Another picture of his experiments so far was submitted by the multi-million dollar neurotechnology company Neuralink. Elon musk (Tesla and Space X) with a monkey, who, with two wireless brain implants in his head, seems to be playing a videogame on a screen with just your mind.
The three-minute video shows a male macaque, with a chip on each side of his brain, playing the “Mind Pong” game. without any control, control the movements of the game simply by thinking that you are moving your hand up or down.
As the happy ones wrote Elon musk on Twitter, “Neuralink’s first product will allow someone with paralysis to use a smart cell phone with him | νου faster than someone who uses their fingers. “
Later versions of the product, according to the ever optimistic Musk, will allow paraplegics to walk again, while stressing that the implants are charged wirelessly, “with the result that you look and feel completely normal.”
Neuralink device records and decodes electrical signals from the brain using more than 2,000 electrodes present in the chip that is implanted in the motor cortex of the brain and allows the coordination of movements after the mental command. In the future, this may allow someone to use a computer, phone, or other electronic device. just with your thought.
The company researchers said: “Our mission is to create a safe and clinically effective human-brain interface system that is wireless and fully implantable. Our first goal is to return people with paralysis to their digital freedom, so they can easily communicate with each other. through text, exercise your curiosity on the Internet, express your creativity through photography and art and, yes, play. video game».
In the next stage, the system “could also potentially be used to restore physical mobility,” through brain signals that will activate the body’s nerves and muscles. But up to this advanced level, the system will need further improvement.
The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2016 and aims to grow technology wireless brain implants for neurological diseases (dementia, Alzheimer’s, etc.) and paralysis (for example, due to a spinal cord injury) with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms, according to Reuters and the BBC. Last August, Musk unveiled a pig with a brain implant, and the new monkey experiments are one more step before the technology can be tested in humans.
Other scientists, such as Andrew Jackson, professor of neural interface technology at the University of Newcastle in the UK, described the video as “impressive” but asked for more information and a scientific publication.
However, as Jackson said, the mere fact that no wires appear to be coming out of the monkey heads and the brain signals being sent wirelessly is “definitely something new and innovative.”
Neuralink assured that laboratory animals they are being treated well, but it is not certain that animal rights activists see it that way.