Friday, April 9, 2021

Musk's Mind-Machine Interface, Neuralink, Reports Progress: Monkeys Now Playing Pong

From Neuralink's blog 

Neuralink is developing a fully-implanted, wireless, high-channel count brain-machine interface (BMI) with the goal of enabling people with paralysis to directly use their neural activity to operate computers and mobile devices with speed and ease.

If you are just joining us…

In a 2019 white paper, we outlined the design of our novel electrodes and our unique surgical approach, along with preliminary electrophysiology obtained in a rodent model. That generation of the Link had wired leads and a connector that protruded through the skin, and was an important platform for developing and validating our robotic surgical approach and our ultra low-power custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for amplifying and processing neural signals. In 2020, we publicly shared a wireless version of the Link that was able to stream 1,024 channels of action potentials (also called “spikes”) wirelessly and in real time (Fig. 1). We demonstrated its functionality by recording somatosensory (touch) signals in pigs exploring their environment. The electrodes were placed in a part of the brain involved in processing signals from the pig’s exquisitely sensitive snout. As it snuffled about, the responses of the neurons to sensory cues could be readily observed.....

....MUCH MORE

Previously:

"Elon Musk Says Neuralink Will Stream Music Straight Into Your Brain"

"Scientists use ultrasonic mind control on monkeys" as Elon Musk Says His Neuralink Will Do Human Brain Implant in “Less Than a Year” 

"Superbrains getting closer? Musk ‘lines up $100m’ to fund Neuralink brain-computer interface " 

And dozens more.
But they all pale in comparison to:

....For the ultimate explanation of what Elon & Co. are trying to do, the go-to is WaitButWhy, to whom we first linked in 2017:
More Than You Might Want To Know About Elon Musk's Neuralink