Ranya Belmaachi

Current theories of consciousness are making predictions about distributed activity across the whole brain, yet every available recording method for reading the brain has trade-offs. Implanted electrodes give high resolution but only from a small targeted region. Non-invasive methods like EEG and MEG cover more of the brain but with poor spatial or temporal resolution. fMRI infers activity indirectly through hemodynamics on a timescale far slower than the phenomena of interest. All are reading a fraction of the brain, which is why decoding consciousness has had bottlenecks: you cannot capture a distributed, whole-brain phenomenon with a partial view of it. Each method forces a trade-off between coverage and resolution, and as a result the leading theories remain empirically underdetermined rather than genuinely tested against one another. This presentation introduces a different measurement architecture. Subsense is developing a non-surgical neural interface based on nanoparticles delivered intranasally, requiring no craniotomy, no implanted array, and no fixed recording site. It is designed to read across the whole brain at single-neuron level resolution. I will explain the operating principle, the current preclinical stage of development, and the constraints that remain unresolved. I will then show how this combination closes the gap, and how it makes accurate decoding of conscious states possible rather than inferred. Whole-brain, high-resolution measurement does not by itself explain why physical processes give rise to subjective experience. What it does is open a new window into the brain, turning questions currently limited by how we read it into questions we can actually answer, and narrowing the explanatory gap.

Ranya Belmaachi is Product Lead at Subsense, where she works on the development of the first ever non-surgical invasive nanoparticle brain computer interface pioneering the Nanobci field. She has several years of experience in neurotechnology and previously worked at OpenBCI, where she contributed to product development across neuroscience, AI, and machine learning. She studied Computational Neuroscience at Barnard College, Columbia University, and is interested in translating advances in brain science into practical technologies. Ranya is also involved in several communities such as the iBCI-cc, American Brain Coalition, Brainmind, and more to help expand and improve the field. She has spoken at several events and more recently at the Neuromodec conference in New York City where she discussed the necessary steps for a company to commercialize in the neurotech space.