Elon Musk unveils next-generation brain-computer interface and chips
Latest update time：2021-09-08 01:36
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Source: The content is compiled from " venturebeat " by Semiconductor Industry Observer (ID: icbank), thank you.
At a press conference early this morning, scientists at Elon Musk’s Neuralink provided an update on progress. Just over a year after the company was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating a brain-computer interface, the company unveiled its vision, software, and implantable hardware platform for the first time.
Little of what was discussed today was surprising or unanticipated, but it provided reassurance that the pandemic won’t stop Neuralink from moving toward its grand goals.
Neuralink's prototype can extract real-time information from many neurons at once. In a live demonstration, Neuralink showed readings from a pig's brain; when the pig touched an object with its snout, neurons captured by Neuralink's technology fired visually on a TV monitor. This in itself is not new. Kernal and Paradromics are among the many companies developing brain-reading chip technology under the skull. But unlike them, Neuralink uniquely utilizes flexible cellophane-like wires inserted into the tissue via a "sewing machine." Musk said it received a breakthrough device designation in July and that Neuralink is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a future clinical trial for paraplegics.
Neuralink's founders Tim Hanson and Philip Sabes of the University of California, Berkeley, and Michel Maharbiz, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, have pioneered the technology, and the version shown today is an improvement over last year's. Musk calls it "V2," and he's confident it will one day take less than an hour to be embedded in a human brain. He also said that if a patient wants to upgrade or abandon Neuralink's interface, it will be easy to remove and won't cause lasting damage.
V2
Neuralink worked with Woke Studios, a creative design consultancy based in San Francisco, to design the sewing machine. Woke began working with Neuralink on a behind-the-ear concept Neuralink unveiled in 2019 more than a year ago, and the two soon returned to work on surgical robots.
Afshin Mehin, Woke’s lead designer, told VentureBeat via email that the machine is able to see the entire brain.
“The design process was a collaboration between the design team at Woke Studios and the technical staff at Neuralink, and in this case, a close collaboration between them and prestigious surgical consultants who could advise on the surgery itself,” Mehin said. “Our role was specifically to take existing technology that could perform the procedure and, based on the advice of our medical consultants and the medical standards for this type of device, to come up with a non-threatening robotic brain implant that could perform the procedure.”
The machine consists of three parts. There is a "head" that contains automated surgical tools, brain-scanning cameras and sensors, and the patient rests their skull against it.
First, the device removes a section of the skull, and the device replaces the removed section of the skull. Then, a computer vision algorithm advances a needle containing a 5-micron-thick wire bundle and a 6-mm insulation layer into the brain, avoiding blood vessels. (Neuralink says the machine is technically capable of drilling a drill of any length.) These wires, which are a quarter of the diameter of a human hair (4 to 6 μm), are connected to a series of electrodes located at different locations and depths. At maximum capacity, the machine can insert six wires containing 192 electrodes per minute.
A disposable bag attaches with magnets around the head of the machine to maintain sterility and allow for cleaning, and angled "wings" around the inner facade ensure the patient's skull remains in place during surgical insertion. The "body" of the machine attaches to a base that provides weighted support for the entire structure, hiding the rest of the technology that makes the system work.
When asked if the prototype would make its way to clinics or hospitals, Mehin skirted the question but noted that the design is intended for use "at scale." "As engineers, we know what's possible and how to communicate design requirements in a way that's easy to understand, and likewise, their team was able to send over highly complex schematics that they could run," he said. "We think this is a design that can exist outside of the lab and be applicable in many clinical settings."
N1 chip
As Neuralink detailed last year, the first device designed for trials - the N1, also known as the "Link" - contains the aforementioned chip, a membrane, and a sealed substrate that can be connected to up to 1,024 electrodes. Up to 10 can be placed in one hemisphere, preferably at least 4 in the motor areas of the brain and at least 1 in the somatosensory area.
Musk said the device has been greatly simplified compared to the 2019 concept. It no longer has to sit behind the ear, it is the size of a large coin (23mm wide and 8mm tall), and all the necessary wiring is connected within a centimeter of the device itself.
The electrodes relay detected neural impulses to a processor capable of reading information from up to 1,536 channels, which is about 15 times more than current systems embedded in the human body. It meets benchmarks for scientific research and medical applications, and may outperform Belgian rival Imec's Neuropixels technology, which can collect data from thousands of individual brain cells at a time. Musk claims that Neuralink's commercial system can contain up to 3,072 electrodes per array on 96 threads.
The chip contains inertial measurement sensors, pressure and temperature sensors, a battery that can last “all day” and charge inductively, and analog pixels that amplify and filter neural signals before converting them into digital bits. (Neuralink claims that analog pixels are at least 5 times smaller than existing technology.) One analog pixel can capture an entire neural signal at 20,000 samples per second with 10 bits of resolution, giving each pixel 1,024 channels of neural data recording at 200Mbps.
After the signal is amplified, it is converted and digitized by an on-chip analog-to-digital converter, which directly characterizes the shape of neuronal pulses. According to Neuralink, the N1 takes only 900 nanoseconds to calculate incoming neural data.
The N1 can connect wirelessly through the skin via Bluetooth to a smartphone up to 10 meters away. Neuralink says the implant will eventually be configurable through an app, allowing the patient to control buttons and redirect output from the phone to a computer keyboard or mouse. During the pig demonstration, Neuralink showed that the N1 was able to predict the position of all of the animal's limbs with "high accuracy." The next step is to write neurons. Musk said a single N1 sensor could potentially affect millions of neurons.
Musk said one of Neuralink’s aspirational goals is to enable quadriplegics to type at a rate of 40 words per minute. Ultimately, he hopes Neuralink’s system will eventually be used to create what he describes as a “digital super-intelligent [cognitive] layer” that would allow humans to “merge” with artificial intelligence software.
Potential obstacles
High-resolution brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, are incredibly complex; they must be able to read neural activity to select which groups of neurons are performing which tasks. Implanted electrodes are well suited for this, but historically, hardware limitations have forced them to contact more than one area of the brain or create disruptive scar tissue.
That has changed with the advent of fine, biocompatible electrodes that limit scarring and can precisely target clusters of cells (although questions about durability remain). What remains constant is the lack of understanding of certain neural processes.
It is rare to isolate activity in brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Instead, it occurs in various brain regions and is difficult to pin down. Then there is the problem of converting neural electrical impulses into machine-readable information. Researchers have yet to crack the brain's code. The impulses generated by the visual center are different from those generated when speech is formed, and sometimes it is difficult to identify the point of origin of the signal.
Neuralink will also have the burden of convincing regulators to approve its device for clinical trials. Brain-computer interfaces are considered medical devices that require further FDA approval, which can be time-consuming and expensive.
Perhaps anticipating this, Neuralink has expressed interest in opening its own animal testing facility in San Francisco, and the company posted a job listing last month for candidates with experience in mobile and wearable devices. Last year, Neuralink claims to have performed 19 surgeries on animals and successfully placed wires about 87% of the time.
The Road Ahead
All these challenges haven’t stopped Neuralink, which has more than 90 employees and has received $158 million in funding, including at least $100 million from Musk. However, they have what STAT News described in a report as a “chaotic internal culture.” A Neuralink spokesperson responded to the New York Post’s inquiry for this story, saying that many of STAT’s findings were “partially or completely wrong.”
While Neuralink anticipates that inserting the electrodes will initially require drilling holes in the skull, it hopes to soon use lasers to drill a series of small holes in the bone, which could lay the foundation for research into alleviating conditions such as Parkinson's disease and epilepsy, and help patients with physical disabilities hear, speak, move and see.
This may not sound so far-fetched. Neuroscientists at Columbia University have successfully converted brain waves into recognizable speech. A team at the University of California, San Francisco, built a virtual vocal tract that is able to simulate human speech by tapping into the brain. In 2016, brain implants enabled amputees to move the individual fingers of a prosthetic limb using their thoughts. Experimental interfaces have enabled monkeys to control wheelchairs and type at a rate of 12 words per minute using only their minds.
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