Kernel is a startup founded by Bryan Johnson that will begin shipping its helmets across the U.S. to its first customers next week per a recent article in BusinessWeek.  The helmet can measure the brain’s electrical impulses and blood flow – this technology has been around for years, but it typically involves brain implants and room size machines to accomplish the same tasks.
 
Bryan Johnson’s claim to fame.  Bryan Johnson, the founder, personally funded $55 million of the $110 million it took to develop the helmets.  That amount was part of a fortune he amassed when he sold his company Braintree to eBay for $800 million in cash in 2013.
 
A helmet in every household.  The first helmets being shipped carry a hefty price tag of $50,000, but Johnson’s goal is to bring down the price of the helmets to the price of an iPhone so he can put a helmet in every American household.
 
First customers.  The helmet’s first customers are themselves brainy – brain and research institutions including Harvard Medical School, the University of Texas, and Cybin Inc, a startup developing mental health treatments based on psychedelics.
 
Another early customer is Seattle's Allen Institute for Brain Science: Christof Koch, the chief scientist there calls Kernel's helmets "revolutionary."  Kernel’s helmets seem to have captured the holy grail of neuroscience, that is, the ability to “peer through the human skull outside of university or government labs,” per the BW article.
 
The science.  Despite the lack of an actual implant, the basic premise of the device remains the same: put electrodes and sensors as close as possible to someone’s neurons to detect when the neurons fire and relay that information to a computer.
 
Researchers will use the helmets to study brain aging, mental disorders, concussions and strokes.  The devices could also provide insight into the brain activity behind meditation and psychedelic drugs.
 
Bryan Johnson, founder and CEO of Kernel says:
“To make progress on all the fronts that we need to as a society, we have to bring the brain online.  We are the first generation in the history of Homo sapiens who could look out over our lifetimes and imagine evolving into an entirely novel form of conscious existence.”
 
And put more simply by him:
 
"The things I am doing can create a bridge for humans to use where our technology will become part of our self.”

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