Michael Sughrue, MD

"It’s all great and well for machine learning to spit out 30,000 outputs, but we have to look at these things and say, ‘does this make sense? What does this mean? Why do we think this part of the brain is in the machine learning?’ Humans need to go back and translate it."

Over time, it has been shown that brain disorders involve multiple and different neural dysfunctions, including regional brain damage, change to cell structure, chemical imbalance, and/or connectivity loss among different brain regions. For example, Alzheimer disease involves many symptoms clusters, including memory loss, apraxia, language impairment, and executive dysfunction, along with neural abnormalities including damage in the hippocampus and neocortex. Gaining a full understanding of the brain map and the complexities within it remains a challenge for researchers, even as these diseases become more highly characterized.

, machine learning may be a key piece to simplifying how clinicians approach these disorders. Sughrue is the founder and chief medical officer of Omniscient Neurotechnology, a company dedicated to improving the brain map through means of big data approaches and “connectomics.” In an interview with 

®, Sughrue discussed aspects the brain that remain unsolved, including the complexities associated with neurodegenerative disorders. He stressed the need to utilize the advanced technology being created, including machine learning and the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

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The founder and chief medical officer of Omniscient Neurotechnology commented on the areas of need with understanding the brain map and treating conditions with multiple pathway crossover. [WATCH TIME: 4 minutes]

Solving the Biggest Questions About the Brain With Advanced Technology: Michael Sughrue, MD

"If you use things like artificial intelligence, you can oftentimes pull this out and say ‘well, this is the cause of this symptom’ or ‘this is the cause of this problem.’ What this mean is that we can start to see mental illness, and when we see it, we can treat it. You can take an extraordinarily complex problem that humans have struggled with since the beginning of time, and make it fairly understandable with intelligence augmentation."

As clinicians gain a better understanding of the brain, they’re able to locate and treat patients’ conditions with more precision. Omniscient Neurotechnology is a company that uses connectomics, a big data approach to constructing and analyzing a computer-generated map of the brain’s functional and structural connections. In July 2021, the FDA awarded 510(k) clearance for Omniscient’s Quicktome, a digital brain mapping platform that allows neurosurgeons to visualize and understand a patient’s brain networks prior to performing brain surgery.

Quicktome incorporates connectomics and helps locate certain pathways that may be directly linked to complex functions such as language, movement, and cognition. Additionally, this planning software analyzes millions of data points derived from a patients MRI and stores them on a computer cloud, making it easily accessible for neurosurgeons and data scientists. Michael Sughrue, MD, chief medical officer and cofounder of Omniscient, believes the community needs to start leveraging these tools, as well as become more familiar with the use of artificial intelligence and the capabilities it has.

, Sughrue discussed how connectomics can be applied, as well as how Quicktome can revolutionize neurosurgery going forward. He also spoke on the next steps in fully committing to new technology like this and “moving the goalposts” in how we view and treat patients with mental illness.

The founder and chief medical officer of Omniscient Neurotechnology provided insight on the successes using connectomics, including the FDA approval of Quicktome, a digital brain mapping platform. [WATCH TIME: 4 minutes]

Applying Connectomics to Neurosurgery: Michael Sughrue, MD

"What makes it so exciting is that it lets us look into the black box a little deeper and see what’s happening in people’s brains when things aren’t working so well. Things like mental illness. Connectomics is a method for using things like [artificial intelligence] and machine learning to make the brain make sense at its connection level."

In 1909, German neurologist Korbinian Brodmann published his original research on cortical cytoarchitectonics and in it, included the first map of the cerebral cortex based on regional variations in structure. The model divided the brain into 47 parts, or parcellations, each with a supposed functional role. More than a century later, brain maps remain a critical part of how clinicians locate and assess where functional deficits may be stemming from.

Omniscient, a neurotechnology company, uses connectomics as a big data approach to construct and analyze a computer-generated map of the brain’s functional and structural connections. The connectome, a series of complex connections that make up the human brain, is the white matter between the cortex and subcortical structures to transfer information between the functional areas of the brain. While Brodmann’s brain map revolutionized how we view the brain, there were limitations, including only looking at gray matter, not white matter, as well as grouping multiple regions that performed distinct, unrelated functions.

Michael Sughrue, MD, chief medical officer and cofounder of the company, believes that connectomics allows clinicians and researchers to begin to look at how different parts of the brain interact with each other. In an interview with 

, Sughrue discussed this big-data approach, the capabilities it possesses, and how machine learning and artificial intelligence plays a major role in pairing and deciphering the data collected.

The founder and chief medical officer of Omniscient Neurotechnology discussed the idea behind connectomics and how AI revolutionizes large-scale brain data. [WATCH TIME: 4 minutes]

Michael Sughrue, MD

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Solving the Biggest Questions About the Brain With Advanced Technology: Michael Sughrue, MD

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