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The billionaire technology enthusiast Elon Musk claimed that his bio-friendly chip, Neuralink — a brain-computer interface to help paralysed persons communicate with devices – was working well after being implanted in the first trial participant. He added that initial results showed neural spike detection, probably indicative of the chip picking up on the brain signals.
While marketable implants and devices are years away, experts say it is exciting to see advancements in the field that can eventually help paralysed people communicate or even walk again.
What is Neuralink?
Neuralink belongs to an upcoming category of medical devices called brain-computer interface that can help paralysed persons or amputees regain some sense or movements. Simply put, it will decode signals from a part of the brain that plans movements. These signals will then be used to control external devices such as computers and mobile phones, allowing the participants to browse the web or play online games with just their thoughts even as their limbs are immobile.
Under the PRIME Study (short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface) an N1 implant will be surgically placed by an R1 robot in the brain. The N1 implant has 1,024 electrodes distributed across 64 threads that are thinner than human hair. The R1 robot has been designed to insert these threads very accurately in a specific region of the brain.
The ongoing Neuralink trial will have participants who are quadriplegic (people with all four limbs paralysed) either due to a spinal cord injury or the nervous system disease Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that Stephen Hawking lived with.
What is the current scenario when it comes to the brain computer interface?
With brain-computer interfaces translating neural signals to sentences close to almost at the speed of speech and bi-directional systems that could provide sensory feedback to the brain, Nature named this technology as the find of 2023.
It was also the year when researchers from Switzerland described the case of a man paralysed waist down being able to walk again with the help of a digital bridge that bypassed the damaged part of the spinal cord. A brain-spine interface was used to convert the signals from the brain to stimulation for the spine allowing the person to walk.
“While it will be several years before such devices become available commercially, the science is exciting. There have been great advancements in the field that could eventually help those paralysed due to accidents move around with such implants in their spine,” says Dr Sumit Sinha, director of neurosurgery and spine surgery at Paras Health, Gurugram.
What are the challenges?
According to Dr Sinha, “One of the main challenges of the technology is of course establishing the connection between the brain and the chips, allowing it to reliably interpret the signals from the brain.”
A Nature editorial also states that use of conventional electronics for developing the brain-computer interfaces results in a “mismatch with the soft tissue of the brain.” This can lead to tissue damage and immune response to the sensors. It states that “flexible electronics” with tissue-like properties can help build interfaces that do not face these problems. It can also help the systems adapt to changes in the brain volume during development, ageing and disease, the editorial said.
