Elon and his team at Neuralink recently claimed that their brain transplant technology would be able to cure blindness, with Elon saying that even if someone had never had sight before, if they were born blind, Neuralink could help them Will allow the world to see.
One of their guys down the road claims that Neurolink is confident that they will be able to give paralyzed individuals a telepathic interface as well as the ability to use computers for blind people as one of their first major achievements.
Only a matter of years but is this really possible and if so how would it work is something we speculated about in the past but thanks to Nerlink’s recent show and event, we have some There are concrete details on how the company is working to solve the visual cortex and the results look very promising so far.
Neuralink is a brain computer interface. E or BCI for short and more specifically Neuralink is in the category of invasive BCI, which means it has a direct physical connection to brain tissue through a surgical implant, designed to get close to the brain. Provides the most efficient way to read signals and the highest bandwidth connections to individual neurons.
Neurons are the tiny cells all over your brain and your nervous system that send and receive electrical signals. Those electrical signals make up your entire human experience. Every sensory input from the outside world is filtered. Your brain sends signals from neurons to your muscles. Each motor command is sent out through a neuron.
Neuralink is therefore a connection point between the neural networks of the brain and the world of computer technology. The cerebral cortex which is the outer layer of the brain is only a few millimeters thick but has a very large surface area thanks to all the layers and wrinkles in its structure, the cortex is incredibly dense with neurons and they are physically divided into various control center.
The frontal region is therefore associated with higher mental function such as decision making and creativity. section is motor control and muscle sensation, the visual cortex is at the back and this is what we’ve got to date If you’re enjoying the content we create here at Tesla Space and want to support us check out our patrons page We have some special perks for our Patron supporters.
This helps us to grow the team and continue to produce this material in most cases when a person loses his sight or never starts it is due to some kind of damage disease disease that organ external Receives light input from the world. converts it into an electrical nerve signal which is the part of the body that receives that signal visual c.
It’s not getting any inputs Neuralink can use its R1 surgical robot to implant 64 tiny wires directly into the visual cortex, each wire containing 16 electrodes for a total of 1024 channels that serve as inputs to the N1 implant device Both work in and both work as outputs. The N1 is a small computer with a Bluetooth radio.
Elon Musk will often say that it’s basically just a Fitbit or smartwatch in your skull and it’s true that the N1 can record neural activity through every channel and transmit that data wirelessly to a computer. Work the other way around and stimulate neural activity by injecting current into the brain through each channel, the idea being that through this stimulation Neuralink can bypass the eye.
They’ll take a video feed from a digital camera, to create a visual image directly into the brain. streamed wirelessly to a smartphone that would convert that image data into a neural signal and send it to the N1 implant that would send that signal back to T. Through the electric current directly into the neurons of the visual cortex so that in addition to their neurallinks the individual would be.
All you need is a GoPro style camera on your forehead and a phone in your pocket. Obviously this will require a deeper understanding of how visual processing works inside the brain and Neuralink is working on figuring that out right now as they have to decode the input.
Output signals that create a visual image so how do you do that Neuralink let us wire up two test monkeys with N1 implants in their visual cortex and what they do is the monkeys sit in front of a screen and they see white A series of dots are shown moving in different places, they use infrared eye tracking to know where on the screen the monkey is looking.
When the monkey looked directly at the white dot and was rewarded with a sip of banana smoothie, using the N1, they could monitor exactly which neurons were active. What they discovered was that the monkey was looking directly at the white dot. Each cell in the cortex is representative of a small portion of the visual field, so your perception of the world is a mosaic.
Signals from all the neurons in your visual cortex. This is actually cool for Neuralink because it means they can link specific areas of the brain to specific areas of visual perception, by taking those areas out of the monkey. and fixed on the neuron. Then they could start the system working in reverse Neuralink by stimulating neurons through electrodes to create visuals in the monkey’s brain.
They found that stimulating a particular neuron would produce a flash in the monkey’s visual field. Because the monkey has been trained to fixate on the white dots on the screen, they will naturally look in the direction they saw the flash. Then through the eye-tracking system, Neuralink would know which part of the visual field they activated with that particular neural stimulus. It sounds all kinds of crazy.
Know but you can think of it like every cell in your visual cortex corresponds to a pixel on the monitor if you activate that cell via electrical stimulation you turn that pixel white if you look at specific When you activate the correct cells in the pattern, you can create a black-and-white image on the monitor that shows where Neuralink is now. They can turn darkness into light, and they can target it within their field of vision.
So they’re pretty sure they can combine to make a relatively detailed black-and-white image, that’s a whole other thing they’re not even talking about, yet obviously it’s more likely to excite the cell. going to do more than. Number of electrodes being taken. Meaning more electrodes to create something more detailed than what we can see with our eyes.
A higher density image AKA more resolution that will require an upgrade to both the R1 surgical robot and the NY implant device The thing about the visual cortex is that it has some pretty deep folds so that the wiring will be able to reach each neuron they need to make it to the brain They need to go deeper, right now they’re getting about a millimeter of penetration.
The R1 robot uses a combination of a camera and an optical laser sensor to identify blood vessels on the brain and avoid colliding them during insertion, the Knurling team said in their QE session, which they believe will be the future of ultrasound. . And using photoacoustic sensors they can safely implant several centimeters deep into the brain substance, they are also working on increasing the bandwidth of their implant device.
Right now Neurolink has already set the record for the highest bandwidth connection via BCI with its 1024. electrode channels, but with future iterations of the link they will be able to push this up to 8 000 channels per device using even thinner electrode wires. Will be able to push. He hopes to scale this up and believes two of these devices will be installed in every device capable of delivering power in the future.
Visual cortex for a combined total of 16 000 electrodes. They can totally turn on a light for someone who’s been living in the dark and that’s a really powerful thing to think about for someone who’s from Star Trek. There is an acquaintance who knows the character of Georgie Leforge.
A blind man gains the ability to see thanks to miraculous futuristic technology from the 23rd century How crazy to think we might not be 200 years away from achieving something we might be 20 years closer to curing blindness and it’s obvious In terms of what a Neuralink could enable for Elon Musk’s vision for this company.
Scratching the surface of it, inventing a product that is safe, reliable, affordable and that can be scaled up to high volume production seeks to manufacture thousands and then millions. and making the procedure accessible to the public in the form of laser eye surgery. In that time we are not only using Neuraling to restore sight to the blind.
We’re using it to amplify and amplify human vision to the point where it’s going to be like having this most amazing VR headset directly into your brain, some crazy stuff along the way but what do you think the future holds for Neuralink?