Neuralink brain chips head for the Great White North Elon Musk's brain chip biz, Neuralink, has been given the nod by Health Canada to start recruiting for its CAN-PRIME Study. The study is a trial for the neurotech startup's wireless brain-computer interface (BCI), designed to interpret a person's neural activity so they can operate a computer by thought alone. The device has …
This post has been deleted by its author
Newfoundland? Finding enough brain cells to insert a 1000 electrode might be a challenge, I understand.
"Neuralink is looking for people with limited or no ability"
Wouldn't need to look any further afield than the incoming US administration, one would have thought.
"Eventually it has the potential [to] be better than natural vision."
Space Karen has likely got the wrong end of the stick here [again.]
As understand the physical optics of the human visual system are actually pretty rubbish and the signals sent to the rest of the brain aren't exactly hires.
Apparently it is the processing brain applies to these signals that extracts fairly decent images (or at least they appear to be :), augmented by a fair bit of "filling in" the missing bits (AI doesn't have a monopoly on hallucination.)
I am not sure the human brain could do anything useful with a 100 megapixel (stereo) images in 24 bit colour shovelled in at 30 fps.
Years ago the eye was remarkable for the dynamic range of its light sensitivity. I don't if modern cameras can match this yet.
One has to hope that "Government Efficiency" won't involve its nominated Tsar mandating electrodes for the "less efficient" members of society so that they will have a "better" view of Lumic's Musk's vision.
If the track record of the Cybertruck is any indication, Musk's cybersuits for these "newly envisioned" would be more of a downgrade.
(Anyway I must find out who manufactures blue leds and acquire some of their shares. :)
"physical optics ... are actually pretty rubbish"
An actual biologist can call me out on this - I'm possibly regurgitating complete bollocks - but as I understand it:
You can't keep your eyes completely still, they are constantly moving very slightly. That means your brain gets lots of slightly different "lo" res images that it can effectively upscale to give the impression of higher detail.
Actually that's pretty cool. Remember reading astronomy mag years ago. They'd take a fairly low res sensor and during the exposure move the sensor down, left, up, and right combining 4 positions and stitching them into an image with 4 times the pixel count of the sensor. Appears most phone cameras do something like this, as well as combining information from multiple sensors now.
"Apparently it is the processing ... that extracts fairly decent images ... augmented by a fair bit of "filling in" the missing bits"
We're probably all familiar with a lot of famous\traditional optical illusions - Our brains are clearly hard-wired to fill-in and augment visual input in some quite specific ways.
I've often wondered if anyone has ever scientifically concluded exactly what the brain is trying to achieve in these cases. Have any papers been written up that draw conclusions regarding what is going on with each specific illusion? What real-world scenario is filling in imaginary black dots into a lattice of white criss-cross lines actually replicating (and presumably conferring a Darwinian advantage in doing so...?)
Second Sight tried using in brain implants to restore vision - tech itself was quite impressive, but when the company had financial trouble people were left high and dry with implants they dare not remove.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/16/22937198/bionic-eye-company-defunct-ieee-spectrum-go-read-this
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
