Recently, Musk just announced that he was going to spend $44 billion to swallow Twitter, and he can't wait to announce his new progress in brain-computer interfaces.
He revealed that it has obtained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct human experiments this year:
Musk revealed that human experiments on brain-computer interfaces will be conducted within the year
Neuralink, a company musk says specializes in brain-computer interface technology, plans for the next five years to allow humans to communicate directly through their brains without having to use language.
Musk also imagines that people can directly export their "memory" and "consciousness" through the brain-computer interface, and perhaps one day we can use USB sticks and memory cards to store their "souls" and realize people's "consciousness immortality"...
Neuralink brain-computer interface chip implantation (schematic)
The term "brain-computer interface" was first coined by Jacques Vidal in 1973 and was not taken seriously at the time.
Until an experiment was unexpectedly discovered, relevant experiments on cats could raise the seizure threshold. Subsequent single studies also demonstrated that similar techniques can significantly reduce the likelihood of major seizures when applied to epilepsy patients. Such studies have attracted great attention in the clinical field, and imitators have flocked to it.
In just over 50 years, brain-computer interfaces have shown great advantages in the treatment of neurological diseases, and the application scenarios in other fields are countless, which is considered to be a cutting-edge technology that will change the future of mankind.
Musk published experimental results on monkey use of brain-computer interfaces
How should we understand the importance of brain science represented by the "brain-computer interface" for the future economy and life, so as to grasp the trend of the development of the times?
Today, Ah Xin is going to recommend a blockbuster new book for you- "The Biography of the Brain", written by Matthew Cobb, a professor of zoology and neuroscientist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
This epic of brain science tells us a comprehensive account of the far-reaching impact of brain science research on the birth and development of computers, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces and other fields.
From either angle, the book deserves the grand title of "Brain Transmission."
Richard C. Atkinson, a member of the Fifth Academy of Sciences, president emeritus of the University of California System, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and former president of the National Science Foundation, said this after reading it:
This is the best of all the books published on the brain in the publishing world of my life (not one of them).
Without further ado, below, Ah Xin will use the hot spot of "brain-computer interface" to briefly summarize the essence of "Brain Biography" for you.
Brain-computer interfaces represent brain science
Will change the future of humanity
Brain-computer interface technology is advancing rapidly.
The world's first cochlear implant was introduced in 1978, bringing the gospel of a better life for the hearing impaired.
Today, cochlear implants are the most successful and clinically widely used brain-computer interface technology.
The inventor of the world's first cochlear implant, Graeme. Clark and the user
In 2011, Brown University in the United States successfully helped Cathy Hutchinson, who had been quadriplegic for many years, hold a bottle with a mind-driven robotic arm, slowly bring it to his mouth, drink coffee with a straw, and then put the bottle back on the table.
It was the first time in 14 years that Hutchinson had been able to drink a drink entirely on his own volition. This experiment has ignited the hope of many paralyzed people to resume independent life.
Three years later, in 2014, at the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Brazil, a 14-year-old paraplegic teenager, dressed in "mechanical armor", used his mind to control the movement of his lower limbs and completed the kick-off, which can be said to be a successful display of non-intrusive brain-computer interface wearable devices.
Cathy Hutchinson controls the robotic arm with her brain
In 1978, American biomedical researcher William Dobelle implanted an array of 68 electrodes into the visual cortex of a disabled person who was blinded, and a small camera was installed on the glasses to send the signal to a huge computer to decode, so that the blind subject could feel the light.
By 2020, Spanish scientists have enabled gomez, a blind man connected to a brain-computer interface, to see ceiling lights, people and letters printed on paper, basic graphics, and even play a simple mini-game.
Gomez wearing glasses equipped with a camera
While the results of brain-computer interfaces that have been achieved are exciting, the current achievable performance is still a long way from being envisioned in science fiction.
In addition to the limitations of the technical level, the more critical challenge is that our understanding of how the brain works is very limited.
The continuous exploration and discovery of brain working mechanism by scholars in the field of brain science is the core foundation for the realization of brain-computer interface system.
In recent years, countries around the world have launched brain plans, such as the BRAIN Initiative in the United States, the Human Brain Project in the European Union, the Brain/Minds Project in Japan, and the brain plan in the mainland landed last year, and it is expected that in the next few years, the Chinese brain plan may have tens of billions of investment.
For example, Qiu Zilong, a senior researcher at the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Brain Science and Intelligent Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said:
After entering the 21st century, brain science and its related artificial intelligence and brain-computer interface technology are not only the most cutting-edge scientific fields at present, but also the science and technology that are most likely to completely change the future of human society.
China's "Brain Project"
All mankind is looking forward to a revolution in brain science, but breakthroughs in brain science face two difficulties.
First, the complexity of the brain is beyond imagination. Constructed from billions of cells, the human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. We face challenges of this magnitude.
Second, while brain-related data from labs around the world is pouring in like a tsunami, we are in a crisis: the metaphor of comparing the brain to a computer seems to have failed, and we don't know what to do with it or how to interpret it.
Humans have the habit of using known "metaphors" for the unknown, and "the brain is a machine" is an example. After going through hydraulic power, clockworks, telegraph networks, telephone exchanges, and current computers, this "machine" metaphor is nearing the end of a crossbow, where do we go next?
But don't be pessimistic about the future of brain science, because in the history of human understanding of the brain, such dilemmas have occurred many times.
Therefore, the correct solution to the problem now should be: what kind of process has human understanding of the brain gone through for thousands of years? Can previous lessons be used to give us a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the brain?
And this is exactly the problem that Professor Matthew Cobb wants to solve for us in "The Biography of the Brain".
The historical context of brain science research
Shakespeare asks the question in The Merchant of Venice: "Tell me where love grows?" Is it in the head, or in the atrium? ”
Now we know that the answer is "head," but historically "for the most part, we thought that the mind, not the brain, was the basic organ that produces thoughts and feelings."
heart
From prehistoric times to the 17th century, scientists and wise men could not know the true function of the brain through observation, and it was generally believed that thoughts and emotions came from the heart.
For example, Aristotle of ancient Greece believed that the heart is the organ that produces sensations and emotions, and the brain looks far less energetic than the beating heart all the time, right? Ancient Chinese sages held similar views, so we have words to describe emotions such as "sadness" and "heartbreak".
Around 162 AD, Galen of ancient Rome proposed a shocking hypothesis about the brain. Galen experimented with a pig. He cut open the pig's chest and clenched the pig's heart, and the pig was still screaming; but when the pig's skull was opened and pressed against its brain, the pig immediately lost consciousness.
Accordingly, Galen proposed the brain-centered view.
At the same time, Galen also proposed an incomparably mysterious concept of "pneuma", which believes that the invisible and untouchable gas produced by the brain can flow through the nerves and control the movement of the whole body.
Galen used pigs as an experiment to prove that thoughts come from the brain
Since Galen, more and more research has proved that the brain is much more complex than the heart, but the power of traditional inertia and everyday experience has led people to still hold the view of the center of the heart.
Bioelectric
In the 17th and 18th centuries, in addition to Newtonian mechanics, which revolutionized physics, there was another kind of study of forces that eventually unveiled the mystery of the brain— the study of electricity.
By the end of the 18th century, Italian scientists such as Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta were the first to reveal the wonderful power of electricity in living organisms. The ancient "essence" was finally found, that is, bioelectricity.
Galvani uses electricity to cause the frog's legs to contract
The Natural History of Creation, the most popular popular science bestseller of the mid-19th century, wrote about the connection between the brain, mind, and electricity, which is probably the most important sign that the public has learned about this idea.
Functional partitioning
In 1848, Phineas Gage was pierced through the skull by an iron rod, entering from under the cheekbones and exiting above the brow bone. His left eye was blind, but he wasn't dead, and he didn't even experience severe pain. But since then, Gage's temperament has changed dramatically, from an exemplary gentleman to a mean, violent, unreliable person.
Scientists were inspired by his experience to propose functional partitions of the brain.
Phineas Gage was holding an iron rod for the accident
In the two or three hundred years of the Enlightenment, scientists established a series of basic knowledge frameworks about the brain, including bioelectricity, functional partitioning, and so on.
Brain research really became a branch of science until the end of the 19th century, when brain science research also entered a modern stage.
neuron
One of the greatest scientific achievements of the 19th century was cell theory: the realization that all living things are made up of cells. The brain, like the rest of the body, is made up of cells, an idea popularized by the Swiss anatomist Albert von Kolik.
But there is still a major controversy about how nerve cells are organized together. This controversy continued until 1888, when the Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón Cajal proposed the theory of neurons.
Cajal's neuronal theory put brain science research really on the fast track. By correcting the erroneous theory that cells in the brain are connected, and drawing up a staining map of brain cells that still amazes people today, Cajal has always been regarded as a grandfather by modern brain scientists.
Cajal observes and draws neurons
Cajal and other researchers have found that neurons are independent structures, and that it is known that there is some kind of charge that travels through neurons, from dendrites to axons, just as telegraph or telephone messages are transmitted through wires. But how is the current between neurons transmitted?
In 1897, Charles Sherrington proposed the concept of synapses, which became a breakthrough in understanding the way nerve impulses are transmitted.
In 1952, British scientists Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley cleverly used a squid to discover the law of cell electrical conduction, which is the Hodgkin-Huxley equation, which explains the basic laws of neuronal firing.
This truly revolutionary discovery revealed the principle of neuronal firing, which is basically the transmembrane flow of sodium and potassium ions. Since this discovery, neurophysiology, as an emerging discipline, has officially entered the halls of science.
Brain is a machine?
In Paris in 1665, the Danish anatomist Nicholas Stannow gave a lecture to thinkers. Stannow boldly points out that if we want to understand how the brain functions and how it works, rather than just describing its components, then we should think of the brain as a machine and disassemble it to see how it works.
This is a revolutionary idea.
For more than 350 years, the way we studied the brain followed Stannow's advice. His foresight profoundly influenced the study of brain science in the centuries that followed, and was at the root of the remarkable progress in our understanding of this extraordinary organ of the brain.
Humans have always used the habit of knowing "metaphors" unknown, so with the new discoveries of brain science, the metaphors for the brain are constantly being updated.
It wasn't until 1940 that Volvo Pitts and Warren McCulloch spawned the most common metaphor used today to explain how the brain works: the brain is a computer.
But in fact, the human perception of the connection between the nervous system and electronic machines was initially reversed: people thought of the computer as a brain.
In brain science research in the 20th century, attempts were made to use machines to simulate and approach human intelligence. Pioneering thinking in this field led to the birth of the electronic computer.
Scientists have been hoping to use computers to simulate the brain's working processes, but a series of efforts to simulate the brain have been thunderous and rainy for more than half a century, and progress has been slow.
It wasn't until the beginning of the 21st century, the advent of machine learning algorithms, and the growing computing power that began to rival human intelligence in some areas, that the era of artificial intelligence finally arrived.
The challenges of the future of brain science
Looking back at the thousands of years of brain research, the field of brain science has interesting characteristics compared to other life science fields. These uniquenesses determine the major challenges scientists will face over the next hundred years.
One challenge is dissecting the structure of the brain.
Compared with the heart, stomach and other organs, the structure of the brain is obviously the most complex. Going down to the molecular and cellular level to dissect such complex structures is the biggest challenge scientists will face in the coming century.
In the face of this challenge, scientists have proposed several solutions, such as the first generation of brain connection group programs that have actually failed.
Scientists proposed the plan more than a decade ago to reconstruct the brain with an electron microscope, and it took more than 5 years to figure out an area of 0.013 cubic millimeters in the mouse brain.
There are as many as 70 million neurons in the mouse brain, and the most comprehensive atlas of mouse neuronal connections has reconstructed the connections of fewer than 2,000 mouse neurons, compared with 100 billion neurons in the human brain! This is clearly an impossible task.
Another challenge in brain research is to parse how the brain works.
Although the structure of the brain is extremely complex, dissecting the structure of the brain is still only an engineering problem, even if it may take hundreds of years for humans, at least it seems to be achievable. The really tough test for scientists is figuring out how the brain works.
For example, how are memories generated and stored?
How is human consciousness different from other animals, giving human beings the uniqueness of being human?
Moreover, how are human complex behaviors and even mental states controlled?
Not to mention the specific mechanisms of the many brain diseases that doctors and scientists can currently do nothing about— Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, autism, and so on.
The most dazzling jewel in the crown of brain research is the principle of these advanced cognitive functions. We don't yet have answers to these questions that will satisfy everyone. We are all looking forward to the arrival of truly "revolutionary" discoveries.
The brain makes human beings the spirit of all things, and the deep understanding of the brain has just begun.