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No idea seems too daring to him: Elon Musk wants to help sick people with the help of a device that connects neurons in the human brain to a smartphone. When introducing the innovative implant, pigs must first be used.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is advancing his plan to create an electronic connection to the human brain. Musk presented the prototype of a device from his company Neurolink that can transmit information between neurons and a smartphone. It is about the size of a coin and should be placed on the skull. Except for a small scar under the hair, there was no trace, Musk said.
Neurolink implants the devices in pigs. Musk showed one of the animals in which impulses were transmitted from the trunk. Every time the pig touched something with it, electrical signals could be seen on the screen. In the case of a pig on the treadmill, the software could use the information from the device to predict when which joint would fire.
Musk and Neurolink see potential areas of application for the technology in humans, for example, to combat pain or visual disturbances, as well as in spinal cord injuries. In the future, it would be conceivable to use the technology to tie the injured nerve tissue together so that people could walk again, Musk said.
Neurolink developed a robot for implantation in the brain. The device on the head must communicate with an application on the smartphone via the Bluetooth radio and be charged wirelessly. “It’s like a Fitbit with fine cables on the head,” Musk tried to explain, comparing it to the fitness trackers that are usually tucked into a bracelet.
Neurolink hopes to reduce costs, including surgery, to a few thousand dollars over time. Musk did not mention a time frame to achieve this goal. The billionaire, who is also the head of electric car maker Tesla and space company SpaceX, has been emphasizing for some time that people will have to connect their brains to computers in the future to keep up with the upcoming artificial intelligence.
