Company is seeking people with paralysis to test its experimental device after getting green light from independent review board
Elon Musk’s brain-implant startup, Neuralink, said it has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruiting patients for its first human trial. The company is seeking people with paralysis to test its experimental device in a six-year study.
Neuralink is one of several companies developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) that can collect and analyze brain signals. But its billionaire executive’s bombastic promotion of the company, including promises to develop an all-encompassing brain computer to help humans keep up with artificial intelligence, has attracted skepticism and raised ethical concerns among neuroscientists and other experts.
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration denied the company’s request to fast-track human trials, but in May approved Neuralink for an investigational device exemption (IDE) that allows a device to be used for clinical studies. The agency has not disclosed how its initial concerns were resolved.
I don’t really know if we’ve had other companies that are crazy enough to pierce the blood brain barrier, just for a brain interface machine.
There have been plenty of brain interface machines, but most are just pieces of headgear that you wear. And they’re just as useful as Musk’s interface… not very.
When you utilize a traditional mouse you are relying on both visual and proprioceptive data, which is interpreted in conjunction in real time by your brain. Without the proprioceptive sensation, your brain loses track of where the mouse is in the operational space. Meaning it takes a large amount of concentration to operate anything with just the aid of visualization.
The biggest problem is that they’ve essentially designed a meningitis machine. For my job we occasionally have to set skull pins for halo devices, basically a cervical immobilizing brace. These pins pierce the skin and are set into the bone of the skull, though we don’t pierce through the skull or damage the blood brain barrier.
These pins are extremely susceptible to infection depending on the level of patient compliance. Because the scalp is not firmly attached to the skull it’s is free to move against the pins and create a lot of skin irritation, which can lead to infections if not properly cleaned on a regular basis.
There’s already a “ping cursor” system in operating systems, but most would probably just move it in circles real fast so they see it like everyone else who forgets where their mouse cursor is.
And the more permanent something like this is, the more issues you get. We should be moving to something as easy to put on as a hat, not something that requires brain surgery to update
It is never going to be as simple as putting on a hat. Hair really gets in the way of picking up brain signals and you’re not going to get the sensors in the right place.
EEGs are about the most advanced thing we have for monitoring the brain from the outside of the body without climbing into a machine. That requires a technician using special conductive glue to hold sensors on the scalp and then wrapping it all in gauze to keep it all from coming off. It takes about 15 minutes to put them all on and after it’s taken off, you really want a shower to wash the glue off your scalp.
I might say “never in our lifetimes” but not “never”.
And these are for paralyzed people, I’m sure a non significant amount wouldn’t mind shaving their head over brain surgery for a chip that will be obsolete in a decade. It wouldn’t have to be one size fits all either, it would be custom fit to it’s user.
A couple decades after that, maybe we’ll have it for consumers
It’s still not really going to help with the mental fatigue. Even when you know where the cursor is, it still fundamentally changes the way you interact with it.
For a mouse the process is (find cursor, move cursor from point A to point B) the proprioceptive sensation from your hand helps translate and guide the movements happening in 3 dimensional space to the 2 dimensional movement on the screen.
For brain interface machines the process is (find cursor, find point B, concentrate on moving away from point A towards point B) It sounds trivial, but without proprioceptive information it turns a leap from a to b into a step by step walk where you can’t feel your feet. None of it is reactionary, it’s all manual concentration.
Im a provider specializing in orthotics and prosthetics, and have actually worked with some psych/philosophy professors on a similar topic, namely the similar interface problems found in prosthetics and in VR.
I personally think brain interface and the vast majority of VR projects are and have always been a failed technology. Mainly because the tech people whom pioneer them have wild misconceptions on how the brain and body function as a whole. Most perceive the brain as a processor that you plug information to and then it dictates reactions to its attached hardware.
In reality there is no separation of body and the brain, in fact according to psychologist specializing in embodied cognition, our cognitive abilities are formed by the dynamic interaction between our actions and the environment around us. Meaning, separating a persons perceptive abilities fundamentally inhibits our ability to function in any given environment.
In a paper I co-wrote we were comparing the similar interface problems with high end VR, and Life like prosthetics. In VR as graphics improved and moved from simulacrum to simulation people began to experience more problems with nausea and motion sickness. In prosthetics as limbs became more lifelike, we began to see patient compliance worsen, and reports of disassociation from the limb.
In both cases it’s proposed the tech became good enough to fool the brain into attempting to interfacing with it as an extension of reality, instead of interfacing with it as a tool. As the brain begins to except it as “real” it has a hard time orienting the perception it receives that does not align with its new “reality”
Sorry for wall of text, I guess I don’t get to talk about this aspect of my research enough!
Jesus…
You think Musk’s product is going to work like the Matrix and someone has full body control in VR?
I have zero idea why you want on that giant rant about it.
And you have no idea what the learning curve is even just for a physical videogame controller. People don’t think “now hit the X button to crouch” they just think crouch and their thumb hits X. It doesn’t take long.
Neurolink only does mouse/keyboard.
It takes an afternoon of training for this kind of interface, as pointed out in this article from literally decades ago. And over a decade before Musk every “thought of” Neurolink. None of what he’s doing is new, except 20 years ago it worked better
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020314080832.htm
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was stating that a matrix like scenario is a impossibility dreamt up by sci-fi.
My critique was that tech bros like to pretend that you can separate the mind from the body. When in reality they are entirely codependent, and when you try to bypass that codependency with something like neuro link people end up not being able to utilize it.