Neuralink, Elon Musk’s startup is making a module that fits outside the head and wirelessly receives information from threads embedded in the brain.
“A monkey has been able to control a computer with his brain,” Elon Musk said in San Francisco live streaming presentation on Neuralink.
- The startup is developing a brain-machine interface that would replace the currently used brain-computer interfaces.
- His new vision tech is based around “threads,” which it says can be implanted in human brains with much less potential impact to the surrounding brain tissue.
- Musk revealed that they will start testing this technology on humans in 2020. It’s working already in animal tests
- Musk’s goal is to implant devices in paralyzed humans, allowing them to control phones or computers.
- Neuralink has created a robot which operates somewhat like “sewing machine” to implant these threads in the brain.
- These flexible “threads,” are incredibly thin, between 4 and 6 μm, which means about one-third the diameter of the thinnest human hair, as per Musk.
- Neuralink’s threads will be capable of performing both reading and writing operations at very high data volume.
- The abstract notes that the system could include as many as 3,072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 threads, Musk said.
- Scientists from hope to use a laser beam to get through the skull, rather than drilling holes.
- Elon Musk’s plan is also that the electrodes implanted in the brain will be able to communicate wirelessly with chips outside the brain, providing real-time monitoring.
