Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, has demonstrated the results of new testing of a brain implant in a pig. Photo / Getty Images
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, has demonstrated the results of new testing of a brain implant in a pig. Photo / Getty Images
Elon Musk unveiled the design of his company's Neuralink brain implant and the robot surgeon used to implant it which is hoped will help people suffering from paralysis.
Musk showed off the latest version of the device, which is initially expected to be used to treat brain injuries and disability, at an event on Friday.
In a livestreamed demonstration, the entrepreneur showed off a pig, named Gertrude, which he said had had a Neuralink implant for two months. The company has also been testing on monkeys and rats, he has said at earlier events.
"As you can see, a healthy and happy pig," he said. A graphic showed the implant's ability to predict the movements taken by a pig on a treadmill to a "high degree of accuracy," Musk claimed. Another graphic showed electrodes influencing neurons.
In humans, Musk said the device would connect to an app on a mobile phone using Bluetooth, with a range of five to 10 metres. It would have a full-day battery life and charge overnight.
He described it as "like a Fitbit for your skull with tiny wires". It would be installed by a surgical robot also developed by the company.
In July, he said Neuralink received breakthrough device designation from the US Food and Drug Administration, a programme which involves the regulator engaging with the company to aid development and regulatory progress.
This means they are able to start clinical trials in humans, though these are likely to take years and consumer applications of the device are expected to be a long time coming.
Matthew MacDougall, head neurosurgeon at Neuralink, said the device was limited to the cortical surface, the outer layers of the brain, which could allow it to control motor intentions, sensory information, hearing and visual processing.
"Our first trial involves patients with spinal cord injury - paraplegia, tetraplegia. We plan to enrol a small number of patients," he said.
"You could solve blindness, paralysis, hearing just by interfacing with the cortex," Musk added.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, has demonstrated the results of new testing of a brain implant in a pig. Photo / Getty Images
While it would initially be expensive, he said the company wanted to get the price down to a few thousand dollars "inclusive of the automated surgery" and similar to the cost of Lasik laser eye surgery.
Musk also repeated some of his more outlandish predictions, which have attracted scepticism from scientists. The company is also yet to publish any evidence for most of its claims about the device's abilities.
One paper published last year outlined the design and insertion process in rats, and described the signals obtained from the animals' brains, but there is no evidence yet for its efficacy in humans.
There are also significant risks to invasive brain-machine interfaces, including malfunctions and infection.
Nevertheless, Musk said he expected people would be able to play computer games, unlock their Tesla and save and replay memories in the future using a Neuralink.
"If you have a whole-brain interface, everything that's encoded in memory, you could upload," he said.
Concerns have also been raised about the potential for the devices to be vulnerable to hackers and for brain data to be exploited by bad actors.
In previous interviews, Musk has also claimed the devices could make human language obsolete by having people telepathically communicate within the next decade.
Musk's brain-computer interface: How would it work?
Neuralink's technology is based around implanting electrodes into people's brain tissue though ultra thin "threads", which would be connected to chips and wires placed under the skin of the head.
Those chips would then be linked to a removable "pod", which could sit behind the ear, and connect wirelessly with other devices.
This would allow information from the brain to be fed back directly to smartphones or computers, and would mean thoughts and emotions could be used to control those devices.
Musk, who co-founded the business, says this could make it possible for people to communicate through their brains in future - essentially a telepathy.
It could also allow for brains to be stimulated by the chips itself, although the company said understanding these signals would take time for the brain.
