What Elon Musk's Brain-Computer Interface Implication Could Offer In Terms Of Data Transfer

Monday - October 2 2023, 14:14 UTC - 1 year ago

Tesla CEO Elon Musk's Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) company Neuralink has announced the N1 implant with 1,024 electrodes to listen in on brain neurons. Scientists are still unsure whether the BCI can speed up communication, but it can potentially detect and stimulate emotions, mental imagery, and more. It also has the potential to detect and transfer data at higher speeds than spoken word which could offer a major breakthrough.

The occasion of Musk’s post was the announcement by Neuralink, his brain-computer interface (BCI) company, that it was officially seeking the first volunteer to receive the "N1," an implant comprising 1,024 electrodes able to listen in on brain neurons.One difference is that the N1 device has more than twice the number of electrodes as used in previous implant experiments. More electrodes means Neuralink can collect more data from more nerve cells.

That brings us to to Musk’s post, in which he discussed a long-term goal of vastly increasing "bandwidth" between people, or people and machines, by a factor of 1,000 or more. What did he mean, and, I wondered, is this really possible? Are we talking about some kind of fast telepathy where I could tell you about my day in nanoseconds?Here’s what his X post said: .

After speaking with a few scientists, I can report to you that the idea that a brain implant can speed up communication between, say, you and me, is largely hogwash. However, speeding up the rate at which machines can read from the brain is very real, and it is key to some cutting-edge uses of mind-reading interfaces, like allowing profoundly paralyzed people to "speak" via a computer.

"The idea that we’re going to hook up two people with bits of wire and do better than what you and I can do right now, speaking, is folly," says Lee Miller, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who works with brain interfaces. "If that’s the plan, I’m not investing." .

Yet scientists concede there are situations in which faster data transfer could allow a fundamental change in how we express ourselves. Say you’ve been mugged and you want to describe the face of your assailant to a sketch artist. Even though you can picture it clearly, it’s going to take a while for you to communicate those details at your spoken-word rate of 40 bits per second.

In fact, Neuralink has started investigating whether its implant electrodes can stimulate the visual cortex of monkeys. Vision produced in this way is extremely crude—essentially, just a few spots of light—but it could get better with more and more electrodes. One day, it might be possible to transmit a picture between two brains over a cable.

"Elon thinks a lot about mental imagery, and I believe he’s imagining a future where the image that I’m thinking of could be presented to you, or stimulated directly in your cortex," says Vikash Gilja, a professor at the University of California, San Diego.

So that’s where more bandwidth could make a difference—not in speeding up speech, but in unexpected forms of thought transfer. It’s also possible, for example, to detect emotional states, like whether a person is depressed, by measuring the brain. Those feelings are not only hard to describe, but you might not even be aware of them.

"I think that there are going to be profoundly interesting things that BCI can read out that people can’t, let’s say, communicate volitionally very easily right now," says Matt Angle, CEO of Paradromics, a Texas company which has developed its own implant system with around 1,600 electrodes. "Electrodes reading from different brain areas could give accexx to a lot more kinds of things about your internal state that the same person can’t necessarily share or easily articulate, even if they are intrinsically aware of it." .