Not long ago, we wrote cutting-edge tech articles about the artificial intelligence company DeepMind and cars controlled by the mind, which were well received by a number of readers. Today we continue to share with you a 'new technology' - invasive brain-computer interfaces - developed by Neuralink, a company that appeared in both previous articles.
Neuralink is literally a neural connectivity company that was founded in the summer of ?2016? by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, though it wasn't until March 2017 that the company became known to the public. In the time since then, Neuralink has become increasingly secretive, almost disappearing from the public eye until 2019, when the company hosted a public launch event to showcase the company's latest advances to the public and published an unpeer-reviewed paper in the preprint journal bioRxiv, which garnered widespread attention.
Neuralink believes they can fuse the human brain with a computer system, and that this fusion, achieved using brain-computer interfaces, will help alleviate neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease and epilepsy, and could someday enable amputee patients to regain mobility or help physically disabled patients regain their speech skills, hearing, vision, and more.
But Neuralink's ultimate goal is to create a "whole-brain interface" (whole-brain?interface), so that almost all the neurons in the brain can communicate smoothly with the outside world, so that people can be "born with artificial intelligence ****", and even realize what Musk believes will be the digitization of the mind, completely uploaded to the computer to achieve "immortality". (The Matrix and Westworld episodes come to mind)
Brain-computer interface technology is not new
The technology (brain-computer interfaces), which sounds sci-fi and has only appeared in movies, was actually discovered by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as early as 1977. The earliest researchers worked on exploring the relationship between the motor cortex and limb movements in animals, mainly macaques, and soon thereafter discovered that macaques were able to learn to control the firing frequency of individual neurons on the initial motor cortex. Subsequently, scientists at Johns Hopkins University also found a relationship between the direction of upper-limb movements in rhesus monkeys and the pattern of firing in the motor cortex.
Brain-computer interface technology advanced by leaps and bounds in the 1990s, and in 2008, University of Pittsburgh neurobiologist Andrew?Schwartz claimed that the brain-computer interface they had created could be used by monkeys to manipulate a robotic arm to feed themselves. This also signals that the development of brain-computer interfaces has allowed people to connect an animal brain directly to an external device and make the external device perform a specific function. But that's a step away from the human-computer integration that Neuralink wants to achieve.
Neuralink's plan is to implant electrodes directly into the brain and establish electrode interfaces with brain neurons at the microscopic level, but all the current non-invasive techniques for recording brain activity are not capable of real-time recording, with invasive craniotomies that only terminally ill patients are likely to undergo. This also means that in order to realize human-machine integration, healthy people will also have to undergo craniotomy, and then the safety issue will become another major obstacle. Coupled with the fact that intracranial implantation surgery is expensive and can only be done by highly skilled neurosurgeons, it's not easy to popularize. But according to Musk's vision, this technology should be as convenient as laser correction of nearsightedness in order to work.
What's been achieved
To that end, Neuralink has developed a neurosurgical robot called the sewing?machine. The robot has an automatic implantation mode and can implant up to six filaments (192 electrodes) per minute. Each strand can be individually implanted into the brain with micrometer precision and is able to avoid surface blood vessels, targeting specific brain regions while reducing the risk of an inflammatory response in the brain. While the entire implantation process can be automated, the surgeon retains complete control and can manually fine-tune the position of the electrode wires before each implantation into the cortex, if desired.
At last year's launch, Neuralink?demonstrated the same medical-surgical device (sewing machine) it had already experimented with in mice, which could deliver?1,500 electronic probes into the mouse brain, 15 times faster than current systems implanted in humans. Prior to that launch, Neuralink?had performed at least?19?surgeries on animals, with an implant success rate of 87.1±12.6 percent (mean±s.d.).
Additionally, another of Neuralink's accomplishments is the development of a chip that can be implanted in a brain-computer interface. The chip amplifies and digitizes signals recorded at 3,072 electrodes, while the entire 3,072 channels take up less than (23 x 18.5 x 2) mm3 of volume when packaged, and a single USB-C cable transmits the data recorded by all the channels at the same time.The Neuralink team has already mounted the system in a mouse brain to read information from the 3,072 electrodes, which is a much better solution than the current brain-computer interfaces buried in the human brain by at least an order of magnitude. They later applied a similar system to monkeys, realizing that monkey brains control computers.
But the prototypes that have been developed to transmit brain signals can only do so using a USB port housed in the animal's head, which is quite inconvenient. Therefore, Neuralink wants to realize wireless transmission. They call the proposed wireless sensor 'N1 Sensor'. And they intend to implant four N1 sensors, three in the motor area and one in the somatosensory area, so that they can not only control external devices with brain signals, but also receive sensory feedback and realize two-way communication between the brain and external devices. The sensors will be wirelessly connected to an external device mounted behind the ear, which can be controlled via a cell phone app.
But Chad?Bouton, director of the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York, said, "While the Neuralink team is working on a wireless solution and has made some progress, it is still a considerable challenge to power a device implanted in the brain while ensuring that it doesn't generate too much heat."
Neuralink, which has also apparently inherited Musk's aggressive style, said it would test the technology on five paralyzed patients as soon as by the end of 2020, to see if it could help patients use their brains to move a mouse cursor and type. New Crown EpidemicCurrently, it is not known whether the company's license application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA,?U.S.?Food?and?Drug?Administration) will be approved.
Arston's conclusion
Musk's company seems to be surrounded by controversy, and only he knows for sure why he created Neuralink. But the brain-computer interface is a very promising technology, and it will certainly be used in cars in the future. According to Statista data, the global brain-computer interface scale was about $125 million in 2018, and is expected to grow to $283 million in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 12% from 2018-2025.
Not long ago, Elon Musk (Elon?Musk) again announced on social media that its brain-computer interface company?Neuralink?will hold a conference at 3 p.m. Pacific (Daylight Saving) Time?Friday,?August?28?(6 a.m. Beijing Time?August?29?) to present the company's latest technological progress to the public. According to previously disclosed information, the focus of the conference will be on real-time neuron activity demonstrations, as well as announcing that invasive brain-computer interfaces may enter the human trial stage, and possibly releasing brain-computer (BCI)-related products. If you are interested in this, you can follow its latest progress.
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Figure? Source from the network
This article was written by the author of Automotive Home, and does not represent the views of Automotive Home.