Neuralink keeps losing the thread on brain implant wiring Elon Musk's neurotech startup's revelation that the tiny wires on its chip implants came loose from its first human patient's brain might not have been a first. The Neuralink N1 implant has 64 threads, each thinner than a human hair, through which is distributed a total of 1,024 electrodes. It's not clear how many slipped out …
Interfacing artificial materials to biological tissues is always a problem.
My guess is the extremely small size of the wires/probes is itself causing the host's immune system to react. The brain, from memory, is a bit different again from the rest of the body.
I imagine you might develop (grow) a biofilm to coat the electrodes to evade the immune system. Or develop (breed) nerve like tissues that sit between the electronics and the brain. But growing new nerves from the host's tissue would remove many of the applications of neuralink.
Rocket Science? Were it that simple!
I watched a livestream with Noland, seems like a great guy. He broke the world record in the standardised test for BCI cursor control on day one of having the implant, and although his scores initially dropped when the wiring issue occurred, they have since recovered back to his best level, they seem to have worked around that successfully so far. He is loving the implant, he says it has totally changed his life. Considering he's the first one, and this tech is only going to get better, I think it's pretty impressive, to say the least.
Yup. Musk is easy to bash for many reasons, some of them are even good reasons, and the idea that healthy people will get this done to gain techno-telepathy is... eh, no.
But from a medical perspective, the results on Noland are amazing. The slipping wires is an issue, as are the granulomas, but even if they end up having to take it out, as a first trial it should still be considered a big success.
Although, despite popular belief, axons and neurons don't communicate between each other via electrical impulses; whilst these might be intracellular, i.e. a potential difference along the length of an axon, the intercellular transmission is chemical (which is why serotonin is a thing). Wires interfacing with brain cells in this way are presumably using electrical pulses of some sort, and there is an argument to be had that such technology won't be truly dependable until it properly emulates the natural interactions of brain cells through the release and absorption of various neurotransmitters. That sort of technology is going to be much harder to implement than a tiny wire with a number of electrodes along its length, but probably not impossible.
Ouch!
I miss the old Register, today's addition to the Standards Bureaux is appreciated though
Another wonderful unbiased piece of journalism on the register.
Let’s try to make the decision to use safer electrode design that can be removed without damage seem like a terrible fail.
It’s exhausting reading through these articles trying to extract the facts. Anyone else wish for somewhere that would report clean and clear and keep all the stupid nonsense if they must to a final paragraph?
The problem is that most sources of "facts" are going to be biased in some way. If you want to uncritically read a press release from one of Elon's companies, be sure to take into account the corporate spin, exaggerations, half-truths and omissions. On the flip side, if you are reading a report of something horrible that happened to someone as a result of one of Elon's projects going sideways, expect it to be written from the perspective of someone with an axe to grind.
There will be elements of truth in both, and unbiased reporting is actually pretty hard to do. You'll find that publications that seriously attempt to produce that sort of dry, academic discourse, concerned only with statement of observable and recorded facts don't get a lot of readers, not to mention the fact that Elsevier keeps them behind a paywall.
The article does say that using untethered wires was a deliberate decision, and does report the reasoning behind that decision in a clear fashion. Two paragraphs, which is a sizeable chunk in a very short article. It doesn't even contest it directly.
The title of course is fairly negative, and TheRegister does have a general editorial choice to bash Elon Musk. However, when I think "biased journalism", this is not really the first publication that comes to mind, or the tenth.
Yes, TheRegister does have editorial direction, but who doesn't? The ones who claim not to have them are usually the worst offenders.
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It does seem like an odd statement to make: if they've not identified the cause, how can they definitively eliminate that as one.
It may be that they have done controls where some "patients" had wires implanted, and others just had the same procedures take place, but no implantation. If both developed granulomas, it would point to the wires not being the cause, however, it would cast a lot of shade on the actual surgical procedures.
Doesn't have to be perfect, this isn't brain.... Oh shit, yes it is brain surgery! I applaud the application and the success, but the thought of a chip going in anybody's brain where Elon Musk is concerned, terrifies me. One can only hope that he will provide funding (probably for clout) and leave the rest well alone.
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