Health Wanted: Brain-Computer Interfaces

The Episode

Mind control—it’s often thought of as a science fiction trope, borne from fears of body snatchers or domineering overlords. But what if we’re thinking about the term the wrong way? Maybe we should be considering the reverse. 

This week on Health Wanted, we talk about how brain-computer interfaces are expanding the possibilities for our minds to control our worlds, including an interview with Chetan Pandarinath, PhD, of the Systems Neural Engineering Lab.

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The Listener Questions

How is this year's flu season going?

As predicted, the flu season this year is off to a running start, and it is not good. Over Christmas, New York state reported they saw the highest number of flu cases in one week since they started tracking flu in 2004. That's a whopping 71,000 cases in just one week.

We have already surpassed last year’s percentage of outpatient visits for influenza-like illnesses for the same time period, and we are on the same trajectory for flu hospitalizations. We still don’t know if this year will outpace last year, and currently cases of RSV and COVID are relatively low, so at least we aren’t dealing with another “tridemic” year at the moment.

There’s also still time to get a flu shot! It’s likely the peak of flu won’t hit until February, and then many people will still get the flu as rates decline.

If you’re worried about how well the vaccine strain is matched to the mutated version of subclade K circulating this year, I have some good news. England saw a particularly early start to their flu season, so they’ve already been able to estimate flu vaccine effectiveness. While the U.S. and UK don’t use the same version of flu for their vaccines, both countries were worried about a mismatch affecting how well they worked. In England, it appears their mismatch is still working well to prevent hospitalizations.

For adults, it appears that the vaccine is 32-39% effective at preventing flu so severe that it requires attention in the ER or hospitalization. For kids, it reduces the risk by 72-75%. So, even vaccines that aren’t a perfect match are still doing their job.

That’s particularly important when it comes to kids. Last year’s flu season saw the most pediatric flu deaths since records of pediatric deaths started in 2004, with over 280 deaths. This season we’ve already had nine pediatric deaths due to flu.

Does the Shingrix vaccine really protect against cancer?

Currently, we don't have any evidence that the Shingrix vaccine prevents cancer.

The HPV vaccine, however, does protect against cervical cancer. In fact, Australia is on track to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035. They just reported that for 2021 (the most recent year with full data available) there were zero cervical cancer cases reported in people under 25. That’s the first time since record keeping began over 40 years ago. This is largely attributed to screening practices and HPV vaccination.

There is some evidence that Shingrix (the shingles vaccine) can help prevent dementia.

In 2024, a study was published based on a natural experiment, which is the rare occasion when circumstances essentially design an experiment that researchers can follow. In this case, it was the U.S. rapidly switching from Zostavax (which is a live attenuated vaccine) to Shingrix (which is a recombinant vaccine). This meant that there were basically naturally occurring cohorts that were well randomized to each vaccine with limited chance of bias.

This study found that people who got Shingrix had a 17% increase in freedom from dementia diagnosis, compared to people who got Zostavax.

Another study, which was published in 2025, used a natural experiment in Wales to see if Zostavax had an impact on dementia diagnosis. For that study, they were able to compare cohorts extremely close in time, because Wales wanted to roll out shingles vaccines but had limited supplies. They made a rule that anyone who was 79 on September 1, 2013, had one year to get the vaccine, then people who were 79 the next year would have one year, and so on. People who were 80 or older were simply out of luck.

This allowed researchers to compare the risk of developing dementia in people who were 79 within the week before the cutoff to those who were just one week too old to get it. The study found a 20% reduction in the risk of dementia within six years.

If we have one study that shows Zostavax can reduce the risk of dementia by 20%, and we have another study that shows Shingrix reduces the risk of dementia more than Zostavax, a study of Shingrix vs no vaccine might show an even higher reduction. But at the moment no such study exists.

Even more recently, a study published in December of 2025 by the same researchers found that people who received a shingles vaccine after being diagnosed with dementia were significantly less likely to die of the disease within the nine-year follow up period, suggesting shingles vaccines might also be able to slow the progression of dementia.

Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

• Streaming at wabe.org or the WABE app
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