Neuralink: Elon Musk’s brain implant

On 9 April 2021, Neuralink, the neurotechnology company co-founded by Elon Musk in 2016, posted a video to YouTube showing a monkey playing the rudimentary video game Pong, using its mind, without a physical controller. The game itself resembles table tennis, with the monkey positioning the paddles on each side just by thinking about it, as the ball bounces back and forth.



But how?

The technology that made it a reality, also called the Neuralink, is a brain implant that makes it possible for the brain to wirelessly interface with a machine. On 29 August 2020, Musk streamed an hour-long “live demonstration” of the technology. 

“It’s kind of like a Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires,” he told the audience. The physical device that Musk presented to the audience looks about the same size as a R2 coin. Attached to it are threads which house electrical conductors that can be implanted into the brain. To insert it, a piece of the skull is cut out and replaced with the coin-size device.

According to the company’s website, “The threads on the Link are so fine and flexible that they can’t be inserted by the human hand.” To insert one of these, they are developing a robot “that the neurosurgeon can use to reliably and efficiently insert these threads exactly where they need to be”. However, during that August 2020 presentation, Musk said that eventually the whole process would be automated. “The Link procedure, the installation of the Link… done in under an hour. So you can basically go in the morning and leave the hospital in the afternoon.”

The device would also come with a charger, circular in shape, that can be plugged to a power source to wirelessly charge the Neuralink from outside the human body.

But why?

At its most basic, the device would then allow users to control a digital device such as a computer or smartphone with their minds. According to Neuralink, “The Neuralink app would allow you to control your iOS device, keyboard and mouse directly with the activity of your brain, just by thinking about it.” 

While this sci-fi future might be appealing to some in the general populace, Musk told the audience that Neuralink’s goal is to create a device that can “solve important spine and brain problems with a seamlessly implanted device”.

Neuralink’s website also states that the “initial goal” of their “technology will be to help people with paralysis to regain independence through the control of computers and mobile devices. Our devices are designed to give people the ability to communicate more easily via text or speech synthesis, to follow their curiosity on the web, or to express their creativity through photography, art, or writing apps.”

Again, how?

Neurons, action potentials, and synapses, that’s how. Australia’s University of Queensland website describes neurons as “the fundamental units of the brain and nervous system, the cells responsible for receiving sensory input from the external world, for sending motor commands to our muscles, and for transforming and relaying the electrical signals at every step in between.” 

Each of us has roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain that have synapses, which are structures that make it possible for them to receive and send messages. The neurons communicate with each other via brief electrical signals known as action potentials, which cause synapses to release neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that transmit a signal from a neuron across the synapse to the target cell.

Neuralink says that they place their electric conductors “near neurons in order to detect action potentials. Recording from many neurons allows us to decode the information represented by those cells. In the movement-related areas of the brain, for example, neurons represent intended movements. There are neurons in the brain that carry information about everything we see, feel, touch, or think.”

Theoretically, once Neuralink has the neuron’s intended message, it can be sent directly to a computer, or other cells.

Image: Neuralink