Elon Musk is posting details about his secret Neuralink brain chip project, but he recently shared technology that could help cure addiction and depression. The billionaire shared the news on Twitter after a user asked if the implant could “retrain the part of the brain” associated with disease. “Exactly. This is both great and awful,”Musk wrote in response. Musk said he will reveal more about his plans next month.
Neuralink, which was founded in 2016, develops tiny, flexible "filaments" ten times thinner than a human hair to treat head injuries. However, Musk was careful not to share too much until the technology is ready, but he answered a few questions on Twitter. Twitter user Pranay Pathole wrote, "Can Neuralink be used to retrain the part of the brain that is responsible for addiction or depression?" "It would be great if the chips could be used for something like addiction / depression treatment."
Musk, who is known to personally respond to his fans, shared, “For sure. This is both great and terrible. All we have ever felt or thought are ordinary electrical signals. " “The early universe was just a soup of quarks and leptons. We, as a very small piece of the Universe, began to think about ourselves. " In May, tech mogul appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast to discuss the birth of his child, as well as how Neuralink is going to prepare a new version of its brain implant "within a year."
Musk explained that the process involves removing a piece of the skull, the robots then insert electrodes into the brain and the device into the hole, leaving only a small scar. He also said the technology could evolve into a complete brain interface in as little as 25 years, allowing a "symbiosis" between humans and AI. “We are not yet testing the technology on humans, but I think it won't last too long,” Musk told Rogan. "We can implant a neural connection in a person in less than a year."
Musk announced in February that the firm he founded had improved on the initial implant design. “Wait until you see the next version versus the one that was presented last year. It's amazing,”he wrote. In a podcast, Musk talked to Rogan about the technology, how it is implanted and what it can do to improve the human body. Musk explained that the device has a diameter of about one inch and is implanted by removing a small piece of the skull. A small robot connects thread-like electrodes to specific areas of the brain, sutures the hole, and the only visible residue is the scar left after the incision.
“If you have an interface in the motor cortex and then an implant that looks like a microcontroller connected to rows of muscle groups, you can then create a kind of neural shunt that restores the brain to full functionality, patients can walk, be normal - perhaps a little better than they were,”Musk explained. When asked about the risks of placing a foreign object in the body, Musk said there was a "very low potential risk of rejection." “People are putting monitors and implants for epileptic seizures, deep brain modeling chips, artificial hips and knees in the heart,” he said, noting that “it is well known what causes rejection.” Along with treating the sick, the chip could change the way people interact with each other.
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You have a phone, a laptop … If you lost your phone, it seems that you have empty limb syndrome. However, the CEO pointed out that the data transfer rate to electronics is slow, but when combined with a computer, we could communicate as one. This will improve the symbiosis between man and machine, and Musk said that in 25 years, the entire civilization could become a brain interface. This means that all neurons will be connected to the AI. “You will have a computer extension of yourself and when you die, your online ghost will remain,” said the tech mogul. "It's simple, most of you will be in the cloud instead of the body."