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."

Comments

Cereberal Network Variability

[rtb61]

The problem with any direct connection to the brain is variability with neurons networks, entirely unique. Whilst broad cerebral manipulations are certainly doable, fine work is not, think waking and sleeping, happiness and sadness, really broad and dangerous brush strokes because you have no real idea the consequences on fine neuron networking detail. Then there is the extreme danger of hacking, whether corporate or government or just the idiot kid down the street with the wrong software. Even something as relatively safe as a sleep inducer can become very dangerous when triggered at the wrong times ie driving a car.

Easier to tap nerve bundles than the actual brain ie eyes, ears, spinal cord and they are also quite dangerous ie stimulation of data input versus extremes of pain stimulation.

For actual brain input, it would really have to be grown and the user and the system aligned, think useful brain tumour, with the tumour creating the communications links but the tumour also the idea representing the real risk involved.

The biggest problems are; Would the government hack it if they could, yes. Would Corporation hack it if they could, yes. Would individuals hack it if they could, yes. The temptation to hack if for total control, is far to great for it to be done, apart from very limited medical actions, sleeping being the obvious target for simple manipulation and a real warning about the risk ie putting someone to sleep when they are driving a car.

Re:Cereberal Network Variability

[pz]

Uh, no. If what you asserted were the case, then things like cortical visual prostheses would not be a possibility. I suggest you look them up. While they are still under development, they most certainly do intend on creating fine-grained control over neural activity. Same for cortical somatosensory prostheses. On the flip side, we can definitely read-out fine-grained information about neural activity, such as is used for motor system prostheses, ranging from limb prostheses to vocal chord prostheses.

On both the read-out (decoding) side, and the driving (encoding) side, we have the ability to receive and transmit information on an individual basis. Yes, there is a lot of variability, but that is part and parcel of the challenge. Just as individual variation in foot size and shape does not preclude the creation of shoes because there is an underlying structure, so individual variation in brain morphology and wiring is unlikely to preclude creation of brain/machine interfaces because again there is an underlying structure.

Any time you hear someone say it is impossible to do something, it's likely they are just not thinking in advanced enough terms to overcome whatever barrier they perceive. I myself am guilty of such mistaken proclamations.

"Neural lace" is a term invented by Iain M. Banks

[realmolo]

He was the author of "The Culture" series of sci-fi novels. Which is *easily* the greatest science-fiction series ever written. It's everything you ever wanted from sci-fi. If you haven't read them, do so immediately.

Start with "The Player of Games", or even better, "Use of Weapons" if you are an "andvanced" reader.