Setting out to achieve “symbiosis with artificial intelligence”, a startup founded by Elon Musk called Neuralink has unveiled the development of a scalable, implantable, wireless and high bandwidth brain-machine interface (BMI) at a presentation at the California Academy of Sciences.
“Brain-machine interfaces have the potential to help people with a wide range of clinical disorders,” said Neuralink. “For example, researchers have demonstrated human neuroprosthetic control of computer cursors, robotic limbs, and speech synthesizers using no more than 256 electrodes.”
“While these successes suggest that high fidelity information transfer between brains and machines is possible, development of BMI has been critically limited by the inability to record from large numbers of neurons,” explained Neuralink. “Noninvasive approaches can record the average of millions of neurons through the skull, but this signal is distorted and nonspecific. Invasive electrodes placed on the surface of the cortex can record useful signals, but they are limited in that they average the activity of thousands of neurons and cannot record signals deep in the brain. Most BMI’s have used invasive techniques because the most precise readout of neural representations requires recording single action potentials from neurons in distributed, functionally-linked ensembles.”
To solve the issues related with conventional BMIs, Neuralink has created an array of small and flexible electrode “threads” contained in a device with custom chips for low-power onboard amplification and digitization. With 3,072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 threads, the thread thickness measures roughly 5 µm (0.005 mm).
To insert the threads into the cortex, a neurosurgical robot is used. The neurosurgical robot is able to track and adjust accordinly to the movement of the brain caused due to heartbeat and breathing for micron-scale precision.
Neuralink head neurosurgeon Dr. Matt Mcdougall has described the procedure as being potentially possible under conscious sedation with no overnight hospital stays.
Neuralink’s BMI is said to be capable of treating brain disorders, enhancing brain functions and creating “a well-aligned future” where humanity is merged with AI.
“Even in a benign AI scenario, we will be left behind,” said Musk. “With a high bandwidth brain-machine interface, I think we can go along with the ride.”
The BMI will only initially be used for serious medical needs.
Neuralink has announced plans to begin human trials in 2020.
To watch Neuralink’s presentation, click the link below.
To read Neuralink’s white paper, click the link below.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/07/17/703801.full.pdf
