On Friday, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk showed off a pig whose brain he says was implanted with a small computer.
“We have a healthy and happy pig, initially shy but clearly high energy and, you know, a kind of loving life, and she’s been planted for two months,” Musk said of the pig’s Gertrude.
The billionaire entrepreneur, whose other companies include Tesla and SpaceX, was introduced during a livestream event to recruit employees for his neuroscience startup Neurilink. He described Gertrude’s coin-sized seedling as “a fitbit in your skull with a small wire.”
In Musk co-founded Neurelink 2016 with the goal of creating a wireless brain-machine interface, scientists hope it can help heal neurological conditions and allow paralyzed people to control a computer mouse.
In July 2019, Neurlink unveiled a design that would implant small electrode “threads” into the brain, as well as another device behind the ear. The new device musk described on Friday is much smaller, does not require a visible ear device, and the brain will be implanted by a surgical robot under local anesthesia.
The device is removable, Musk said, and he showed it to another pig, Dorothy, who he claimed had planted a device in it and later removed it. “What Doro explains is that you can put in a neuralink, get rid of it, and become healthy, happy and inseparable from a normal pig.”
Although the near-term practical applications of wireless brain-machine interfaces are medical, Kasturi also expressed the wish that such devices could help human intelligence compete with artificial intelligence, which he considers a “survival threat.” In Friday’s event, the entrepreneur makes a lot of claims about the potential capabilities of the technology, including being used to call Tesla, play video games or allow a person with a spinal cord to walk again.
Kasturi did not present any scientific data to support his claim about pigs or devices.
Neurlink has raised more than 150m of funding, including 100m from Musk itself. The company employs about 100 people, but it could soon expand to 10,000, Musk said at the event.
Musk also said that Neuralink acquired the FDA Breakthrough Device designation in July, a program that could help speed up the regulatory process for products that “provide for more effective treatment or diagnosis of life-threatening or irreversible diseases or conditions.” doing”. Such designation does not mean that the device is approved by the FDA.
While Neurlink’s mission to read and stimulate brain activity in humans is possible, the company’s timeline seems more ambitious, say neuroscience experts.
Grammy Moffett, a research fellow at the University of Toronto Neuroscience, said it would be very impressive if everyone in the field showed data from a device implanted in a human.
Small devices that electronically stimulate nerve and brain areas to treat hearing loss and Parkinson’s disease have been implanted in humans for decades.
Neuroscientists have also conducted brain implant trials with many people who have lost control of bodily functions due to neurological conditions such as spinal cord injuries or strokes. In those tests, human robotic limbs or small objects can control objects, such as a computer keyboard or mouse cursor, but more sophisticated tasks remain to be accomplished.
Much of the current research on animals in the brain-machine interface has been done on animals, with scientists noting that safety challenges and lengthy regulatory approval procedures prevent large human trials.
Notably, Musk, who has been repeatedly misinformed about coronavirus in recent months and has been fighting to keep his factories open during the epidemic, did not wear a face mask during his presentation, despite being in a room with dozens of workers. Crew and veterinary staff. He finally put on the mask during the question and answer session.
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