Is Neuralink Brain Chip Creating A Cyborg With Superhuman Intelligence?
What is the science behind Elon Musk’s brain chip
Elon Musk’s brain chip company recently pushed back on claims that it violated animal's welfare laws a few years ago while testing on monkeys. This year the company plans to test n human subjects. But if that happens, then what would be the major steps mean for brain implant science?
Few doctors have conducted clinical trials in people with brain implants. Academic research brain implants, until this point, more or less have almost only been with wires. The difference that the N1 has with neuralink is that it’s fully implantable, it is battery powered; it is wireless. All of this is being done over a bluetooth protocol.
How human brain chip works?
The science behind how this works is not that different from how one would go about trying to measure the energy from AA battery. It's the same principle that they are doing with these brain implants. It's called neuro electrophysiological recording. When you move your arm to the right, they activate certain sets of neurons in a certain pattern. Listening in to that activity and that pattern, you can predict quickly which direction the arm is going to move. These are neurons that are directly wired to your muscles.
Unless that path from the brain to the spinal cord to the muscle is damaged, the way it is in paralysis patient. In the damaged path, the signals from the brain will not get down to muscles. Most times, the signals are still present in the brain; they are just not getting out. So if you reach in and put something that listens to those neurons, then you will know what's happening to the muscles. That's the ultimate goal of a brain implant. To connect the lost signals to the particular part of the body.
Timeline of Brain Interface Breakthroughs
2002- first demonstration of real-time cursor control in monkeys
2008- A monkey controlling a robotic arm in three dimensions fed itself.
2012- the first brain- controlled robotic arm by a human.
2017- A human controlled cursor mentally to type out words and sentences.
2018- A human subject mentally controlled a tablet to do things like browse the web, send an e-mail and play games or music.
2019- neuralink, a private company changed the game when it unveiled a pig named Getrude with a wireless implant that monitored about a thousand neurons. For the pig, they implanted the electrode in somatosensory cortex, allowing them to measure sensory activity, like that of taking a step.
In April 2021, neuralink released the so-called mind Pong video of rhesus macaque. It’s a type of monkey which is commonly used in this field. They implanted the monkey with two of the N1 devices, the neuralink devices, performing brain control of a cursor on a screen.
The recording power of the N1 device in pager was eye opening because of the sheer number of the individual electrode that had been implanted.
The next phase- Human Implant
In neurosurgery requires cutting the skin, getting down to skull, drilling a hole in the skull, exposing dura (protective layer of tissues that surrounds the brain), cutting the dura, folding it back to expose the brain and then the implant of electrodes are done on the surface of brain. The biggest risks with this type of techniques are infection, bleeding and tissue damage.
FDA Approval
The neuralink device is called class III medical devices. They are implantable and they are going into very sensitive body cavities. There is a high bar for this device to get approved by the FDA. So, what neuralink has to do next is prepare a very long and technical document with all the evidence of animal studies. Their device is safe and effective. They then submitted document to the FDA and have 90 days to review and give them an answer.
This type of technology has the potential to transform treatments, not just for strokes and paralysis, and the degenerative disease, motor degenerative diseases, but also for any type of brain disease from The Parkinsons to epilepsy to dementias, alzheimers’s and even psychiatric disease.
Will this industry lead to creation of cyborg humans with superhuman intelligence?
There're all sorts of wild speculation in this field. But the reality is we are in the early stages of this space, where we can just barely able to record from neurons that control muscles and try to interpret a meaningful information out of that. We are going to be in this space for decades. That’s where scientist will focus more on neurons and the circuits that they are working on.
