“It's an announcement that obviously makes a lot of noise because of Elon Musk's tweet, but in reality”, behind the first implant in a human being of a chip from Neuralink, the tycoon's company that deals with brain-computer interfaces, beyond the noise there is more, explains to Adnkronos Salute Silvestro Micera, professor of Bioelectronics and Neural Engineering at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa and at the Polytechnic (EPFL) of Lausanne, a scientist known for his work on robotic arms and increasingly 'human' prostheses. “This technology – he assures, speaking of the Neuralink chips – is very interesting and very robust. I was asked: isn't it a leap forward, madness? I know the group of bioengineers who are working on it, some of them very well, and they are good, serious. And what they want to do and are doing is technologically interesting because it has some very important advantages compared to previous systems.”
“Using implantable interfaces in the brain to read thoughts, read information from neurons and control devices is something that various groups have already done in the past. The idea is not new – he observes – what is new is the technology. The first advantage is that it has an implant system based on a robot, which allows you to implant less invasive electrodes, wires, very small 'hairs', in a truly precise way. And, in addition, the number of electrodes goes from a hundred to many thousands and this is very interesting because the greater the number, the greater the sampling of the brain and the greater the information we are able to extract, the greater “theoretically” the possibility for the patient to control more things and better. This, however, will have to see, it's one of the bets that we will then have to see if we actually manage to win.” In detail, as the company explains online, the implant created by Neuralink records neural activity through 1,024 electrodes distributed on 64 highly flexible and ultra-thin wires.
What timescales can you expect? “There are different aspects – reasons Micera – In the next few months we will see if at least initially the Neuralink bet seems to have been won. But in general there are many technologies, it is a very fertile moment for neurotechnologies and neuroengineering. So it is possible that, not tomorrow but in the next 5 to 10 years, there will start to be more and more commercial systems around.” In short, it is a phase “of great hope, for the patients and also for us who deal with these activities. We will need to understand how many of these hopes, hopefully many, will become reality”. (continued)
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