On August 28th, 2020, Elon Musk hosted a livestream
with updates on his company Neuralink’s
progress toward making a brain machine interface.
So what has changed in the time since we were
first introduced to Neuralink over year ago,
and where does the company see themselves
going from here?
A brain machine interface or BMI is just what
it sounds like, a machine that can interface
with a brain. BMIs have potential uses helping
the disabled move robotic limbs or even helping
able bodied people use computers and devices
in newer and faster ways. There are a few
approaches to making a BMI, and Neuralink’s
uses electrodes on strands just a few micrometers
thick that are threaded in between neurons
to read their activity. Neuralink’s latest
BMI still relies on those threads but otherwise
looks radically different from how it first
appeared. The rats that sported earlier iterations
had a USB-C port sticking out of their heads
that sent information gathered by electrodes
to outside devices. Eventually, the goal was
to have completely implanted chips communicating
wirelessly with an outside device sitting
behind the ear. The latest device is much
more simplified. Dubbed Link V0.9, it measures 23 mm by 8 mm, about the size of a chunky coin.
Rather than residing entirely in the skull,
Link V0.9 actually replaces a piece of it.
Once a hole has been drilled and the electrodes
are threaded into the brain, the disk-shaped
BMI fills in the gap and the skin is super
glued over it. No, I do mean it's super glued over it, not joking. Anyway when it’s all said
and done, the only evidence that a person
is now a cyborg is a tiny scar which can be
hidden by hair. Each link has 1024 channels
to monitor neural activity and compresses
and sends data to a device like a phone at
a rate of megabits per second. A person could
even have multiple links depending on their
needs and if they’re ok with having a skull
that looks like swiss cheese.
Though the Neuralink researchers aren’t
too concerned about replacing bits of skull
with their devices. They say that since bone’s
properties are well understood it’s not
hard to design something that can withstand
whatever situations a normal skull might see.
To demonstrate their latest prototype worked
and was robust enough to handle a rough-and-tumble
lifestyle, Neuralink introduced a pig named
Gertrude. Gertrude had a Link V0.9 installed
two months prior, and her device monitored
neurons that represented her snout. Whenever
Gertrude sniffed food or a handler touched
her snout, a screen showed activity in her
brain spiking, while making little beeps and boops.
Neuralink started testing with pigs because
of their similar skull thickness and membrane
makeup to humans. But there were some unexpected
benefits, like the fact that they bump into
things constantly which Musk said was a good
demonstration of the device’s integrity.
And pigs can be trained to walk on treadmills.
This allows the researchers to read neurons
dealing with moving joints. Based on the readings,
they could predict accurately where the joints
would move. Technology like that could be
huge for paraplegic and tetraplegic people.
Musk reasons that because people who are paralized
due to a spine injury have effectively had
the connection between their brain and their
limbs severed, their device could help people
walk again by decoding movement impulses and
transmitting them to the other side of the
break.
While miraculously making people walk again
is an incredible goal, Neuralink’s aims
go far beyond that. The device can also send
impulses to the neurons so some employees
imagine it treating a whole host of brain
disorders. Musk, ever the futurist, pictures
the technology could be used for storing memories,
downloading them into robots, or communicating
at high speed with AI.
Those are pretty lofty ambitions and there
are a lot of hurdles to clear between here
and the future Musk pictures. The device needs
to be tested in humans, though the FDA has
granted Neuralink breakthrough device designation,
moving them closer to human trials.
The machine that weaves the threads into the
brain looks sleeker and more medical than
it did last year, but it’s still limited
to implanting electrodes into the cortex and
can’t go deeper yet. And then there’s
the barrier that is our own understanding
of how the human brain works. We’ll have
to learn more about the language of neurons
to be able to decode their spikes and techno-beeps
into something meaningful and we are very
far away from that. Ironically the researchers
at Neuralink suggested their device, that
can actually be inside the brain and monitoring
activity, could be just the thing that pushes
our understanding of the human brain to new
heights.
While some expected more from this presentation,
it’s still progress. Based on what Neuralink
has achieved with about 100 employees, it’ll
be interesting to see where the technology
is another year from now as the company grows.
The Link V0.9 uses a battery that Musk claims
will last all day and can be charged wirelessly
overnight. How wireless charging on something
embedded in your skull will work, I’m not
exactly sure, but I like to picture Neuralink
will develop some kind of pillow too, which
will bring new meaning to the term “power
nap”.
If you’d like to see what Neuralink’s
original concept looked like, check out this
video I did on it a year ago. So is this something
you’d stay away from or would you sign up
to be one of the first transhumanist cyborgs?
Let us know in the comments, don’t forget
to subscribe, and I’ll see you next time
on Seeker.
