Tech Tuesday

  “Welcome to the Neuralink product demo. Really excited to show you what we got, and I think its gonna blow your mind.”, Elon Musk said and for good measure. The Neuralink project is a very meaningful step forward in the way we interact with the electronic devices around us. It is yet another step forward in reducing the effort and the complexity of interacting with devices and aims at humans being able to control electronic devices with their brains with a small chip implant that will sit inside our skull. How does Neuralink work? To understand how Neuralink works, we must have a basic idea of how the human brain functions. The basic functioning of the brain and the neural system in our bodies works in the form of electro-chemical signals that are transmitted by the neurons. This creates an electric field, and this electric field can be measured to detect various brain activities. This is where the Neuralink implant comes into play and acts an all time reader and transmitter of t

  With advancements in AI and Computer technology we have been able to replicate our core senses. Developments of smart prosthetic and hearing devices are good examples that can support the statement. Replication of our sense of smell has been a difficult task for researchers. ‘Smell-O-Presence ’ for computers sound strange right? But in a research paper published in Science Advances researchers were able to turn this impossibility into a possibility by creating a Biohybrid Nose that uses olfactory receptors of mosquitoes for sensing VOC.   Why Olfactory Receptors of Mosquitoes? Probably a first question that might have struck your brain… We humans are not ‘master of smell’ in animal kingdom. Therefore rather than going to humans researchers turned their attention towards yellow fever mosquito (yike). These mosquitoes have great sense of smell due to their highly sensitive odor receptors. Instead they have a separate component that can amplify the electrical signal biologically. It is