The startup that wants to put implants in our brain has revealed its progress in the device that, theoretically, can read your mind.
Neuralink , the startup led by Elon Musk and founded in 2017, is working on a technology based on "threads", which can be implanted in human brains with a much smaller potential impact on the surrounding brain tissue compared to the brain-machine interfaces that They are used today.
"Most people don't realize, we can solve it with a chip," Musk said at the Neuralink presentation event, while talking about some of the brain disorders and the problems the company hopes to solve with this new device.
Musk also explained that, in the long term, Neuralink will try to find a way to “achieve a kind of symbiosis with artificial intelligence. This is not mandatory. It's something you can choose if you want. "
Medical purposes
For now, the goal is medical , and the plan is to use a robot that Neuralink has created that works as a “sewing machine” to implant these threads, which are incredibly thin (between 4 and 6 μm, which is approximately one third the diameter of the thinnest human hair), deep in the brain tissue of a person, where you can perform reading and writing operations with a very high volume of data.
The chips, which measure approximately 4 mm by 4 mm, will be designed to stimulate neurons (or nerve cells in the human brain that communicate with other cells), using small flexible electrode wires.Each electrode wire would be inserted using a precision robot in a procedure that Musk said would be as safe and painless as LASIK eye surgery (in a single device there are 3072 electrodes and 96 wires).
Although it really sounds the purest cyberpunk aesthetic, and to some extent it is, Neuralink scientists said they still have a "long way to go" before they can offer a commercial service.
The co-founder and president of Neuralink, Max Hodak, commented that Neuralink could, in theory, allow amputees to regain mobility through the use of prostheses and reverse vision , hearing or other sensory impairments. In fact, the company expects to start working with human test subjects in 2020, including through a possible collaboration with neurosurgeons at Stanford University and other institutions.
The current incarnation of Neuralink technology would involve drilling real holes in a subject's skull to insert ultra-thin threads into his cerebral cortex, but future iterations will change to using lasers to create small holes that are much less invasive and, in essence , the patient will not even feel them.
Although working with humans may seem unlikely at this time, the company has already demonstrated the feasibility of technology in laboratory rodent experiments, with performance levels that exceed current systems in terms of data transfer. Mouse data was collected through a USB-C port in your head, and provided approximately10 times more than what the best current sensors can offer.
The plan is also that electrodes implanted in the brain can communicate wirelessly with chips outside the brain, which will provide real-time monitoring with unprecedented freedom of movement, without wires or external connections.
Elon Musk is financing most of this project, in addition to acting as its CEO, with $ 100 million of the 158 million he has raised so far. Neuralink has 90 employees, and seems to continue hiring personnel aggressively because on the company's website we can basically only find job ads .
Before Neuralink can offer this device for commercial purposes, it will have to wait for the approval of the US Department of Health. UU. ( FDA) , something they expect will be viable too soon.
Source ?
https://www.muyinteresante.es/tecnologia/articulo/actualidad-asi-es-neuralink-la-interfaz-cerebro-maquina-de-elon-musk-301563438311