Neuralink Explained
“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 these electric field signatures that can be recharged and used without it
affecting the activity of our brain or our health in any way.
A rough representation of how
the implant is connected to the human body
Neuralink have also developed a custom chipset to
power the implant called the N1 chip. They also have an app with the help of
which you will be able to control the Neuralink implant with your smartphone.
The most important application of this will be being able to control the
electronic devices linked to the Neuralink implant with just our brains. So
there will no longer be a need to even say “OK GOOGLE” or “HEY ALEXA”, you
could just do it by thinking of it. The downside to all this is that there is a
definite learning curve to really understand how to exactly do certain tasks by
just using your brain. The Neuralink app also provides the users with a guide
to learn these skills.
How is Neuralink installed??
The Neuralink implant, as explained by Elon Musk
in a live presentation, will be inserted surgically into the skull of the
person by removing and replacing a small part of the human skull. The implant
is supposed to be a little less than the thickness of the skull and hence will
sit flush within the head of the person.
The implant also has wires that will help us
connect the electrodes to the human brain. This kind of surgery requires
extreme precision and accuracy to avoid damage to the brain in the process.
Hence, a human performing the surgery is less than ideal for the safety of the
patient.
But Neuralink has already thought this through,
and they have also built a fully automated robot that is programmed to perform
the surgery with extreme precision. Since this is a pre-programmed process, the
time taken for the surgery is also very less with the surgical procedures
taking less than an hour. Also, the surgery can be performed with no need for
global anesthesia.
The Neuralink Robot:
What are the uses of Neuralink?
Neuralink is a very ambitious project with very
far-reaching applications, but the initial applications for the implant include
medical applications like helping paraplegics with doing simple tasks like operating
a mobile phone or interacting with a computer. It is also said to help in
curing epilepsy.
Further and bigger applications of Neuralink
include being able to restore eyesight, provided the cause of loss of eyesight
is due to the loss of the optical nerve. By principle, the technology is said
to be capable of curing anything that is wrong with the human brain. We can
also effectively download information onto our brain but it is very premature
to assume that this will be a reality in the near future.
Some of the other smaller but very useful and
interesting applications include being able to communicate directly with
somebody telepathically, streaming music directly into the brain instead of
listening through our ears amongst various other applications.
What are some of the concerns with Neuralink??
One of the very major concern about all the
Neuralink technology is that it has not been tested on any humans. All the
testing of Neuralink as of today has been done on rats and pigs and monkeys.
Although monkeys have a very similar brain structure and functioning to that of
humans, we cannot be certain of the fact that the implant will be safe to use
on humans because we have a much more evolved and more complex brain structure
that we have developed over the centuries.
Some more concerns include the general block in the
minds of people about having an electronic device inside your head all the time
and safety concerns like effects it will have on your day-to-day activities
over a long period of time.
There are other smaller things too like the
requirement to charge the implant after a day of use and the lack of knowledge
of the full capability of the implant that stand as barriers before people
start to actively use Neuralink like they use their smartphone in today.
CREDITS: Avinash Sreelal (SY Metallurgy, 112011004)
(Team Tech Tuesday)
LINKS AND REFERENCES:
Neuralink Official Website: https://neuralink.com/
The Quint: https://www.thequint.com/explainers/what-is-neuralink-and-how-does-it-work-explained
Neuralink Product Demonstration Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/CLUWDLKAF1M
NOTE:-
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