On the Brink of Technological Telepathy

The emerging neurotech industry connecting brains to computers ?

Hey Everyone,

As impressive as Apple’s ‘Spatial computing’ is, the advent of BCIs forms one of the major themes of how human beings embody AI in the 21st century. I know, that sounds like a stretch, but hear me out.

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This is a guest post by Conrad Gray

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Recently Conrad has been digging into how BCIs are developing:

1. Brain-Computer Interfaces: The Promise of Technological Telepathy and More
2. Six startups connecting brains with machines
3. So, you have a chip in your brain. Now what?

Brain-computer interfaces and the promise of technological telepathy

Imagine you have a question you never heard before and within seconds, you just know the answer. Or you think about turning the lights on and the lights just turn on. Or your friend sends you a message and you can feel exactly what they felt when sending it. This, and many more things, could be possible by connecting our brains to computers.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are often portrayed in science fiction stories, and the possibility of using them to merge human brains with machines to enhance our capabilities is a common topic of discussion in transhumanist circles. These devices, also known as brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), create a direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device, such as a computer, a robot or a prosthetic. BCIs enable individuals to control or interact with technology using their brain activity, or thoughts, alone.

The BCI devices can be either invasive or non-invasive. Non-invasive BCIs are those devices that do not require any surgery as they are not placed inside the head. Because of that, non-invasive BCIs are considered safe and pose little to no risk to the wearer. They are also cheaper, can be easily put on and taken off, more accessible, and easier to use. However, what makes them safe—being outside the brain—also causes issues. Since the electrodes are placed on the head and not inside the brain, they cannot record brain activity with high resolution.

Invasive BCIs, on the other hand, require open brain surgery to install electrodes which can be placed on the surface of the brain (a semi-invasive approach if they do not penetrate into the brain) or inserted deep into the brain. Invasive devices offer a much greater signal-to-noise ratio and the overall quality of the signal compared to non-invasive methods. However, these methods require open brain surgery, which comes with huge risks for the patient.

BCI technology has seen steady progress over the last 10 years. The number of published publications grew 35-fold between 2000 and 2021. Over 80% of high-impact neuroscience publications are produced by only 10 countries, with the US and China topping the list.

Government investments, particularly from DARPA and the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Initiative, have helped propel neurotech massively forward in the last 20 years. In total, government investments in this field have exceeded $6 billion since 2013. Private investment has also been interested in neurotech space, pouring over $33 billion from 2010 to 2020. In 2023, neurotech attracted more than $8 billion in VC investment, according to PitchBook.

Around 2016, a new wave of neurotech companies began to emerge. Chief among them was Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Neuralink wasn’t the only one entering the stage but because it was Musk’s latest company, it attracted public attention and sent a signal that neurotechnology is a field worth joining. That same year, another billionaire, Bryan Johnson, announced the launch of his BCI company, Kernel. Synchron, today one of the leading companies in the BCI field, was also founded in 2016.

Big Tech has noticed an opportunity in the emerging neurotech and BCI industry, too. In 2017, Facebook announced they were working on a BCI (Facebook shut down the BCI project in 2021). In 2019, Facebook acquired CTRL-Labs, a company that makes a wristband capable of transmitting electrical signals from the brain into computer input. In 2022, Snap acquired NextMind, to help drive long-term augmented reality research efforts within Snap Lab. Gaming giant Valve is also collaborating with OpenBCI to explore the integration of EEG-based BCIs with VR headsets.

Notable BCI companies and startups

Neuralink

If you ask a random person to name any BCI company, there's a high chance their answer would be Neuralink. Neuralink was founded in 2016 by Musk and a team of seven scientists and engineers but the world learned about the venture next year with the goal to make devices to treat serious brain diseases in the short term. The long-term goal of the company is to achieve “symbiosis with artificial intelligence” by creating BCIs that enhance human mental capabilities.

Currently, the company is working on their N1 brain implant. The implant is designed to fit under the skull without the need to use cables. The neural activity, recorded with 1024 electrodes distributed across 64 threads, is sent wirelessly to an external device. N1 also has a built-in battery charged wirelessly, which removes the need for any ports or cables sticking out from the head.

Apart from the N1, Neuralink is also developing R1, a surgical robot, which is used to insert the implant into the brain. The company claims R1 is able to perform the surgery better than any human neurosurgeon as the threads that contain the electrodes are too small and fragile for a human to handle. Neuralink is the only BCI company developing this kind of robot. Introducing automation has the potential to reduce the cost of inserting the implants into the brain and make it easier to scale up the operations, assuming the technology catches on and more people will be interested in having Neuralink’s implant in their heads.

The first public demo of Neuralink’s implant in action was in 2020. During the live event, the company showed a working device implanted in a pig showing that the implant can read neural activity from the animal’s brain. In April 2021, Neuralink released another demo, this time with a monkey playing Pong using Neuralink’s implant. Although this kind of experiment is not something new in the field, it was a big milestone for the company and has shown its implant in action for the first time.

In both these demos, the implanted devices were only reading the neural activity. However, at the end of 2022, Neuralink showed their devices can also stimulate nerves and cause a pig to move its leg through a device implanted in the pig’s spinal cord.

In late 2022, reports emerged that the company is under investigation for animal cruelty and is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General for breaching the Animal Welfare Act. Neuralink has reportedly terminated around 1,500 animals, including sheep, pigs, and monkeys, in experiments since 2018. This figure is considered a rough estimate due to the company's imprecise record-keeping on animal testing. The report also reveals an internal culture at Neuralink that pressures employees to expedite work, driven by Elon Musk's aggressive timelines. This environment has contributed to mistakes and a higher rate of animal testing and euthanasia.

In April 2023, Neuralink received approval from the FDA to launch clinical trials on humans and in September of the same year, the company opened recruitment for their first human trial. On January 29th 2024, Elon Musk announced the first human has received Neuralink’s brain implant. A month later, Elon Musk said the patient was controlling a computer mouse with thoughts.

To date, Neuralink has raised $686.2 million in funding and is reportedly valued at around $5 billion.

Blackrock Neurotech

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