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Now pigs will be man
Translated from Dutch. View the original post
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Elon Musk lets pigs control computers with their brains.Elon Musk first showed the brain computer interface of his company Neuralink. During an announcement on August 28 revealed #Neuralink prototypes of the device. They flaunted pigs with the devices implanted in the brain.
The device looks like a coin with extremely thin wires sticking out on one side. It is designed for implantation into the skull, in which the wires are poked a few millimeters into the outside of the brain. The wires can then detect when neurons are stimulated, or emit their own electrical signals to activate neurons. Musk showed a video in which nerve cells react to the electrodes.
The ultimate hope is that these little devices will be able to both detect and create the signals of neurons. According to Musk, they can then be useful in treating medical problems caused in the brain or spine. Also, the devices may allow the integration of computers into the human brain in the distant future.
The device looks like a coin with extremely thin wires sticking out on one side. It is designed for implantation into the skull, in which the wires are poked a few millimeters into the outside of the brain. The wires can then detect when neurons are stimulated, or emit their own electrical signals to activate neurons. Musk showed a video in which nerve cells react to the electrodes.
The ultimate hope is that these little devices will be able to both detect and create the signals of neurons. According to Musk, they can then be useful in treating medical problems caused in the brain or spine. Also, the devices may allow the integration of computers into the human brain in the distant future.
Happy Pigs
The Neuralink team used three pigs to demonstrate the device. The first one, named Joyce, had no implant. The second one, Gertrude, had an implant that monitored the nerve cells in her snout. While the pig was rooting in some hay, Musk showed direct signals from Gertrude's Neuralink device through a screen. Those signals appeared when the muzzle touched food or the ground.
Dorothy, the third pig, had already received an implant. That had been removed by now. “Dorothy shows that you can put the Neuralink in and take it out, and then you have a healthy, happy pig that is indistinguishable from a normal pig,” says Musk. He added that this is important for human use, as they may want to remove or upgrade their implants.
'The most challenging thing they've accomplished is that the animal seems to be happy, walking around and behaving normally, and that the data is transmitted wirelessly, 'says bioelectronics expert Timir Datta-Chaudhuri of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York. “Other people who do similar things normally show the animal under anesthesia on an operating table while wires stick out of the brain.”
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