A second person will soon receive Neuralink’s experimental brain implant, according to Elon Musk, the company’s cofounder. In a video update on Wednesday, Musk said the surgery is planned to take place in “the next week or so.” The company is making changes to the surgical procedure and placement of the device to avoid problems … Read more
“There has to be some kind of triage to remember what is relevant and forget the rest,” Zugaro said. “Understanding how specific memories were selected for storage was still lacking … Now we have a good clue.” Last December, a research team led by Bendor at University College London published related results in Nature Communications … Read more
Rather than building a device from the ground up, Synchron and Paradromics have taken inspiration from previous medical devices. Paradromics’ design, for instance, is based on the Utah array but makes some key improvements. It’s wireless, for one, and it has 421 electrodes on the end of tiny wires that sit in the brain tissue. … Read more
At a tech forum in Beijing last week, a Chinese company unveiled a “homegrown” brain-computer interface that allowed a monkey to seemingly control a robotic arm just by thinking about it. In a video shown at the event, a monkey with its hands restrained uses the interface to move a robotic arm and grasp a … Read more
Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink has chosen the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, as the initial study site to test its Telepathy device. The first participant in Neuralink’s study, Noah Arbaugh, underwent a successful procedure at the institute in January to get the device implanted. Known as a brain-computer interface, or BCI, the technology … Read more
Brian Bussard has 25 tiny chips in his brain. They were installed in February 2022 as part of a study testing a wireless device designed to produce rudimentary vision in blind people. Bussard is the first participant. Bussard, who’s 56, lost vision in his left eye at age 17 after his retina detached. The right … Read more
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In recent decades, neuroscience has seen some stunning advances, and yet a critical part of the brain remains a mystery. I am referring to the cerebellum, so named for the Latin for “little brain,” which is situated like a bun at the back of the … Read more
As a designer, what safety considerations did you have to think about with the Neuralink device? The primary safety considerations weren’t so much on the device but on the robot. We had a small role to play, which was to psychologically transform their first-generation robot, which was exposed steel—you could argue it looked pretty ominous—to … Read more
On Wednesday, Neuralink introduced the first human subject to receive the company’s brain implant, a 29-year-old man who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for eight years after a diving accident. In a brief livestream on the social media platform X, the man introduced himself as Noland Arbaugh, and said he’s able to play … Read more
There’s a lot to like about brain-computer interfaces, those sci-fi-sounding devices that jack into your skull and turn neural signals into software commands. Experimental BCIs help paralyzed people communicate, use the internet, and move prosthetic limbs. In recent years, the devices have even gone wireless. If mind-reading computers become part of everyday life, we’ll need … Read more
