There is new news about Musk's brain-computer interface!
Elon Musk, the founder of Neuralink, just announced on the social media platform X that yesterday, humans received the first brain-computer interface (Neuralink) chip implantation, and the implanter is recovering well.
Just a few days ago, due to Tesla's performance falling sharply as expected, Musk was ousted from the throne of "the richest man in the world" by LV boss Bernard Arnault.
The valuation has reached 35.9 billion yuan, which is highly evaluated in the industry
Neuralink is a brain science company founded by Musk in 2016 with a number of scientists. As the name suggests, the company's main research direction is brain-computer interfaces – the development of a device that can be implanted in the brain to achieve "human-machine interaction". Last year's financing showed that Neuralink's valuation has reached US$5 billion (about 35.9 billion yuan).
The so-called "brain-computer interface" is to implant tiny electrodes in the brain and use an electric current to allow the computer to interact with brain cells. In 2019, Musk released his first product, which uses a laser to drill holes in the skull, and then bypasses the blood vessels in the brain and implants a line into the brain. In August 2020, in order to verify the effect of the brain-computer interface, researchers implanted devices in the bodies of three pigs, and Musk showed viewers the real-time transmission of the piglets' brain activity during the live broadcast.
According to Musk, Neuralink is designing a device that converts brain signals into action and will initially focus on two applications: one is to restore human vision, and the other is to help people who are unable to move their muscles to control devices such as smartphones, and even restore the whole body function of people with spinal cord injuries.
Neuralink's human trial of a precision robot implanted with a brain-computer interface was aimed at finding participants aged 22 and older who were paralyzed by ALS (due to spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and had not improved for at least a year after the injury, with the initial goal of allowing paralyzed people to operate a computer cursor or keyboard with their minds alone.
Judging from the operation process of Musk's brain-computer interface project, the operation will be operated by the robot "R1" and the implant "N1" will be implanted into the brain region. After implantation in about 15 minutes, the chip inside "N1" will be used to record brain signals and transmit them wirelessly to Neuralink's decoded motion intent application. After the app decodes the brain signal, it controls the external device via a Bluetooth connection. Patients use the Neuralink app and Bluetooth connectivity to control an external mouse and keyboard to do what they want.
Externally, the implant "N1" is only the size of a coin, and the small internal battery can be wirelessly charged from the outside via a pocket-sized inductive charger. "Fully implantable, invisible from the outside, and allowing you to control your computer or mobile device anytime, anywhere," Neuralink's official website says. ”
Implant "N1"
Image and source: Neuralink official website
The key parts of the robot "R1" are the head and needles, which contain the optics and sensors of the five camera systems, as well as the optics, which are thinner than a human hair. According to Neuralink, the "R1" reliably and efficiently inserts the thin wire of the "N1" into exactly where it is needed, which cannot be done by hand.
Robot "R1"
Image and source: Neuralink official website
For Musk's brain-computer interface, the industry has always been highly evaluated. Previously, Gao Xiaorong, a tenured professor at Tsinghua University School of Medicine, who has been engaged in brain-computer interface research for 20 years, told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the two major features of Neuralink products are high throughput and full implantation, on the one hand, the device integration can achieve "coin level", without installing a plug on the brain like other brain-computer interface devices, connecting a very long cable, but a truly "integrated device"; on the other hand, the surgical robot greatly improves the efficiency and accuracy of the electrode wire inserted into the brain.
Dr. Liu Dan, a senior investor in the medical industry, also said that flexible high-density electrodes and automatic implantable robots can greatly reduce the difficulty of surgeons' surgery, and after 6~7 years of preliminary research and development and polishing, and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, Neuralink has an international leading advantage in the research and development of the whole chain of implantable brain-computer interfaces.
Approved for human trials last year
Neuralink announced on September 19, 2023 that it has received approval from an independent review committee to conduct first-in-human trials to implant devices in the brains of paralyzed patients. According to Neuralink, the human trial will last for six years, and participants will first participate in an 18-month study, after which they will spend at least two hours a week working on brain-computer interfaces.
Last September, Neuralink began recruiting for its first human trials. One of Musk's biographers, Ashlee Vance, noted that Neuralink aims to operate on 11 people by 2024 and more than 22,000 by 2030. According to Neuralink's reply to an interview email with the National Business Daily on October 4 last year, the company is recruiting patients with diseases such as quadriplegia, paraplegia, hearing loss, major amputation and cataracts.
Musk said that he hopes to find patients with quadriplegia due to spinal cord injury or ALS as a priority for experiments. Vance said it took surgeons a few hours to perform a craniotomy before the robot inserted Neuralink's device and an ultra-thin electrode array of about 64 different threads in 25 minutes. The device will replace the removed skull. Vance also added that the wires are very thin, about one-fourteenth the width of a human hair.
It is worth mentioning that before the successful application for human clinical trials, Neuralink had already conducted relevant trials on pigs and monkeys, which caused a sensation.
In April 2021, Neuralink released a video showing a monkey implanted in its device playing a video game telepathically, demonstrating the team's breakthrough in brain control research.
According to CCTV Finance, the macaque in the video is named Pag, and a brain-computer interface was implanted before the video was filmed. Initially, the research team taught Pug to play the game with a game joystick and rewarded him with a metal straw feeding a banana milkshake. At this stage, the brain-computer device records which neurons are activated and models the relationship between Pag's neural activity and the intended direction of movement, enabling a "brain-computer connection."
Although, brain-computer interface company Neuralin only a few months ago began human trials to implant devices in the brains of paralyzed patients. If the "brain-computer interface" can help people who have lost their sight to regain their sight, it will also be an important breakthrough in the history of human civilization.
According to the National Eye Institute, vision-related serious diseases are on the rise over a long period of time, with approximately 1.3 million blind and 2.9 million amblyopia patients in the U.S., both likely to grow to 2.2 million and 5 million by 2030.
In recent years, brain-computer interfaces have become a research hotspot in ALS, stroke, spinal cord injury and other fields. Yu Jintai, chief physician of the Department of Neurology of Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, previously told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that in the process of deterioration of ALS patients, they often encounter speech and communication barriers, and brain-computer interfaces convert the nerve signals sent by the brain into text or words spoken through computer or other devices synthesized speech, and through brain nerve signals, it can help patients with advanced ALS to communicate.
Top institutions are entering the game
Expert: It may take 5-10 years for commercialization
According to Liu Dan's previous observation, the domestic brain-computer interface track has been very lively - the commercialization of products is mainly non-invasive brain-computer interface technology, and the invasive brain-computer interface technology applied in China as a medical device is in the preclinical research and researcher-initiated research stage, and goes hand in hand with international leading companies; Aobo and other top institutions have entered the game, and a number of brain-computer interface companies have received high financing in the past two years......
However, it is worth noting that the relevant regulatory policies and regulations are not yet mature, and relevant policies need to be formulated when promoting and applying brain-computer technology, including regulations on the approval process of the technology, data privacy protection, ethical review, etc., which are all uncertain factors in the commercialization time.
For example, Yu Jintai said that the introduction of these devices into clinical practice should develop and follow a certain review process, develop international brain-computer interface standards to ensure uniformity in the introduction and evaluation of the technology, and more research is needed to obtain safety and theoretical data support.
Liu Dan also said that from a global perspective, brain-computer interfaces have not yet been applied on a large scale as medical devices. For the commercial application of brain-computer interface as a medical device, the regulatory level still maintains a relatively strict attitude, requiring sufficient long-term safety, efficacy and implantation convenience, so the commercialization of brain-computer interface products relies on sufficient data support.
When conducting technical evaluation, investment institutions pay the most attention to the risks related to the accuracy, safety and stability of the product, and specifically evaluate the dismantling of the brain-computer interface system into electrodes, chips, and algorithms, and disassemble various parameters one by one for accuracy and safety risk assessment, such as evaluating the number of electrode channels, biocompatibility, implantation trauma, and chip power consumption, and at the same time evaluating the productization degree and operational stability of the brain-computer interface in combination with animal experimental data.
As a result, there are more opportunities for "safe" investments (technologies that can more securely collect high-precision EEG signals). Liu Dan believes that the fully implantable brain-computer interface technology path represented by Neuralink is still far from the real clinical application, facing long-term safety, clinical surgery acceptance and other problems, and commercialization may take at least 5~10 years. When investing in the field of brain-computer interface, I tend to look for technical solutions that are safer and more deterministic in clinical implementation in the near future, such as semi-invasive brain-computer interfaces that compromise between signal quality and landing difficulty and trauma.
Businesses should also strive to break down barriers. Liu Dan believes that domestic and foreign brain-computer interface companies are in the stage of simultaneous development and common development, and domestic brain-computer interface companies can learn from the experience of leading brain-computer interface companies in terms of technical parameters and technical route design, and at the same time actively cooperate with overseas experts with rich experience in the clinical application of brain-computer interface of the United States Food and Drug Administration to explore the path of overseas declaration.
Peng Lei, founder and CEO of Brain Tiger Technology, reminded that brain-computer interfaces need investors who can endure loneliness - (R&D and commercialization) basically have no previous experience to learn from, so everyone is crossing the river by feeling the stones, "Every industry has its own periodicity, and the same is true for the brain-computer interface industry." From the beginning, then a bunch of people poured in, then suddenly dry up, then capital bearish, then fell into the abyss, and then recovered, steady growth. ”
Edit|Duan Lian covers the source source
Proofreading|Tang Yawen
The daily economic news is synthesized from Musk's X account, the Financial Associated Press, CCTV Finance, China Securities Journal, every headline, public information, etc
National Business Daily