There seem to be a technological savior In the world now who is breaking grounds in the banking, space, automation and energy industry. He has gotten a very good reputation in the last decade for disrupting a lot of industries and he is still doing more although making lots of money from it. That person is Elon Musk. You must have heard of Tesla, SpaceX, Hyperloop, SolarCity, and many more but in this post, I am looking at Neuralink.
What Technology are Neuralink working on?
Neuralink is one project that is going to take Elon Musk’s name to another level as the company deals with the technology of Implantable brain-machine interface (BMIs). The company is developing technology to unravel the mysteries of the brain. Unlike previous technological success that involves the human being like using Crispr technology to edit DNAs and rewrite DNAs, nanobots to improve humans health, transplanting, artificial limb, growing skin from stem cells as well as creating bots from stem cells and many more but one aspect of the body has not been really studied as it deemed to be complex and that is the brain. The brain has not been attended to deeply as the surface is what is being studied which makes it difficult to find solutions to people with brain disorders or malfunctions.
With Neuralink, is bringing in technology that will allow human access the brain and be able to work on severe brain malfunctions. Neurolink electrodes are inserted into the head through a 5micro meters thick threads (really smaller than the human hair, about 10 times smaller than the human hair and about the same size of the neuron) with 32 electrodes each. This is inserted with the help of a robot which uses very tiny needles to insert the electrodes. The head will only have an opening of 8mm in other to insert the electrodes so there is no need for a serious surgery as well as there will be no need for stiches after getting it done.
How Does it Work?
The brain is a combination of several neurons which connects to one another through the help of synapsis which passes information through chemicals called neurotransmitters. Every signal and activity gotten by our sense organs are being transmitted through the neurotransmitters which then moves from neurons to neurons through synapsis. Neuralink is adding electrodes into the brain so as to cut off the middle man within the brain processing process and allow people to control objects and things with their brains alone.
Neuralink is working on Brain-Machine interface (BMI) which consist of the brain and a machine. This machine can be anything you know currently that runs on binary or gets information from the outer word but not human like a phone, computer and so on. With Neuralink, machines communicate with the brain directly but in other for the brain neurons to get this information there need to be an artificial machine in your brain so as to communicate properly with the machine in the outside world without a middle man interfering like the hand, ear, or any other part of the body. Neuralink in other to achieve this, puts in a N1 sensor chip which is 4×4 mm with 1000 electrodes each. There can be up to 10 chips which can be very tiny in the head and would not be noticed.
Neuralink has been testing the chips on people with clinical disorders and the first set of test was done with a chip with 250 electrodes and humans have been able to control computer cursors, type on a computer, speech synthesizers and control robotic limbs with the brain. It is hard to imagine what it will look like with a human with a complete 1000 electrodes in a chip or having 10 chips. Currently, the company is using an FDA approved BMI of 10 electrodes for patients with Parkinson disease. The electrodes help to read data from the brain as well as transfer data to the brain. The Neoralink electrodes will function with any external machine with the help of a single wireless battery computer behind the ear, patients can access machines.