The Tartan

Neuralink: The future of technology

September 15, 2024

**Courtesy of Robina Weermeijer via Unsplash**

Founded in 2016 by Elon Musk, Neuralink is a chip that allows you to control surrounding devices through just a simple thought. The chip has been implanted into the brains of quadriplegic patients who have difficulty speaking and participating in continuous motor functions; the chip has made devices more accessible to these patients. According to the Neuralink website, their goals for the future include restoring “capabilities such as vision, motor function, and speech, and eventually expand how we experience the world.” The implant contains four aspects: the biocompatible enclosure, the battery, the chips and electronics, and the threads. The biocompatibleenclosure allows the chip to endure conditions in the body after implantation. The battery is charged wirelessly through an inductive charger. The chips capture information from the neural signals in the brain and transfer them to the computer application which decodes the data from the signals into actions that the computer will take. Lastly, the threads, which are equipped with around “1,024 electrodes distributed across 64 threads,” record neural activity in the brain. Each thread is manufactured to function under intense environments in the human brain.

In May 2023, Neuralink received official approval to begin testing the implants on humans. Noah Arbaugh was the first official patient of this new implantation. Noah is a quadriplegic patient, meaning that he has paralysis in all four of his limbs. As stated by ABC News, he sustained a spinal cord injury that led to paralysis after he jumped into a lake eight years ago. He claimed to ABC News that now “I can control a computer just like anyone else can, which is not something I was able to do beforehand,” and he is reaping the benefits of the device which has allowed him to communicate and work with technology at a remarkable rate. In looking towards the future Arbaugh states, “It’s going to be amazing when someone can have a spinal cord injury, go into a hospital, get surgery, and walk out a couple days later,” garnering hope for the improvement of this form of technology to improve the lives of many.

Carnegie Mellon assistant professor Johnathan Tsay is currently doing research in areas such as cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, computational modeling and psychophysics, and shared his thoughts on the new improvements of Neuralink. Tsay reports that the new improvements are “super exciting” and that Neuralink is making neuroscience more accessible to the general public through its connective apps and games like webgrid. The game compares how fast you can click on the targets while avoiding misclicks compared to a patient with the Neuralink implant and how fast they click the targets while controlling the computer with their brains.

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Gabriella James

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One response to “Neuralink: The future of technology”

Tuggler Thornswald Habsburg II

September 20, 2024 at 5:32 pm

The interface between people and machines has never been closer, both in terms of our addiction to the devices around us, and in these new sorts of ways with interacting with computers. Brain computer implantation has been around for a while, and has already genuinely changed many lives. However, there are dark clouds on the horizon of this voyage, and we must very carefully navigate the next few years of this technology to ensure that it continues to improve lives.

Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) have actually been around for a while. The first mention of a BCI was all the way back in 1973, with Jacques Vidal’s incredibly influential paper “Toward direct brain-computer communication” published in the Annual Review of Biophysics and Bioengineering. Putting aside the fact that his name sounds Fr*nch, he pioneered brain-computer communication and the paper is definitely worth a read for anyone who is interested in the topic. In short: we’ve been doing this for a while. In 1990 we had working control of a bidirectional BCI that could control a buzzer, and things have only gotten more advanced from there. Keep in mind: this is 30 years ago. That’s double the age of most of the editors of the Tartan currently reading these words. DARPA, a long time department of defense friend of CMU, gave out neural engineering design grants over a decade ago. [10] Hell, all the way back in 2016 we created a BCI that someone could use to control a robotic arm, and ALSO get feedback from that arm. We had working bidirectional brain implants 8 years ago.

The man who received one of the first implants ever, Nathan Copeland, had his device working for 7 years until it was finally removed in 2021. However, this implant required constant tuning, as the body works incredibly hard to reject foreign materials. Our best tests in monkeys have only lasted up to 10 years. [11] We’re also seeing degradation with Noah Arbaugh’s implant, the first patient in the neuralink clinical trials. Over 85% of the threads that record brain activity retracted from his brain, which required heavy software adjustment to correct.

So why do these things fail? While Neuralink did not provide any information as to why the implant retracted, there are a couple of problems with brain computer interfaces in general that could have caused this retraction. The first is glial encapsulation, which is when your brain builds a protective shield around something that it has identified as a threat. [1] Since the electrodes are so sensitive to any sort of change they are damaged by this process, and thus need either software adjustments, or a change in their physical location. An article in the journal Nature states that there “remain[s] many challenges to overcome before achieving long-term, stable, high-quality recordings and realizing comprehensive, accurate brain activity analysis.” [3] And in DARPA’s own grant proposal document stated that there needs to be significant breakthroughs in multiple fields to make this technology last in people’s brains. [10]

So what has Neuralink done to alleviate these critical problems? Not much. As mentioned before, they immediately started having problems with the electrodes retracting, and what’s worse is that they’ve known about this for years. [12] Yes, according to a Reuter’s exclusive, both Neuralink and the FDA knew about the granuloma formation but still approved and went through with the trial anyways. In BCI design, there is a fundamental tradeoff between sensitivity, longevity, and ease of implantation. If you make a device more sensitive, you make it harder to implant, and you decrease it’s longevity. The smaller the electrodes, the better signals you get, but the more likely glial encapsulation is to occur. [2]

There are real human costs towards these devices failing. Arbaugh said on a podcast shortly after the Neuralink chip started malfunctioning that “it would’ve been a cruel twist of fate if I had gotten to see the view from the top of this mountain and then have it all come crashing down after a month.” [7] It intensely hurts psychologically to have a brain implant, and then have it removed, as the case was with Copeland’s implant. It’s like losing your control all over again, only this time compounded with the BCI’s changes to your brain chemistry.

Here’s a far worse issue than just the BCI no longer functioning: it malfunctioning as it shuts down. What if the sensors inside the BCI detect that they are no longer able to communicate back to the brain, and start jolting the brain with more and more electricity. As these implants advance towards bidirectionally we need to be even more caution about the risks associated. BCIs also change brain chemistry. Some of the monkeys in the Neuralink animal studies killed themselves, because implantation of a BCI caused their brain chemistry to alter and produce suicidal ideations. Football and hockey players have much higher rates of suicide than the average population, due to receiving many traumatic brain injuries over the course of their careers. How much worse will something directly inserted onto the brain be for patient’s brain chemistries and mental health? Another issue I don’t see people talking about is the security of these products. What is to stop a bad actor from manipulating someone’s brain chip from over the internet? What’s to stop the editors of the Tartan finding out the truth by hacking someone’s brain implant? I haven’t seen much communication from Neuralink about the security of their products. Due to the nature of my employment, I’m probably more concerned about security than the next person, but what’s to stop rouge actors from hacking my computer and monitoring my brain wave data?

While this test is promising, we need to be careful with this technology. We need to put our trust not in the hands of billionaire tech demagogues but in the hands of researchers telling us the drawbacks, and tread lightly. If we’re going to help anyone through these new devices, we need to control our research and development efforts with more than just a simple thought.

-Tuggler Thornswald Habsburg II

(feel free to publish, sources below.)

| 1 | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6187588/ | 2 | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6261524/ (Nature) | 3 | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-022-00451-6 | 4 | https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00689/full | 5 | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165027005002931 | 6 | https://neuralink.com/blog/prime-study-progress-update-user-experience/ | 7 | https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02368-8 | 8 | https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/brain-chip-helps-paralyzed-man-feel-his-fingers-n665881 | 9 | https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/19/238809/nathan-copeland-man-with-brain-implant-on-elon-musk-neuralink-brain-computer-interface/ | 10 | https://www.darpa.mil/program/neural-engineering-system-design | 11 | https://amputeestore.com/blogs/amputee-life/nathan-copeland-has-been-wearing-a-brain-computer-interface-bci-for-seven-years | 12 | https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-has-faced-issues-with-its-tiny-wires-years-sources-say-2024-05-15/

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