In Elon Musk’s latest headline grabbing release for one of his stable of technology companies, Neuralink Corporation, the neurotechnology startup he founded in 2016, has successfully implanted a microchip into a pig’s skull. Gertrude, the pig, is ushering in a new era of “superhuman cognition”, says Musk.
Human brains augmented with AI capabilities is Neuralink’s ultimate ambition but it is hoped that at an earlier stage of development the technology, which Musk describes as “like a Fitbit for your skull”, could help cure dementia, Parkinson’s disease and even reverse paralysis.
Gertrude is Neuralink’s first prototype of a fingernail-sized microchip implanted in the brain acting as a brain-to-machine interface. Musk almost flippantly described the technology earlier this week in terms that will split the audience between dread and excitement:
“It’s kind of like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires. It actually fits quite nicely in your skull. It could be under your hair and you wouldn’t know.”
Gertrude is actually one of three pigs implanted with the chips, which, placed in the part of her brain that controls the activities and sensory information gathered by her snout, relays her neurological activity on to a graph. She doesn’t appear to be suffering any ill effects, with Musk describing her as “a healthy and happy pig with an implant that is two months old and working well.”
The miniature device consists of 1024 electrodes connected to the brain by a web of threads that are finer than a human hair. Those electrodes monitor the activity of as many as 1000 neurons, recording the electrical impulses they send out onto a computer by wireless transmission.
The hope is that eventually the chip could repair any damage or allow damage to the brain’s circuitry to be bypassed. That could have a huge impact on how paralysis is treated as well as neurological disorders and mental illness. Brain function could be altered, strengthened or specific circuits supressed.
Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s chief surgeon, stated that future clinical trials involving humans would first prioritise the treatment of paralysis and paraplegia. Last year Neuralink applied for permission to begin human trials. The hope was they might begin before the end of this year but it is likely that will be delayed by regulatory hurdles.
Within Neuralink, there is a belief that eventually the company’s brain-machine interface technology will be able to treat a range of problems as diverse as strokes, hearing loss and insomnia as well as degenerative brain diseases and ever depression. The plan is to offer surgery implanting the chips at a cost of just several thousand dollars, with the operation performed by robots under just local anaesthetic.
Its not the first time nerve-stimulators have been implanted in humans to try and treat conditions such as hearing loss and Parkinson’s disease. There is also a lot of research currently going into brain-controlled robotic prosthetics. However, so far, the technology has not been especially effective. Mr Musk insists the technology Neuralink is working on is significantly more advanced than anything else that has been tried to-date.
There are, however, many still unanswered questions, which will not be a surprise for anyone familiar with Mr Musk’s record over the years. Graeme Moffat, a neuroscience research fellow at the University of Toronto, commented for The Times newspaper:
“The big challenge is in processing so many channels of information from the brain without a giant rack of electronics, and they appear to have at least partially achieved that. Even for a big lab-based system that would be state of the art, but the fact that they’ve packed so much into such a tiny implanted device is a real jump.”
“I suspect we’ll see data from humans within the next two years, but Neuralink probably won’t have something approved for widespread clinical use before about five years.”