The brain chip implant builds on decades of research from academic labs and other companies into connecting the human brain to computers to address diseases and disabilities. The first patient was implanted with a brain-computer interface (BCI) around 2006 through the company Cyberkinetics. Several researchers involved in the effort now work for Musk at Neuralink.
Recently, BCIs have helped paralyzed people walk again, begun to restore touch and speech, and assisted people with strokes, Parkinson's, and ALS. They are also being used to treat brain disorders, including depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and traumatic brain injury.
How does the Neuralink implant work?
The Neuralink device records activity from electrodes placed next to individual brain cells, reading out the movements the person intends to make.
The company said it is looking for volunteers for the clinical trial who have limited function in all four limbs due to ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or have suffered a spinal cord injury at least a year ago but have not made significant recovery.
Volunteers must be willing to allow the R1 Robot to be surgically implanted into a region of the brain that controls intended body movements. They must also agree to six years of training and monitoring sessions.
Musk's invention doesn't help a person walk. For that to happen, a second intervention is needed.
To restore movement to a quadriplegic, microelectrodes that “read” brain signals must be connected via a “digital bridge” to the spinal cord, which then stimulates movement, says neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine. His company has linked its neurostimulation platform to a device (a brain-computer interface) that restores movement after paralysis.
Other brain technologies
Other companies and researchers are working on similar devices, as well as devices that read from large populations of brain cells. They could be used to decode people’s inner speech, or silent speech, according to Richard Andersen, a neuroscientist at Caltech. This would allow people who cannot speak to articulate their thoughts.
Andersen, a professor of biology and bioengineering, is also using ultrasound technology to read brain activity in a less invasive way. With this type of device, a “window” would need to be placed in the skull to allow ultrasound waves to enter the brain, but the electrodes would not need to be placed as deep inside the brain as with other devices.
Deep brain stimulators have long treated conditions like Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and essential tremor by delivering specific stimuli. More recently, they’ve been listening to the brain to know when those stimuli are needed, said Dr. Brian Lee, a functional neurosurgeon at the University of Southern California.
By contrast, brain-computer interfaces like Musk’s Neuralink can collect signals and have much broader potential, he said. Still, it’s too early to tell what Neuralink’s full potential is.
“So far Musk hasn’t shown us anything,” Lee said. “Perhaps he’ll be able to use those signals like other labs, to control a cursor on a screen, decode speech, move a wheelchair around.”
Andersen said his team and others are now using devices similar to Neuralink, but with much smaller stimulating electrodes, to restore the sense of touch to people with paralysis and loss of touch.
The same device that helps read a paralyzed person’s intentions could potentially help that person feel an object. So they could pick up a can of soda without crushing it and take a sip. Anderson hopes such products will be available on the market in the not-too-distant future.
“That will be the goal for many of us in this field,” he says, with other medical applications to follow. “Neurotechnology in general is a rapidly accelerating field.”
(According to USA Today)
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