How to Command a Computer Just by Thinking

Calendar July 25, 2022 | Posted by admin

The first brain-computer interface device was implanted in a patient in the US earlier in July by a doctor at the medical center, Mount Sinai West, in New York, in an investigatory trial of the startup Synchron’s procedure to help patients suffering from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) text by thinking. The procedure involved the doctor threading a 1.5-inch-long implant comprised of wires and electrodes into a blood vessel in the brain of a patient with ALS. The hope is that the patient, who’s lost the ability to move and speak, will be able to surf the web and communicate via email and text simply by thinking, and the device will translate the patient’s thoughts into commands sent to a computer. Synchron, the startup behind the technology, has already implanted its devices in four patients in Australia, who haven’t experienced side effects and have been able to carry out such tasks as sending WhatsApp messages and making online purchases.

The implant was a major step forward in a nascent industry, putting the Brooklyn-based company ahead of competitors, including ahead of Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp.

“This surgery was special because of its implications and huge potential,” said Dr. Shahram Majidi, the neurointerventional surgeon who performed the procedure.This was the first procedure the company has performed in the US.

The brain-computer interface (BCI) has caught the attention of many in the technological field because its device, known as the stentrode, can be inserted into the brain without cutting through a person’s skull or damaging tissue. A doctor makes an incision in the patient’s neck and feeds the stentrode via a catheter through the jugular vein into a blood vessel nestled within the motor cortex. As the catheter is removed, the stentrode, a cylindrical, hollow wire mesh opens up and begins to fuse with the outer edges of the vessel. According to Majidi, the process is very similar to implanting a coronary stent and takes only a few minutes.

A second procedure then connects the stentrode via a wire to a computing device implanted in the patient’s chest. To do this, the surgeon must create a tunnel for the wire and a pocket for the device underneath the patient’s skin much like what’s done to accommodate a pacemaker. The stentrode reads the signals when neurons fire in the brain, and the computing device amplifies those signals and sends them out to a computer or smartphone via Bluetooth.

The stentrode then uses sixteen electrodes to monitor brain activity and record the firing of neurons when a person thinks. The signal strength improves over time as the device fuses deeper into the blood vessel and gets closer to the neurons. Software is used to analyze the patterns of brain data and match them with the the user’s goal.

Source: https://synchron.com/
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Neuralink Founder Elon Musk Says It Can ‘Safely’ Start Implanting Its Brain Chips In Humans By 2022

Calendar December 20, 2021 | Posted by admin

Elon Musk said Neuralink, a brain-interface technology company he co-founded, is hoping to start implanting its microchips in humans next year. In a live broadcast interview at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit on Monday, Musk announced that Neuralink hopes to start implanting chips in 2022. Musk went on to say that they’ve been testing Neuralink in monkeys and confirmed that it’s ‘very safe and reliable‘. He also clarified that the Neuralink brain chip can easily be removed.

“We hope to have this in our first humans – which will be people that have severe spinal cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics – next year, pending FDA approval,” Musk said.

According to him, Neuralink has substantially higher standards than what the FDA usually requires when implanting the chips. In 2019, Musk hoped to begin human trials by late 2020, but it got delayed. Earlier this year, in February, he said Neuralink would start implanting the chip in people by the end of 2021. This time, it seems Musk is overly confident that the trials will certainly kick off in 2022.

Meanwhile, another brain-interface company, Synchron, will also start its human trials in July 2022 and have already been approved by the FDA.

Source: https://www.techtimes.com/

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How To Merge Your Brain With A.I.

Calendar July 18, 2019 | Posted by admin

Elon Musk said startup Neuralink, which aims to build a scalable implant to connect human brains with computers, has already implanted chips in rats and plans to test its brain-machine interface in humans within two years, with a long-term goal of people “merging with AI.” Brain-machine interfaces have been around for awhile. Some of the earliest success with the technology include Brown University’s BrainGate, which first enabled a paralyzed person to control a computer cursor in 2006. Since then a variety of research groups and companies, including the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and DARPA-backed Synchron, have been working on similar devices. There are two basic approaches: You can do it invasively, creating an interface with an implant that directly touches the brain, or you can do it non-invasively, usually by electrodes placed near the skin. (The latter is the approach used by startup CTRL-Labs, for example.)

Neuralink, says Musk, is going to go the invasive route. It’s developed a chip containing an array of up to 96 small, polymer threads, each with up to 32 electrodes that can be implanted into the brain via robot and a 2 millimeter incision. The threads are small — less than 6 micrometers — because, as Musk noted in remarks delivered Tuesday night and webcast, Once implanted, according to Musk, the chip would connect wirelessly to devices. “It basically Bluetooths to your phone,” he said. “We’ll have to watch the App Store updates to that one,” he added (the audience laughed).

Musk cofounded Neuralink in 2017 and serves as the company’s CEO, though it’s unclear how much involvement he has given that he’s also serving as CEO for SpaceX and Tesla. Company cofounder and president, Max Hodak, has a biomedical engineering degree from Duke and has cofounded two other companies, MyFit and Transcriptic. Neuralink has raised $66.27 million in venture funding so far, according to Pitchbook, which estimates the startup’s valuation at $509.3 million. Both Musk and Hodak spoke about the potential for its company’s neural implants to improve the lives of people with brain damage and other brain disabilities. Its first goal, based on its discussions with such patients, is the ability to control a mobile device.

The company’s long-term goal is a bit more fantastical, and relates to Musk’s oft-repeated concerns over the dangers of advanced artificial intelligence. That goal is to use the company’s chips to create a “tertiary level” of the brain that would be linked to artificial intelligence. “We can effectively have the option of merging with AI,” he said. “After solving a bunch of brain related diseases there is the mitigation of the existential threat of AI,” he continued.

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In terms of progress, the company says that it has built a chip and a robot to implant it, which it has implanted into rats. According to the whitepaper the company has published (which has not yet undergone any peer review), it was able to record rat brain activity from its chips, and with many more channels than exist on current systems in use with humans. The first human clinical trials are expected for next year, though Hodak mentioned that the company has not yet begun to the FDA processes needed to conduct those tests.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/

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