Brain firmware: details
Musk: "We will implant our neurointerface to a person next year"
Georgy Golovanov, Hi-tech+
Elon Musk's secretive startup Neuralink presented the results of its developments to the public for the first time. At a press conference in San Francisco - The company's specialists told how work is progressing on a prototype of an ultralight neurointerface that can combine a human brain and a computer.
Neuralink showed a device implanted in the brain of a laboratory rat and capable of reading information from multiple neurons at once. The novelty is that the implants are made of flexible, cellophane-like wires that are implanted into the soft tissues of the brain by a so-called "sewing machine" created by scientists from California universities, VentureBeat reports.
The signal from the device can be read wirelessly with the help of a chip located outside.
An autonomous neurosurgeon robot equipped with a machine vision system directs a needle with a bundle of wires and insulation 5 microns thick into the brain past the capillaries. Electrodes are located on different sections of each individual thread with a diameter of four to six micrometers (a quarter of the thickness of a human hair). At maximum productivity, the robot "stitches" six threads with 192 electrodes in a minute.
The electrodes transmit nerve impulses to a processor mounted on the surface of the skull, which reads information simultaneously through 1536 channels, which is about 15 times better than modern analogues. The device meets the requirements of scientific and medical research.
The documentation published by Neuralink states that up to 3072 electrodes can be distributed on a total of 96 threads. That is, to double the amount of simultaneously read information. The authors also write that the company has already performed at least 19 operations on animals and successfully implanted wires in 87% of cases.
During a recent experiment in a laboratory in San Francisco, a thread implanted in the brain of a rodent was connected to a USB and was able to transfer information from its brain to a computer. At the same time, the software – the chip – recorded and analyzed the brain activity of the experimental animal, registering the electrical activity of neurons. The volume of data received is ten times higher than the amount of information that modern sensors can collect, the developers stressed.
During the presentation, Musk hinted that Neuralink also worked with primates: "The monkey was able to control the computer with the power of thought."
Whether the same technology will work on humans is still unknown, as well as how durable these wires are. In the future, Neuralink hopes to penetrate the skull using laser beams, not drills. Such experiments are already being conducted by neuroscientists at Stanford University. "We hope to apply this [technology] to the first person by the end of next year," Musk said. And the ultimate goal of a startup is to achieve symbiosis with artificial intelligence.
Neuralink's competitors have already developed the first working neural interface, which has an undoubted advantage – it does not require surgical intervention. Non-invasive technology with high-quality interference suppression will allow paralyzed patients to control mechanisms and robotic prostheses with the power of thought.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru