Brain chips: Clinical trials in humans
“Έγειρε, άρον τον κράβαττόν σου και περιπάτει.”
“Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.”
– John 5:8
The billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s brain chip start-up is preparing to launch clinical trials in humans. Musk, who co-founded Neuralink in 2016, has promised that the technology “will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs.” The company, which has already successfully implanted artificial intelligence microchips in the brains of a monkey named Pager, and a pig named Gertrude, is now recruiting a “clinical trial director” to run tests of the technology in humans.
They are cautiously optimistic that the implants could allow tetraplegic people to walk.
“We hope to have this in our first humans, which will be people that have severe spinal cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics, pending Food and Drug Administration approval,” Musk told the Wall Street Journal.
“I think we have a chance with Neuralink to restore full-body functionality to someone who has a spinal cord injury. It’s working well in monkeys, and we’re doing lots of testing to confirm it’s safe and reliable, and the device can be removed safely. The device can be implanted flush with skull and charges wirelessly, so you look and feel totally normal.”
Neuralink has previously released a video of a monkey that had been implanted with the chip playing the video game Pong using only its mind.
A medical group that opposes medical testing on animals plans to take legal action against Neuralink, alleging that they mistreated monkeys in medical experiments.
Animal research is strictly regulated, and the company’s labs state that they follow all applicable laws and regulations. Multiple brain-computing experts have confirmed that the animals involved were healthy, vigorous and coherent.
Keeping up with A.I.
The company said its first product, known as the N1 Link, will be “completely invisible” once implanted and transmit data via a wireless connection. It has been described as a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires that go into your brain.
Neuralink’s mission is to “develop brain-machine interfaces that treat various brain related ailments, with the goal of creating a whole brain interface capable of more closely connecting biological and artificial intelligence.”
A.I. is getting smarter and Neuralink’s technology could allow humans to “go along for the ride.”
People are in effect already “cyborgs” because they have tertiary “digital layers” thanks to phones, computers and applications, with which they are already continuously interacting each day.
“With a direct neural interface, we can improve the bandwidth between your cortex and your digital tertiary layer by many orders of magnitude,” said Musk. “I’d say probably at least 1,000, or maybe 10,000, or more.”
The cortex is a part of the brain that plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. A “digital layer” could be anything from an iPhone to a Twitter account.
Neuralink could allow humans to send ideas to one another using ‘telepathy’, and exist in a “saved state” after they die that could then be put into a robot or another human.
Elsewhere, scientists at the University of Melbourne have already had some success with brain-computer interfaces. A study in October showed two humans controlling a computer through thought using a stentrode (a small stent-mounted electrode array) developed by Australian biotech firm Synchron without having to shave the skull and drill through it.
The stentrode brain-computer interface allowed two people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — a rare neurological disease — to type, text, email, do online banking and shop online, purely by using their thoughts.
James Neophytou
