Elon Musk’s company Neuralink is working on human-machine interfaces. The company’s secret project, which has been kept secret to date, has been unveiled for the first time. The ultimate goal of Neuralink is to enable paralyzed people to control computers and phones.
The first important step for this purpose was flexible “threads”. The system, which is expected to cause less damage to the brain than the currently used brain-machine interfaces, will also enable high data transfer. According to an article entitled on Elon Musk & Neuralink çıkan, the system can reach up to 96 monitors where 3072 electrodes are dispersed.
These structures, which are thinner than human hair, stand out as the first part of the project. The other important step of Neuralink is the machine in which this system is embedded.
Musk made a presentation about the company and its works and said that the purpose of this presentation is recruitment. Max Hodak, the company’s president, said at first that he didn’t trust the idea, but Musk convinced him.
Neuralink plans to eliminate the need to drill holes in the skull in the future by using laser beams passing through the skull. The first trials will be conducted with neuroscientists from Stanford University. Musk also hope that this product could be used in human patients at the end of next year. Matthew Nagle was the first person to use a computer with an implant in 2006. Nagle first learned to play Ping Pong.
Dr. Hodak, Neuralink is not a company that emerged suddenly, academic studies in this field has been done for years, he said. A special robot has also been developed to apply the new technology with flexible cables to the brain.
Neuralink announced that it has developed a chip capable of better reading, clearing and amplifying signals. They’re only working on rats right now. These threads, which are similar to flexible threads in the system work, perceive and record brain activities. This structure, which aims to increase the bandwidth in brain-machine communication, is expected to provide cleaner and improved communication in the future.
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