When we first took science class in school, we learned about the five senses. Maybe not far into the future, that information might be as outdated as the idea of nine planets in our solar system . This might be thanks to Neuralink, a company that’s been making headlines for its controversial brain-chip interface. On July 17, 2019, the company finally unveiled its hard work in a YouTube live stream.
When you first hear it, Neuralink’s pursuit sounds like it comes straight out of a mad genius’s diary; certainly, with Elon Musk at the head of the company, that image might not be a far stretch. But if you look beyond what seems to be a Sci-Fi horror movie, you can get a glimpse of quite a different future for humanity — one that has a new, sixth sense: Neuralink.
Neuralink is a device that will first be used to help paraplegics with simple tasks such as using an iPhone and making mouse clicks on a computer — by making no physical movement. To be clear, human trials have not yet started; Elon Musk and his team are optimistic about beginning by the end of 2020, but they anchor that timeline with the fact that FDA approval is not easy. So far, Neuralink prototypes have been tested on rodents and apparently even a monkey, according to Musk.
Neuralink does involve surgically implanting some components onto the surface of your brain. But brain implants are not new — research and development have been going on, tested, and used since the 1970s. It’s just that previously, brain implants have not been considered enhancements; after all, our brains are still a big mystery, and we have only recently started decoding the genetic origins of our intelligence.
Ideally, we would like to preserve the sanctity of this sacred chamber — and I’m sure Elon Musk (as well as his team) would like to as well. At this point, though, it’s not possible. They realized this by running a test using electrodes, which are devices that are used to detect electric fields (in the brain, electric fields occur when nerves fire messages to one another — i.e., Neuralink uses the electrodes to detect when nerves are sending messages to each other).
One of the electrodes (we’ll call it Electrode 1) was placed right on the neuron. Because it’s directly on the neuron, it would be able to detect any electrical field generated as a result of the neuron firing. They then placed another electrode (we’ll call it Electrode 2) farther away to see if it could still detect an electric field from the neuron firing. If it could, they moved it farther and farther, until a point where Electrode 2 could no longer detect the neuron’s electrical signal — at that point, Electrode 1 would report that the neuron is firing, but Electrode 2 wouldn’t be able to confirm it. In other words, Electrode 2 was too far from the neuron. That distance was 60 nanometers. Without getting any further into the weeds, the fact is that 60 nanometers means it would have to be inside, not outside, the skull.
At the very least, the electrodes would need to reside underneath the skull. And that’s exactly what they’re going to do. The electrodes, along with a small receiver, will be fitted underneath the skull. No, you won’t have an antenna sticking out of your head, and no, poles are not impaling your brain.
Stick out your index finger and try to imagine the chip resting on top. Now you realize just how small it is — it’s certainly smaller than the AirPods I have in my ears right now, which fire signals back and forth with my brain caught in the crossfire. The cylindrical encasing it will be placed in is 8mm in diameter and stands 4mm tall.
Coming out of the encasing will be 1,024 tiny, thin electrodes that look like microscopic threads. When I say tiny, we are looking at approximately 6 nanometers in diameter. To compare, imagine the diameter of your hair, and then divide that diameter by ten. It’s so small that something as comparatively large as a human hand just won’t be able to install it on the brain. That’s why Neuralink created a robotic surgeon, too.
That’s because, at that scale, there are other factors that it has to consider; for example, breathing and heartbeat. Both are involuntary. Sure, a person who is not under complete sedation could try to hold his or her breath for the hour-long procedure, but can he or she hold a heartbeat? I don’t think anyone would recommend that.
You might wonder if poking the brain will just end up in massive headaches from the pain. The answer is no. First of all, the brain does not have any pain receptors, so you won’t feel anything. Second of all, the electrodes are so thin. If the hair analogy isn’t visual enough, think of it like this: those electrodes are thinner than a mosquito's proboscis (that long needle that comes out when it wants to suck your blood) — the inner part of its mouth, the Labium, is around 40 nanometers in diameter (compared to the electrode’s 6 nanometer diameter). When was the last time you felt a mosquito biting you?
The Neuralink surgical robot takes the variables into account when identifying the right areas to place each electrode, minimizing the likelihood of hitting a blood vessel — which would not be good for the brain. In the image above (you can click the source link to go straight to the point in the live stream where they show this video), the top two pieces of footage show the movement of a simulated brain with variables such as heartbeat and breathing, while the bottom left one shows what the robot sees after accounting for these variables — a seemingly still brain.
Having a bionic superbrain chip robotically implanted in your head is something that most of us would consider a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Musk and his team want to keep it that way. Software updates are already inconvenient, and always happen whenever we don’t want them to. The idea of having to make a trip to the local neurosurgeon every time the software wants to run an update takes away a glimpse of the appeal that having a superbrain might bring. So a large piece of Neuralink resides outside of the skull, as a wearable behind your ear.
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