Neuralink, Elon Musk's medical technology company, has inserted its brain implant into a human being for the first time. The patient is recovering well after Sunday's procedure, the tech billionaire wrote on his online platform. Other companies and researchers are also working on these processes.
So far, there is still a lot of information missing about the case, neurotechnologist Rüdiger Rupp from Heidelberg University Hospital told the German Press Agency (dpa). It is unclear, for example, how many leads were implanted and whether the experiment was designed for a specific period of time or permanently. The fact that neural activity could initially be derived means little.
“That doesn't mean checking the smartphone,” Rupp emphasized. To do this, the user must be able to actively modulate the activity of neurons through their thoughts, and a neural decoder must also stably convert neuronal activity into control commands.
Grosse-Wentrup: “In principle, the technology already exists”
The technology itself does not represent a revolution, neuroinformatician Moritz Grosse-Wentrup from the University of Vienna told dpa. Robotic arms have been controlled by individual patients using implants for almost two decades. “In principle, the technology already exists, but with Neuralink it is now possible to use a lot of money and a lot of employees to solve the countless small problems until they are ready for the market.”
The implant has a comparatively large number of 1,024 electrodes that are connected to nerve cells in the brain, Grosse-Wentrup explained. In addition, it is possible to control certain areas and, therefore, functions very precisely. The big disadvantage of the procedure from the point of view of the neuroinformatician: “You are inside the brain”: this always carries the risk of infections, and the brain tissue defends itself like any other, for example with encapsulation reactions. “It is still not entirely clear how long the system can remain stable.” Similar invasive approaches have shown that the number of observable neurons decreases over time.
Only in a few years will it be possible to truly evaluate Neuralink, said Grosse-Wentrup. The first approvals may only be expected in about a decade. Neuralink has several competitors who also want to use the technology commercially.
Neuralink invests large sums, but profit prospects still unclear
The company Precision Neuroscience wants to fix its implant, also with 1024 electrodes, to the brain using a film through a very fine cut in the skull in a minimally invasive way. Synchron aims to bring a system with 16 electrodes closer to the right areas of the brain through blood vessels.
But Neuralink has a special advantage over other companies and collaborations with a similar goal, says Grosse-Wentrup: “Everyone else doesn't invest as much money in it.” The expert is not clear where Musk will be when the technology is ready for the market in the hope of making huge profits. The group of patients who could foreseeably benefit is not very large. “Only a few people suffer from such severe paralysis.” In each case, the risk of invasive brain surgery must be weighed. There are also other options such as voice control of computers and devices.
Technology could, in principle, cure paralysis
In principle, in the long term it is possible to allow some patients to walk again thanks to this technology, Grosse-Wentrup added. But the costs and challenges are immense.
However, dealing with large sums of money and uncertain prospects is nothing new for Elon Musk. The 52-year-old entrepreneur and billionaire brought electric car maker Tesla and space company SpaceX to global prominence. Under pressure from him, the entire automotive industry increasingly turned to electric vehicles. The United States cannot do without SpaceX rockets; In the future, people will fly to the Moon and Mars with SpaceX's “Starship” rocket system. Reliance on Musk's Starlink satellite system is also increasing. His decisions on Twitter, which he bought in 2022 and later renamed X, could influence the upcoming White House election campaign.
Musk is known for leading companies to success
Neuralink currently has no decisive advantage over other implemented solutions, Rupp said. However, this great attention may still be justified, as Musk is known for being very determined and persistent in bringing innovations to market maturity and practical usability.
“It would be a huge benefit to the entire BCI field if Musk, like Tesla or SpaceX, launched a product with Neuralink and kept it on the market for a long time with the large amounts of money available,” Rupp explained. . BCI stands for Brain-Computer Interfaces
Neuralink was founded in 2016
Musk founded the company Neuralink in 2016 to research ways to connect the human brain with machines. Neuralink received permission to use the developed implant for research purposes in a human clinical study in May 2023. Previously, the technology had been tested in animals.
The implant's extremely thin electrodes are connected directly to the brain tissue during an operation using a special robot. External devices should be able to be controlled wirelessly. For the clinical study, Neuralink was looking for patients with quadriplegia, a paraplegia that affects the legs and arms.
Several institutions and companies have been researching brain-computer interfaces for years. They are based on the fact that the brain generates electric fields. These fields can be measured and represent a picture of our thoughts. Since certain thoughts are associated with characteristic patterns, computers can be taught to draw conclusions about our thoughts from these patterns.
If this is successful, paralyzed people could, for example, control an exoskeleton through mind control or people with locked-in syndrome could communicate with their outside world. Currently, Rupp believes that less invasive electrode systems, in which brain activity is read by an implant under the skull, but not deep in the brain, are more promising than Neuralink's approach.