Musk’s chip is second-rate science fiction, says Nicolelis – 01/31/2024 – Tech

The brain implant from Neuralink, one of Elon Musk’s companies, does not bring advancement or innovation, according to Brazilian neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis. “It’s just smoke.”

The chip called Telepathy uses the brain-machine interface technique invented by Nicolelis with the aim of allowing control of computers, cell phones and digital devices through thought. In principle, the solution aims to help people with mobility disabilities.

“The vast majority of paralysis cases can be treated with non-invasive interfaces as we have demonstrated over the last ten years; they [a Neuralink] are living on hype and bad sci-fi [ficção científica ruim]”, says the neuroscientist to Sheet.

When contacted by the report, Neuralink did not respond.

The research group led by Nicolelis at Duke University made the first records of the use of technology by humans who were able to control robotic arms remotely. The experiment involved 15 people without the need for surgery.

The brain-machine interface began to be addressed by Nicolelis in studies in 1999, after years of collecting neural activity signals from rats and monkeys. The first successful experiment on primates dates back to 2002.

Nicolelis’ group, unlike Neuralink’s approach, placed its chips on exoskeletons, used to aid the mobility of people with paraplegia or quadriplegia. In 2014, a volunteer kicked a ball during the opening of the World Cup in Brazil, at Arena Corinthians, with one of the equipment developed by Nicolelis.

Today, in Brazil, there are already medical units that use exoskeletons to treat people with paralysis. One of them is the Lucy Montoro Rehabilitation Network, in Vila Mariana, which has equipment from the French company Wandercraft and the Russian ExoAtlet.

Video of Senator Mara Gabrilli walking with the help of a Wandercraft exoskeleton went viral on the networks last year.

In the case of these devices, the movement sensor is located on the neck.

Also in 2004, researchers led by engineer Kevin Warwick also made a neural implant from an electrode plate. The method became known as the Utah Matrix and was more invasive.

Warwick did several tests with the machine implant itself. In 2004, he published the book “I, Cyborg” (I, cyborg, in free translation), in which he reports the results of risky experiments.

The technique was improved and later used by another neuroscience research center at the University of Pittsburgh.

The first human to receive an implant in Pittsburgh was Nathan Copeland, who underwent surgery in 2014. Paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident, Copeland was able to move a mechanical arm, control a computer and play video games with thoughts.

In 2022, the American broke the record for the person with the longest exposure to the procedure called the Utah Matrix, after seven years and three months of implementation.

The implant in Copeland’s head is about the size of an eraser. Newer chips are smaller.

Neuralink, for example, uses a robot to surgically place a brain-machine interface implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, the motor cortex.

The chips are so small and sensitive that they cannot be implanted by human hands, according to the Neuralink website.

According to the company, the device contains more than a thousand electrodes, well above that recorded in other implants. It also targets individual neurons, contrary to competition that targets signals from groups of neurons. If it works, this should allow for a greater degree of accuracy.

In Nicolelis’ assessment, there is no market for these implants. “The vast majority of patients do not want to undergo neurosurgery and take risks.”

“Apart from Musk’s misleading marketing, he is not producing anything new or innovative in the field,” he added.