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Neuroscientists Weigh In On Elon Musk's Mysterious 'Neural Lace' Company (ieee.org)
the_newsbeagle writes: Elon Musk has set out to change the world with SpaceX's reusable rockets and Tesla's electric cars, and now he plans to change your brain. His new company, Neuralink, will reportedly build delicate brain implants called "neural lace" to help people with neuropsychiatric disorders and to give healthy people strange new mental abilities. But the news announcements about the company contained scant details about what kind of hardware Neuralink might actually build, and what engineering challenges the company will have to overcome in pursuit of miniaturized and safe brain implants. Here, five neuroscience experts describe those challenges, and give hints on what to expect from Musk's neural dust. One of the neuroscientists is Mary Lou Jepsen, founder of the Openwater startup, which is looking for ways to develop a noninvasive BCI for imaging and telepathy. Jepsen was also "an engineering executive at Facebook working on its Oculus virtual reality gear; before that she spent three years at Google X, running advanced projects on display technology," reports IEEE Spectrum. She says that Neuralink will likely face many medical hurdles, even if their process doesn't require splitting open patients' skulls. "The approach as I understand it (not much is published) involves implanting silicon particles (so called "neural lace") into the bloodstream. One concern is that implanting anything in the body can cause unintended consequences," says Jepsen. "For example, even red blood cells can clog capillaries in the brain when the red blood cells are made more stiff by diseases like malaria. This clogging can reduce or even cut off the flow of oxygen to the parts of the brain. Indeed, clogging of cerebral capillaries has been shown to be a major cause of Alzheimer's progression. Back to neural lace: One concern I would have is whether the silicon particles could lead to any clogging."
You're right, but there are many conditions for which the brain is the problem. I've have cerebral palsy (more specifically spastic diplegia) as a result of a brain injury caused by oxygen loss during a premature birth. Through various surgeries addressing orthopedic and muscular issues I've reached a point wherein I can now even stand still without any external support. Walking is possible with canes or as little support as one finger to hold onto with both of my hands. The core of the issue is that the part of the motor cortex that processes incoming information from the balance organs and muscles about the posture of the body is partially dead, so the brain is unable to regulate balance accordingly. Outside stem cells or other such theoretical ways of regenerating nerve tissue, implants are the only thing that may one day solve this.
A hypothetical implant for something like my case of CP would be just a chip that sits on top of the brain and does the calculations that the dead part of the cortex would normally do. It doesn't have to be connected to the external world, and should I ever get to see a day where such an implant is a reality, I certainly would not accept one that was. I'm 26 now and realistically speaking I don't expect to see this tech becoming widespread during my lifetime, nor will I volunteer as a test subject because I've reached a point wherein I can live by myself, work and drive a vehicle, so my quality of life is pretty much as close to normal as is currently feasible for people with CP, thanks in large part to the medical expertise of the university of Helsinki hospital, so my disability does not bother me nearly enough for me to desire to try experimental high risk treatments. But having seen the already very promising results that for example deep brain stimulation has had for people with Parkinson's etc I do think this kind of solution is far more feasible after some more decades of advances than most people currently think.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead