone launch keynote in 2007
Pantheon on Netflix

Links
Juan Benet on X
PL Neuro
Protocol Labs

Disclaimer