Further Update on Elon Musk' s Brain Chip

Neuralink: Why is Elon Musk’s brain chip firm in the news?

By Shiona McCallum  Technology reporter in the BBC

Elon Musk's brain chip firm Neuralink has said that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved its first human clinical trial, a critical milestone after earlier struggles to gain approval.

The FDA nod "represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people," Neuralink said in a tweet.

It did not elaborate on the aims of the study, saying only that it was not recruiting yet, and more details would be available soon.  (... much more ) ... ' 

Neuralink, Elon Musk's Brain Implant is Approved for Clinical Trials

 Had not followed this before, will continue ...

Neuralink says it has the FDA’s OK to start clinical trials

Company isn't enrolling patients yet, but it has cleared a major hurdle.

 - John Timmer  in   Arstechnica

In December 2022, founder Elon Musk gave an update on his other, other company, the brain implant startup Neuralink. As early as 2020, the company had been saying it was close to starting clinical trials of the implants, but the December update suggested those were still six months away. This time, it seems that the company was correct, as it now claims that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given its approval for the start of human testing.

Neuralink is not ready to start recruiting test subjects, and there are no details about what the trials will entail. Searching the ClinicalTrials.gov database for "Neuralink" also turns up nothing. Typically, the initial trials are small and focused entirely on safety rather than effectiveness. Given that Neuralink is developing both brain implants and a surgical robot to do the implanting, there will be a lot that needs testing.

It's likely that these will focus on the implants first, given that other implants have already been tested in humans, whereas an equivalent surgical robot has not.

The news is undoubtedly a relief for both the staff of the company and its owner Musk, given that Neuralink has had several negative interactions with federal regulators of late. It's a bad sign when having an earlier bid to start clinical trials rejected by the FDA was the least of the company's problems. The company has also been accused of being abusive toward its research animals and violating transportation rules by shipping implants contaminated with monkey tissue and pathogens.

Typically, when the FDA rejects an application for clinical trials, it is willing to communicate in detail why it found the plan for trials insufficient. It's a positive sign for Neuralink that the company was able to address the concerns of federal regulators in a relatively short period. ... '

More Elon Musk on Brain Implants

Some more detailed comments on the Neuralink talk given by Elon Musk last week.  And a link to the talk.  Was an area we looked at carefully, especially how it linked to neuromarketing engagement.

Humans and technology/Brain-computer interface
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater
Elon Musk’s livestreamed brain implant event made promises that will be hard to keep.  by Antonio  Regaldo in TechnologyReview

Humans and technology/Brain-computer interface
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater
Elon Musk’s livestreamed brain implant event made promises that will be hard to keep.

Rock-climb without fear. Play a symphony in your head. See radar with superhuman vision. Discover the nature of consciousness. Cure blindness, paralysis, deafness, and mental illness. Those are just a few of the applications that Elon Musk and employees at his four-year-old neuroscience company Neuralink believe electronic brain-computer interfaces will one day bring about.

None of these advances are close at hand , and some are unlikely to ever come about. But in a “product update” streamed over YouTube    on Friday, Musk, also the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, joined staffers wearing black masks to discuss the company’s work toward an affordable, reliable brain implant that Musk believes billions of consumers will clamor for in the future. ... "

Connecting Computers to the Brain: Update NeuraLink

Had heard of this some time ago.   Apparently this updates.   Still skeptical as to what the word 'connecting' means here.  We can read brain signals readily, but can we control things that way?   Look forward to see more.  No comments from the pigs.  Suggest some caution before you volunteer

Elon Musk is one step closer to connecting a computer to your brain

Neuralink has demonstrated a prototype of its brain-machine interface that currently works in pigs.
By Rebecca Heilweil  in Vox

At a Friday event, Elon Musk revealed more details about his mysterious neuroscience company Neuralink and its plans to connect computers to human brains. While the development of this futuristic-sounding tech is still in its early stages, the presentation was expected to demonstrate the second version of a small, robotic device that inserts tiny electrode threads through the skull and into the brain. Musk said ahead of the event he would “show neurons firing in real-time. The matrix in the matrix.”

And he did just that. At the event, Musk showed off several pigs that had prototypes of the neural links implanted in their head, and machinery that was tracking those pigs’ brain activity in real time. The billionaire also announced that the Food and Drug Administration had awarded the company a breakthrough device authorization, which can help expedite research on a medical device.

Like building underground car tunnels and sending private rockets to Mars, this Musk-backed endeavor is incredibly ambitious, but Neuralink builds on years of research into brain-machine interfaces. A brain-machine interface is technology that allows for a device, like a computer, to interact and communicate with a brain. Neuralink, in particular, aims to build an incredibly powerful brain-machine interface, a device with the power to handle lots of data that can be inserted in a relatively simple surgery. Its short-term goal is to build a device that can help people with specific health conditions.

The actual status of Neuralink’s research has been somewhat murky, and Friday’s big announcement happened as ex-employees complain of internal chaos at the company. Musk has already said the project allowed a monkey to control a computer device with its mind, and as the New York Times reported in 2019, Neuralink had demonstrated a system with 1,500 electrodes connected to a lab rat. Since then, Musk has hinted at the company’s progress (at times on Twitter), though those involved have generally been close-lipped about the status of the research.  .... " 

Do we Know How the Brain Works?

Have had  conversations of late with people who have said:  Look at neural nets they are modeled after brains.    But the answer is still, no we don't.  And we are still not close.   Artificial neural models are very different even from the way we think we know how biological neurons work.    Not to say the artificial models are not useful,  but its not what your brain actual does.  How much closer are we getting?  See the Neuralink approach, mentioned below, to understand the challenges.  Will we know?  I am always optimistic.

Will It Ever Be Possible to Understand the Human Brain?
Despite technical breakthroughs like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, scientists still have no reliable model of how the brain actually works

By Brian Bergstein in Medium ...