Tue Jun 06 10:51:58 CST 2023
On May 26, Musk's brain-computer interface company Neuralink officially announced that its first human clinical trial was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to Musk, Neuralink is designing a device that translates brain signals into action and will first focus on two applications: one is to restore human vision, the other is to help people who cannot move their muscles to control devices such as smartphones, and even restore whole-body function to people with spinal cord damage.
In a social media post, Neuralink said, "We are thrilled to announce that the FDA has approved us to initiate our first human clinical trial. This is an amazing achievement by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step in which our technology can help many people in the future."
Neuralink said enrollment in the clinical trial has not yet begun and the company will announce more information about it in the near future.
Neuralink is a U.S. technology company based in San Francisco that was co-founded by Elon Musk and eight other people in July 2016. The company focuses on developing "neural lace" technology that connects the human brain to computers, which supports direct human-machine communication, eliminating the need for physical interfaces.
Neuralink said the clinical trial has not yet begun enrolling participants, but will release more information about it soon. The company said, "This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team working closely with the FDA and represents an important first step."
Musk has reportedly predicted several times since 2019 that Neuralink will soon receive FDA approval for human trials, but the company's application had been denied in early 2022.
According to Musk, Neuralink's device, which translates brain signals into action, will first focus on two applications: first, restoring human vision, and second, helping people who cannot move their muscles to control devices such as smartphones, or even restoring full-body function to people with spinal cord damage.
Brain Computer Device Implantation Process
The device relies on up to 1024 5-micron diameter wires "stitched" into the gray matter of a patient's brain to form connections to surrounding neurons, provide high-resolution sampling of the brain's electrical emissions, and convert between analog electrical impulses and digital computer code.
It is important to note that human clinical trials are not ordinary trials, and therefore the partners working with Neuralink to complete the trial are of great interest.
Brain-computer interface (BCI) are brain, computer, and interface, a combination of the three, reads information from the brain through appropriate interface technology and manipulates the actions of external devices; these external devices can be a robot, a virtual keyboard, or anything else that one wants to manipulate.
The current development of BCI technology has come out of the laboratory and entered the preliminary application stage; how to make this technology serve the society and promote its wide application is the hot spot of current research. This technology will build a bridge between people and machines, and eventually achieve the free transmission of ideas and downloading of thoughts between people and people, and between people and machines, thus creating great economic and even social value.
BCI technology is a new development direction of brain-machine combination, a technology to realize symbiosis between human and machine; it extracts signals directly from the brain and translates them into control commands to control external devices such as computers or robots. The current brain-machine interface is mainly divided into two categories: the former is an invasive technology that requires electrode chips to be installed into the brain or computer devices to be installed in the human body to achieve a hybrid human and electronic system; the latter is a non-invasive technology that enables control of external devices as long as electrode chips are attached and signals are collected from outside the brain.
Brain-computer interface technology is currently mainly used in the field of medical rehabilitation, it will be further developed in the future, and the application areas are expanding. Not long ago, Elon Musk said that the brain-computer interface company (Neuralink) founded by him soon completed human brain implants, which in principle can repair any brain problems, including improving vision and hearing, restoring limb function, treating Alzheimer's disease and acromegaly. He also said that brain-computer interface technology has the potential to stimulate the release of chemicals such as serotonin and oxytocin in the human body, which play a neuronal role.
BCI technology is a multidisciplinary cross-fertilization research field involving electronic engineering, medical engineering, artificial intelligence, materials science, neuroscience, cognitive science, biology, psychology and many other disciplines, and its development benefits from the progress of its doors. Take neuroscience as an example, brain-computer interface technology is becoming an important way to study the basic problems of neuroscience; brain-computer interface technology based on the motor paradigm helps to elucidate the neural mechanism of sensory-motor control, which in turn can improve the design of brain-computer interface technology based on new scientific findings; brain-computer interface technology can partially reshape brain function and provide help to study the neural mechanism of brain plasticity, learning, memory, emotion and other problems. Brain-computer interface technology can partially reshape brain function and help to study the neural mechanisms of brain plasticity, learning, memory, emotion, etc. Brain-computer interface technology also provides new experimental tools and exploration methods for cognitive science and psychology research, and plays a role in visual, auditory, attentional, imaginative, verbal, emotional, and behavioral research.
It can be seen that BCI technology can realize the manipulation of external devices by measuring and extracting signals from the central nervous system of the human brain, and also realize the regulation of the central nervous system through the stimulation and neurofeedback of external devices on the nervous system, making a closed-loop system with neurofeedback regulation between the human brain and external devices, realizing the intelligent integration of human-machine or brain-machine, and enabling us to better understand, enhance, improve or restore the central nervous system and its interaction with the outside world, thus currently having a wide range of applications in many fields such as medical rehabilitation, aerospace, smart home, smart business, military, education and entertainment.
By HornmicLink_Mia.J @230606 10:52