Commercial Real Estate; Master of the Mind | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

0:07 what is New York City without its Skyline monuments to Commerce standing proudly shoulder toosh shoulder more office space than any city in the world but Peak inside all this vertical real estate and there's a fundamental question where is everyone more than 95 million square ft of New York office space currently unoccupied the equivalent of 30 empire state buildings I think this is an existential moment you know I call it crossing the chasm what's the chasm specifically this postco world of higher

0:39 interest rates the changing nature of how people work and live we're not going back to where we were it's a different world and it's going to be turbulent you're going to go right in there most American families know someone who's been Afflicted with Alzheimer's disease or the scourge of addiction tonight we will show you research that is being done on both and introduce you to the pioneering neuroscientist who allowed us to follow his startling progress okay ready we can

1:09 Sonic it now there we go there's always risk but you cannot advance and make discoveries without risk but we need to push forward and take the risk because people with addiction and Alzheimer's just not going away it's here so why wait 10 20 years do it now I'm Leslie stall I'm Bill Whitaker I'm Sharon alansy I'm John wory I'm Cecilia Vega I'm Nora odonnell I'm Scott Pell

1:40 those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes looking for signs the US economy can continue to Stave off a recession avert your gaze from commercial real estate City office buildings are in trouble for a century the towers have been propped up by two pillars one workers filling the buildings all week two money flowing freely in the form of loans to borrow buy and build those days

2:13 are over as hybrid work hardens from Trend to New Normal office occupancy rates have hit all-time lows meanwhile interest rates have spiked to Historic highs and now the morgage comes due $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate loans expire in the next 2 years it's enough to make you rethink the future of cities we crisscross Manhattan talking to players big and small about a sector Rock to its foundations what is New York City without its Skyline monuments to

2:44 Commerce standing proudly shoulder toosh shoulder more office space than any city in the world but Peak inside all this vertical real estate pen there's a fundamental question where is everyone more than 95 million ft of New York office space currently unoccupied the equivalent of 30 empire state buildings this building had a lot of law firms had some government Scott reckler is CEO of rxr a New York real estate company with more than 20 billion

3:14 dollar in Holdings we walk through his property at 61 Broadway near Wall Street every other floor half the building lies empty I think this is an existential moment you know I call it crossing the chasm what's the chasm specifically this postco the world of higher interest rates the changing nature of how people work and live we're not going back to where we were it's a different world and it's going to be turbul it already is the return to office has stalled out

3:43 Fridays are dead Mondays aren't much busier as tenants shrink their office footprint office landlords are confronting the fact that some of their buildings have become obsolete if not worthless ever the pragmatist reckler decided not to throw good money after bad at 61 Broadway and defaulted to his bank on a $240 million loan I could see people saying it's a lot of money how did he sleep last night we invest a lot of equity if it works we make a lot of

4:11 money if it doesn't work the lender can take over the building you got to face reality right reality is coming your way the reality is the price of Office Buildings is tanking as much as 40% since the pandemic uptown at Columbia business school Stan Van Newberg a professor of real state has modeled out the impact of hybrid work on pricing and calls it a train wreck in slow motion and this is just a beginning and the reason is just a beginning is

4:39 because there's a lot of office tenants that have not had to make an active space decision yet do I want to renew this space do I want to vacate maybe I sign a new lease for half as much space this is what tenants have been doing for the last three years so when you take all of those current and future declines of cash flows into account we end up with about a 40% reduction and the value of these

5:01 offices consider this office building near Penn Station one of a handful of sales in the city last fall built in 1920 and showing its age eight empty floors with a 99 cent store on the ground level cocoa Butters 80% off real estate Partners Tony Park and aad drawer told us they'd been eyeing that building for years and prepandemic offered the owner $80 million they didn't get very far he doesn't answer he didn't even answer answer yeah we didn't have his attention

5:32 at all so what do you think happened the whole building is now empty in September Park and drawer got the building for less than half their original offer and they have planned to convert the place did you ever think of just keeping it as an office building no never you laugh anything that is not an office anything that is not an office Miss Hall good morning so much for the prestige Hollywood has has for decades conferred

6:00 on Manhattan office life suffice to say they didn't set Mad Men in succession above a 99 cent store no has gotten weird okay it has gotten very weird but you might set a glitzy office drama in a place like this one Vanderbilt part of a crop of so-called trophy buildings one resilient sliver of this changing real estate market to the very very top Mark holiday is CEO of SL Green New York's biggest office landlord also the 60

6:28 minutes landlord he took us to the top of his new3 billion skyscraper probably see half halfway to Philly from here yeah oh for sure that's from here that's a Chip Shot there's a view but more critically the building is connected underground to Grand Central Terminal for an easy commute trophy buildings reflect a flight to Quality corporate tenants with Deep Pockets flocking to edity Rich Towers this one includes two Michelin star restaurants all of it designed to

6:58 motivate employees to leave leave their homes one Vanderbilt is 99% occupied a hedge fund here a consulting firm there but when we talked to him in September holiday was obsessing over occupancy across all of SL Green's properties our goal was 92% for this year now we've got some work to do to get there your occupancy rates now are about 89% you said ideally about 92 would be great I could see people saying it's two three points difference what's the big deal no

7:27 when you have 30 million square fet like we do every 1% is a big difference you know we pride ourselves in in keeping our occupancies historically at 95% and above you do accept that work from home is a fundamental shift in in how we work and that it's here to stay it's one of the biggest societal problems we're facing right now is work from home I think that it's bad for business it's bad for cities it's bad for people it's

7:56 also been bad for his stock price down 50% since the pandemic a culture of smooth talk and sharp elbows commercial real estate is a world built on loans big ones and the assumption that those loans will be refinanced with little friction every 5 to 10 years not anymore the bank will look at that building and say well I used to be willing to lend you $80 million against this building but I don't think that building is worth

8:23 as much anymore as it used to be so maybe today I'm only willing to lend you $60 million against that same building right and now the office owner they got a choice to make you know do I come out of pocket for that $20 million difference or do I walk away the rubber meets the road when it comes time to refinance right and to make matters worse interest rates are now much higher interest rates have essentially doubled

8:44 so the cost of that new mortgage even if you can get one will be much higher what happens when that cost becomes too high pursuant to the terms of sale on the lawn in front of a Manhattan Courthouse we saw something you won't see on a double-decker bus tour 9,650 a mortgage foreclosure on an office building 10 million going once 10 million going twice here no one in the crowd is willing to outbid the bank holding the

9:10 loan on the building and if the bank rep doesn't look thrilled it's because he has an empty office building dragging down his balance sheets Professor van Newberg has been meeting with captains of industry and the Federal Reserve on this very point so commercial real estate is a huge part of the book of business of your typical bank and I'm talking mostly about these smaller and medium-sized maybe Regional Banks they have a lot of exposure that is their

9:36 bread and butter activity about 30% of all their loans are commercial real estate loans and here we are sort of seeing weakness in office that is something like that we have never seen before and Banks need to come to grips with that are you comfortable calling this a crisis I think we're at the beginning there's a potential crisis here in December Nationwide office loan delinquency rates crowded 6% almost 4 four times what they were a year ago but

10:01 banks have been reluctant to write down those losses you know Ender David aam from Maverick real estate a firm he and his partner founded after the 2008 financial crisis their specialty buying distressed debt on the cheap avaron keeps tabs on the debt on every office building in the city he says New York is a wash in billions worth of commercial real estate loans at risk of not being paid we know that there's this buildup of bad debt in the system but it's not

10:31 being dealt with just yet and it's in large part because the banks have been kicking the can down the road as best they can trying to push this off as far as they can what does that mean it means that banks are entering into extensions on a lot of their bad loans which essentially change their classification from a non-performing loan a loan that's in distress to a performing loan a healthy loan even though they haven't received a pay down

11:00 on the loan and the collateral value on that loan continues to drop extend and pretend that's right and it works really well when interest rates are low because the banks can just keep the status quo going but once rates are high it doesn't really work anymore a downturn in real estate made worse by bad loans contaminating Banks and potentially the entire economy Echoes of the global financial crisis of 2008 are hard to ignore but whether the trouble with Office

11:31 Buildings ends in a simple pricing correction or becomes a systemic crisis likely there's pain coming not just for building owners and Banks but for cities themselves in the long run property taxes on those buildings will also Fall by 40% and these commercial property tax revenues are an important component of the budget of local governments which means less money for police departments trash collection and some people are going to decide that you know the quality of life has deteriorated too

12:01 much and they went out and in fact that's what we've seen in the last three years about our largest 10 cities have lost about 2 million residents you're losing that tax base as well and now you're losing that tax base and now this cycle continues and we end up in something that we have called an urban Doom loop it's awfully quiet around here the urban Doom Loop sounds scary and it's making the rounds threatening cities Beyond New York Dallas Chicago to

12:27 say nothing of San Francisco a question posed across the country especially given the housing shortage why not convert empty Office Buildings to Apartments some developers are the elevators here we're standing about Tony Park and a lad Roar are turning the former 99 Cent Store building into 77 units renting at market price developers we talk to say they simply can't turn a profit converting to affordable housing less than half of New

12:57 York office space is zoned for conversion and even then it's not so easy we visited this residential conversion near Wall Street where developers from Van Barton group were making an end run around a city rule that says you can't add to existing square footage what is this call this the void they call this the void a giant 30-story hole they cut through the middle of the building it's one of the tricks of the trade you take

13:27 the center section of the office floor the part that doesn't get a lot of light and air seal it up and preserve that square footage so you can apply it somewhere more valuable say a penthouse residents may not even know it's here they'll never know maybe not but the void offers a larger lesson in urban real estate where there's space there's potential this would be the tallest commercial building in the Western Hemisphere by floor for Scott reckler

13:53 that means doubling down even in a down market near Grand Central he's lined up financing to build his own trophy building part office part hotel but for Professor van Newberg the reimagining can and should be far more ambitious a sweeping New Deal combining public and private money and ideas for what to do with old office space it's no longer fit for purpose we got to redesign it you know more space for communities more space for artists maybe

14:23 pickle ball courts or basketball courts there's lots of different uses for these buildings especially when you can buy them at a at a depressed price if an Newberg gave us the term Urban Doom Loop he also gives off a certain optimism about the current point of inflection for all of human history humankind has been tied to to work where it lives we were farming the farms and we lived on our Farms we were working in the

14:47 factories and living close to the factories we no longer have to live where we work and that's a very transformational idea and I believe Society is only at the beginning of realizing the full potential of that idea who wants to live in a converted office building from the 70s what would this floor have been cubicles at 60 Minutes overtime.com sponsored by

15:18 fizer anyone who's had experience with Alzheimer's disease knows the agony of watching someone fade away as it steals memory and at the end a person's own identity tonight we'll show you an experimental way to try and beat back Alzheimer's it's been tested on just a handful of patients but it caught our attention because of the doctor involved Dr Oli rosai whose 60 Minutes first met 20 years ago Dr Rai is a neuroscience Pioneer who's developed treatments for

15:49 Parkinson's Disease and other brain disorders over the last year we followed this master of the Mind as he attempted to delay the progression of all Alzheimer's disease and its worst symptoms using ultrasound we saw a Cutting Edge approach to brain surgery with no cutting if we can we should not be doing brain surgery you're a brain surgeon I am but I should be out of a job because brain surgery it's cutting the skin opening the skull it can be

16:17 barbaric you're going to go right in there it looked like a scene from a sci-fi movie just make a little bit more comfortable a Halo wrapped patient pushed into a tube ready go as a team of doctors manipulate his brain from the other side of the glass gain high modulate power 3 minutes okay we're ready to go Dr oi Rai allowed us to witness his revolutionary attempt to use ultrasound to slow down the cognitive decline in three patients diagnosed with

16:46 Alzheimer's disease it's never been done before there's no medical cares here it's advancing medicine with calculated risks and pushing the Frontiers so we're targeting these areas Dr Rai and his team are focused on these red patches in the patient's brain scans the red indicates the densest beta ameloid protein that gummy protein is believed to play a major role in Alzheimer's by disrupting communication between brain cells in people with Alzheimer's it

17:17 accumulates much faster and over time these protein aggregates we call them plaques like plaques and arteries they keep on accumulating and impacting function there are two FDA approved drugs on the market that can help break up that brain plaque at a canab was approved in 20121 followed by lamap last year both are given intravenously but they work slowly typically you go into the clinic

17:47 and you get an IV and you have the antibody infusion over 1 to two hours and you have to do it once a month or twice a month for 18 months and longer and during the those 12 to 18 months the brain is continuing to progress Alzheimer's is not going away it takes so long because the drugs have a hard time getting through something called the bloodb brain barrier this tight filter of cells lined the blood vessels

18:13 to keep toxins from leaking into the brain but it also prevents almost all of the medication from getting into we think that that's what's causing the BB disruption by opening this year Dr Rai thought he could solve that problem with ultrasound the same technology that's been used for 70 years to give doctors a view of organs and Fetal development just in good you're good come back he chose ultrasound because it easily penetrates the skull and can be focused

18:41 like sunlight through a magnifying glass to help open the bloodb brain barrier and allow the drugs to rush in this way we're getting the payload the therapeutic payload exactly to the area it needs to go with a high penetration but we got to be careful because we want to be safe about this you don't want to deliver too much don't want to open the blood brain barrier too much because if you open it too much what could happen

19:03 you get bleeding in the brain it can get swelling in the brain you can get many other problems so you have to get it just right we will show you exactly how that worked and the early results in a minute but to understand why one of the country's most accomplished brain surgeons is betting on ultrasound okay open and close your hands for me you have to go back to 2002 when Dr Rai first caught our attention in a story

19:28 morly safer reported on treating Parkinson's disease look up show me your teeth stick a tongue out very good Dr Rai was among the first to implant a pacemaker type device in the brain which stopped uncontrollable movements suffered by Parkinson's patients it's like traveling through a labyrinth as in the Greek myth and around every quarter you have that bloodthirsty monster that can jump on you so you want to be careful to avoid these areas that kind of implant surgery is now routine for

19:59 advanced Parkinson's du Rai went on to write hundreds of scientific papers secured dozens of patents and present his Parkinson's research to Congress and the White House he could have gone to any big city Research Center but true to form he chose to try something different and moved to Morgantown West Virginia where he is the executive director of the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute it was a fantastic move because we're able to achieve so many things that would have been difficult that other

20:28 institutions sometimes in the bigger institutions you may not be hungry as much for you may have a thousand different agendas and priorities here we think we have a very Nimble and agile team that can quickly get outcomes like in 2019 okay this is video Dr rai's team took when they were among the first to use ultrasound to treat Tremors for 15 years Dan wall had been suffering from essential tremor a neurological disorder you okay you got a hat on now okay all

20:58 right all right very good rai's team focused ultrasound into a part of the brain called the thalamus to destroy a pinpoint size patch of tissue doctors believed was responsible for the Tremors these are the 980 elements converion right there wall was awake during the procedure touch my finger with your finger after 2 hours the 71-year old's Tremor was gone I'm still afraid I'm going drop it you got it I've got it really good you

21:29 yeah wow prise the Lord that success helped convince drze good morning that focused ultrasound could be adapted to patients with other brain disorders including Alzheimer's disease my first symptoms that I noticed were that I was having trouble typing at work did you think you had Alzheimer's no I didn't Dan Miller is just 61 years old his wife Kathy began noticing changes four years ago he kind of hit it

22:01 pretty well and then I noticed he was having trouble his clothes would be backwards and those kinds of things just little things just little things yes a scan of his brain revealed what Dan had been hiding Mr Miller had a very large amounts of beta amalo the red spots indicated a buildup of those beta ameloid proteins the so-called brain plaque a marker of Alzheimer's Dr Rai explained to Miller he couldn't cure him of the disease but he hoped to

22:32 slow its progression why take part in the trial if it's not a cure I have to explain to you that I was at the point you know like in Dante's Inferno where where it says abandon all hope you who enter here for me it was just you know let's do this you know what do I have to Le and you are infusion sir here's how it worked hours before the procedure Miller was was given an IV treatment of adak

22:59 canab one of those two new drugs to reduce beta ameloid plaque Miller was then fitted with this million dooll helmet similar to the one the team used to treat Tremor patients it directs nearly a thousand beams of ultrasound energy at a Target the size of a pencil Point basically the patient lies on the MRI table and the head goes inside the helmet and the patient is immobilized with a Halo or with a mouthpiece because we don't want

23:30 movements to cause errors in our targeting in the brain is that comfortable thumbs up once inside the MRI machine gave Dr Rai a 3D view of the plaque he would Target in Dan Miller's brain The Next Step was an IV solution that contained microscopic bubbles when hit with ultrasound energy the bubbles pry openen that bloodb brain barrier okay ready we can Sonic now there we go the bubbles start vibrating they're

24:01 moving they're moving they start expanding so you can open the barrier temporarily now it's open for 24 to 48 hours and then it reseals so this gives you a tremendous opportunity for 24 to 48 hours with the barrier being open so now Therapeutics can get inside the brain you can't hear ultrasound that noise is a signal to tell rai's team the ultrasound is doing its work very nice opening at the blood brain

24:33 barrier each dot represents an area where all the waves all the ultrasound waves converge and open the blood brain barrier so this is just one blast if you will one blast getting there and you're hitting one point one point and then it moves to the next one even though patients were awake they told us they didn't feel a thing it all took a couple of hours and they went home when it was over ready the the

24:57 three patients were given the treatments of ultrasound with infusion once a month over 6 months that's another Target right there the result beta ameloid plaque targeted with ultrasound were reduced 50% more than areas treated by infusion alone that's the top of the head right there Dr Rai shared the three patients brain scans with us and the red indicates more density of beta ameloid plaques in the brain so you can see as you treat it with ultrasound look

25:27 closely at the areas outlined in white that were targeted with ultrasound and the drug you get reduction whoa right that's after you can see the plaques are very significantly reduced by opening the blood rain barrier just in one area have you lay back Dan Miller and the third patient in the trial had larger areas of their brain targeted with ultrasound and this is his Baseline and then you can see here after 26 weeks there's a very dramatic reduction in the

25:57 beta ameloid in the areas as outlined by this white Mark and now we're going to look at patient number three and this patient underwent antibody infusion therapy plus ultrasound you can see this area which is really amazing the ultrasound opened the blood vein barrier and the antibody went in faster and cleaned out the plaques what was your reaction when you saw this scan I mean my jaw dropped I'm like whoa I was actually even in the clinic seeing

26:25 patients and the Pet Scan technician called and said oh yeah there's a big change I'm like how do you know we have to analyze it he's like no you can see it on the screen so what did you think when Dr Rai shared the the scans with you it was surreal you can really see it you don't have to be a doctor and understand what's going on there absolutely not even the red is decreasing that's amazing Kathy Miller

26:50 says she can see it in her husband too who slips up once in a while but hasn't slipped further away he has trouble finding things I'll send him into the kitchen to get something and he's like it's not there and I'm like yes it is I can see it but he can't see it but if that's the worst that's nothing you'll take it I'll take it you feel hopeful about the future I do yes I learned that what I

27:18 needed to do is accept that the Old Dan is gone and then start working on the new me which has a future Dr aai's team told us there's been no change in the ability of the three patients to do their daily activities since the ultrasound treatments ended in July now that Dr Rai has shown Focus ultrasound can clear beta ameloid plaques faster he has FDA approval to use ultrasound to try and

27:50 restore brain cell function lost to alzheimer's what's the result of breaking up all those plaques to the damage that's already been done to the brain we don't know if it's going to reverse the damage to the brain because Alzheimer's the underlying cause is still occurring so we have another study that we're looking at with ultrasound first clear the plaques then deliver ultrasound in a different dose to see now if we can reverse it or boost the

28:19 brain more for people with Alzheimers when we come back we'll show you Dr rai's new way to use ultrasound to reset the brain and help people suffering from drug addiction the human brain contains a 100 billion neurons that's as many cells as there are stars across the Milky Way Dr

28:51 Oli Rai has spent 25 years exploring this Frontier of medicine the surgical techniques in therapies he pioneered are in use around the world Dr Rai allowed us to see his latest research over the last year at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute in Morgantown West Virginia it includes revolutionary treatments for a brain disease suffered by 24 million Americans addiction the results so far have been life-changing for the people we met once trapped by

29:23 drugs looking back I didn't have a chance what do you mean you didn't have a chance I couldn't do anything without having that drug in my system Jared Buckhalter is the son of a coal miner at 6'3 he was a high school football standout who dreamed of playing wide receiver at Penn State but after a shoulder injury he got hooked on painkillers the very first time that I that I took that first pill I I knew

29:54 that I wanted that feeling for the rest of my life but what dides it feel like it's just pure Euphoria he took us to where he said he often went to buy drugs including heroin everybody in morgant town knows to to come here he's probably 17 18 years old you know just a kid bu cter still looks like an athlete it's hard to imagine he was an addict for more than 15 years he told us he does

30:20 not remember how many times he overdosed and that he couldn't stay clean for more than 4 days at a time didn't know where I was going to sleep some nights you know my family didn't want me around anymore I just I did so many things to hurt them that you know it was just too much for them to deal with four years ago a psychologist who' worked with buck halter introduced him to Dr Ali rosai who was gearing up to perform

30:46 a new kind of brain surgery to treat severe addiction our protocol was people that have failed everything once you've tried everything everything residential programs multiple failures detox multiple times outpatient inpatient multiple overdoses I think he classified it as a endstage drug user I mean end stage makes you think that this is the end of your life correct and here in that at the age of 34 it was crazy

31:17 bring the DS electr in Dr Rai thought he might be able to adapt technology he helped develop years earlier to treat Parkinson's disease to treat people with severe addiction we've been able to map out with Neuroscience Imaging there's a specific part of the brain that is electrically and chemically malfunctioning that is associated with addiction so it's not just willpower it's what's happening in the brain it's a brain disease it's an electrical and chemical abnormality in the brain that

31:49 occurs over time with recurrent use of drugs and this can be any substance as alcohol can be opioids amphetamines cocaine and they all are involving the same part of the brain and so your idea was what with the implant Parkinson's we implant that in the movement part of the brain that is electrically malfunctioning causing shaking in this case we're going into behavioral regulation anxiety and craving parts of the brain Dr Rai has seen the impact of

32:21 addiction in his community the problem is so severe in morgant town a vending machine enses the overdose antidote Narcan for free you got your baselines the National Institute on drug abuse agreed to support Dr rai's attempt to fight addiction with a brain implant in 2019 the FDA gave him a green light to attempt the groundbreaking surgery cover pleas that is Jared Buck halter he agreed to be the first addiction patient in the US to get the implant Dr rai's

32:53 team interviewed him the day before the surgery the best outcome possible would be you know just to cut the Cravings out and and make me feel a little bit better if you know if those couple things happen you know that's all I could possibly ask for at that time I was so desperate for a better life that I was willing to do just about anything and I signed up to do it I think some people might look

33:24 at this and think an electronic implant in the brain sounds a little creepy people maybe 50 years ago they say a implant in the heart sounds creepy now it's like normal 25 years ago people are saying what are you doing you're putting an implant in the brain for Parkinson's but now it is routine part of standard of care for advanced Parkinson's this is video from the 7-hour procedure I'm you are surgery so new it didn't have a name yet Dr Rai

33:54 opened a nickel-sized hole in buckle alter skull then he directed a thin wire with four electrodes deep inside Jared are you okay yes sir all right Jared was awake during the surgery why was that necessary to map the brain we have tiny microphones the size of a hair we put inside the brain and they're going slowly with micro robots they go at increments of a thousandth of a millimeter very slow we drive them into the brain and we're listening to the

34:23 neurons talking to each other in addiction we want to find the area in the reward center so that confirms where we are in the brain once we listen and we say okay that's the right sound then we put the final therapeutic pacemaker what does it sound like static electricity which may be electricity to you but it's music to my ears music because Dr Rai says it's a signal that he found the right spot in the brain for

34:49 the implant once in place the wire was connected to a device placed below the collar bone okay the electrical pulses it sends to the brain are intended to suppress Cravings Buck halter said it was painless post surgery the system is adjusted remotely with a tablet computer is needed when they turned the unit on it was an immediate change what was the change just felt better you know just felt like I did prior to ever using

35:21 drugs but a little bit better and it was at that point that I knew that I was going to have a legitimate shot at doing well in all four patients with severe drug addiction had the implant surgery one had a minor relapse another dropped out of the trial completely but two have been drug free since their operations including Jared Buck halter who's been clean for 4 years if you hadn't met Dr Rai if you hadn't gone

35:51 through this implant do you think you'd be sitting here talking to me today you may may be talking to my parents you know those that have lost their their loved ones to a drug overdose but you wouldn't be talking to me there's there's no doubt about that beautiful beautiful the surgery was a success but opening someone's skull is always risky Dr Rai thought he could reach more patients quickly if he used ultrasound he was already using it to

36:23 treat other brain disorders and was convinced focused ultrasound could Target the same area of the brain as the implant is this brain surgery without a knife it is indeed so this is there's no skin cutting there's no opening the skull so it is brain surgery without cutting the skin indeed now this is just the measuring part right Dr Rai explained how his team would be the first to treat addicts by aiming hundreds of beams of ultrasound to a

36:50 precise Point deep inside the brain so the area that we're treating is the reward center in the brain which is the nucleus accumass which is right down at the base of this dark area and then we deliver ultrasound waves to that specific part of the brain and we watch how acutely on the table your cravings and your anxiety changes in response to Ultrasound how is the ultrasound making a change here

37:22 ultrasound energy is changing the electrical and chemical mil or activity in this structure in the brain involving addiction and Cravings just resetting them and giving them kind of a fresh start at this point it seems like the brain is being reset or rebooting of the brain and the Cravings are less they're managed anxiety is better so now that allows them to interact with the therapist it's very important to know that this is not a cure but an

37:52 augmentation of the therapy by reducing the cravings and anxiet xiety that's so overwhelming that the therapist has difficulty working with the patient last February we watched Dr Rai use focused ultrasound to treat Dave Martin who told us he's been surrounded by friends and family who use drugs his whole life when did you start using drugs when I was seven years old seven yes I did drugs for 37 years what kind of drugs were you using anything I can get my hands

38:24 on inside the MRI Martin was shown these images of drug use to stoke his Cravings his legs were moving a lot and he's very agitated a simultaneous brain scan allowed Dr Rai and his team to immediately spot the area in the nucleus accumbent that was most active I'd like to see the targets one more time 90 watts of ultrasound energy were beamed at a Target the size of a gumdrop ready Sonic right there we go within minutes

38:54 we noticed Martin's foot that had been anxiously bouncing was still and he told rai's team that those same images of drugs he was shown earlier were now not sparking the need for a fix heroin is going down meth is also going down marijuana's down marijuana's down lot actually good keep on sonicating the day of the procedure it was the best day of my life I didn't experience the same effect as like the

39:25 times before didn't feel like I need that I want no I didn't feel like I needed the The Urge or the desire to use wasn't there anymore so within 15 to 20 minutes of treatment their craving and anxiety melts away and we're seeing this pattern in multiple instances then they can walk away after this there's get off the table and go home and how long does this entire procedure 1 Hour 1 Hour 1 hour have you

39:52 been around people still using drugs yes yes unfortunately I have and what happen it didn't even trigger me I used to use in intervenous with needles and it was a a little while ago not too far back but this one individual was trying to hit theirself and they couldn't hit and they asked me can can you hit me do you actually put drugs I actually stuck them through the blood back you know now before when I drew

40:22 their blood back it would like make make me sweat cuz I couldn't wait to hit myself but this time it was just like God I hope they don't know D and I kill them here you know but I didn't have any urges or desire or anything so Dr rai's team told us Dave Martin did admit to taking one painkilling pill at a party in December still 10 of the 15 patients in the ultrasound clinical trials have remained completely

40:51 drug-free Dr Oli Rai is trying the same ultrasound therapy on 45 more addiction patients and is already thinking about expanding the use of ultrasound to help people with other brain disorders I want to get a vas here including post-traumatic stress disorder and obesity let's do it again this is serious business research never been done before we have to learn more we have to replicate our findings is there any risk at running towards something quickly there's always risk

41:22 but you cannot advance and make discoveries without risk R but we need to push forward and take the risk because people with addiction and Alzheimer's is not going away it's here so why wait 10 20 years do it now now an update of our story who is Ray EPS in April we spoke with the January 6th rioter and his wife in

41:54 hiding and fearing for their lives Ray EPS had become the target of a conspiracy theory offering no evidence the conspiracist portrayed EPS as an FBI informant sent to incite the riers did anyone from the federal government direct you to be here at the peace Circle at this time no no one from the FBI no your old comrades with the oathkeepers no Ray EPS pleaded guilty to

42:28 entering a restricted area on the capitol grounds this past Tuesday he was sentenced to a Year's probation and community service for his role in the January 6th attack I'm Bill Whitaker we'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes join us for a special edition of the CBS Evening News from Iowa tomorrow