Neuralink
We all know Elon Musk. The man worth approximately 90 billion US dollars, who has become famous for launching rockets to the international space station, aiming to colonize mars, selling flamethrowers that are labeled “not a flamethrower, naming his son X Æ A-Xii, and creating the Tesla models S, 3, and X because he thought it would be funny if his car models spelled out the word sex. Besides Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, Elon Musk is also the head of a company called Neuralink. While the concepts behind Tesla and SpaceX are relatively straight forward, Neuralink is a little bit more mysterious. In my multi-media narrative, I will address how Neuralink could benefit the medical field. I will also discuss pros and cons of neuralink, and how it might change our future.
The Neuralink is an invasive brain computer interface, also known as a brain-machine interface. The device is comprised of two main components: The Link and the Neural Threads. The Link is a sealed, implanted device the size of a large coin that processes, stimulates, and transmits neural signals. The neural threads each contain many electrodes, which are directly plugged into the brain.
The electrodes that are put in your brain have the ability to fire signals, just like neurons. If a neuron isn’t firing properly, the Neuralink can send the signal the neuron was supposed to originally. One electrode can influence between 1000 and 10.000 neurons. Given that the Neuralink has 1024 channels, each carrying multiple electrons, it can influence nearly all parts of the brain. While the fact that this would enable us to control our computers with our minds and listen to music in our heads is pretty cool, I will focus on the medical advantages Neuralink can bring us. The medical goal behind Neuralink is to solve important brain and spine problems with a seamlessly implanted device. The Company believes this is an important field to target since most people develop brain and spine problems throughout their life. Just to show how many issues we face fall under the category brain and spine problems, memory loss, hearing loss, paralysis, blindness, depression, insomnia, extreme pain, seizures, anxiety, strokes, brain damage, and addiction all stem from issues with our brain or spine. Since hearing, seeing, feeling, and pain are all electrical signals sent to your brain by neurons, the Neuralink can take control of any one of them. The Neuralink is also able to read the signals your brain is sending, recognize if you are at risk of a heart attack or stroke, and warn you. It is also capable of detecting an epileptic seizure in real time and send the correct counter pulses to stop the seizure. The Neuralink can also be used in patients who recently experienced a stroke. If the patient lost their memory or the ability to speak, the Neuralink is able to repair any damage that occurred.
The process of installing a Neuralink into your head is also surprisingly simple. Because the procedure requires such precision, the company built its own robot that is able to perform the surgery completely autonomously. The robot is able to image the brain and avoid veins and arteries while inserting the electrodes in order to avoid causing neural damage; no bleeding is caused. Additionally, there is no need for general anesthesia. The robot cuts a piece of skull the size of a coin out of your head, inserts the electrons carefully into the brain, and replaces the piece of skull with the link. The surgery can usually be completed within an hour. It’s definitely mind-boggling to that in the distant future, people will be able to walk into a hospital in the morning and leave in the afternoon with a computer installed in their head. Something else that is often emphasized by the company is that it is easy to have a Neuralink removed, in case you change your mind or want an upgrade.
Neuralink is still in test stages, so it is too early to say how well it really works. But despite the lack of actual evidence, it becomes pretty evident that Neuralink is truly a product ahead of its time when we look at similar devices used in the medical field. One example of another device that has been used to obtain neural recordings in the brain and peripheral-nerve tissue is the Utah Array.
As you can see, the patient using the Utah Array has large boxes and wires sticking out of their head, which besides looking quite bizarre are an infection risk. The Utah Array has also only been used on a couple dozen patients and requires a medical professional to operate. While it isn’t a model that will be used in the future, it was an important proof of concept that invasive brain computer interfaces are an achievable reality.
Another approach is the deep brain stimulation method. This is a very aggressive approach, as you can tell by the image. Two large electrodes are stuck into the patients’ brain; the patient also has to have a device under the skin of their chest that sends the impulses. This method is not guaranteed to work and through the installation process, brain matter about the size of a sugar cube is destroyed. Despite these downsides, deep brain stimulation has helped over 150.000 individuals
Now I will briefly discuss my own thoughts about Neuralink. On the one hand I do believe that it has the power to potentially impact our future in a great way. It could cure so many issues that today’s medicine can’t, such as blindness, deafness, Alzheimer’s, and epilepsy. It could change a lot of people lives and enable them to do things that would impossible without a Neuralink. On the other hand, I personally am fearful of the idea of installing a computer into our head. When we read articles such as Big Data: Big Issues and Big Problems by Phil Simon that discuss how big companies are stealing our data, it makes me wonder what companies might be able to do if we had computers in our heads. If these companies didn’t have to only predict our thoughts by looking at our internet usage but could read them since we had computers in our head, it would be very scary. I believe that we can only wait and see whether or not Neuralink will be something that is implemented into society. And if it is, I believe that besides the numerous medical benefits, it will create new societal challenges we currently can’t even imagine.
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