Neuralink design and first animal trials unveiled

Since its first announcement, large media attention has followed Neuralink, as the company aims to create the first real bi-direction BCI. 

"Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 with the goal of creating a wireless brain-machine interface, something scientists hope can help cure neurological conditions and allow people with paralysis to control a computer mouse.  In July 2019, Neuralink unveiled a design that involved implanting tiny electrode “threads” into the brain as well as another device behind the ear. The new device Musk described Friday is much smaller, does not require the visible ear device, and would be implanted in the brain by a surgical robot under local anesthesia."

 "With a device surgically implanted into the skull of a pig named Gertrude, Elon Musk demonstrated his startup Neuralink's technology to build a digital link between brains and computers. A wireless link from the Neuralink computing device showed the pig's brain activity as it snuffled around a pen on stage Friday night.

The demonstration shows the technology to be significantly closer to delivering on Musk's radical ambitions than during a 2019 product debut, when Neuralink only showed photos of a rat with a Neuralink connected via a USB-C port.

Musk also showed a second-generation implant that's more compact and fits into a small cavity hollowed out of the skull. Tiny electrode "threads" penetrate the outer surface of the brain, detecting an electrical impulse from nerve cells that shows the brain is at work. In line with Neuralink's longer-term plans, the threads are designed to communicate back, with computer-generated signals of their own."

"The device is removable, Musk said, and he showed off another pig, Dorothy, whom he claimed had had one of the devices implanted and subsequently removed. “What Dorothy illustrates is that you can put in the Neuralink, remove it, and be healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig.”  While most of the near-term practical applications of wireless brain-machine interfaces are medical, Musk has also expressed a desire that such devices could help human intelligence compete with artificial intelligence, which he considers an “existential threat”. At Friday’s event, the entrepreneur made a number of outsize claims about the potential capabilities of the technology, including that it could be used to summon a Tesla, play video games, or allow a person with a severed spinal cord to walk again.  Musk did not present any scientific data to support his claims about the pigs or the devices.

Musk also said that Neuralink had achieved FDA Breakthrough Device designation in July, a program that can help expedite the regulatory process for products “that provide for more effective treatment or diagnosis of life-threatening or irreversibly debilitating diseases or conditions”. Such a designation does not mean the device is approved by the FDA.  Neuroscience experts say that while Neuralink’s mission to read and stimulate brain activity in humans is feasible, the company’s timeline appears overly ambitious." 

Significant scepticism is also present in the scientific community.

Woke Studios designed the Neuralink surgical robot that was unveiled Aug 29 by Elon Musk

See more images on the implanting robot.

 Source: The Guardian, CNET