NEURALINK

Neuralink Corporation is an American neurotechnology company that is developing implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Founded by Elon Musk and a team of seven scientists and engineers, Neuralink was launched in 2016.

 

At that time, Neuralink announced that it was working on a "sewing machine-like" device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width) threads into the brain, and demonstrated a system that read information from a lab rat via 1,500 electrodes.

 

In April 2021, Neuralink demonstrated a monkey playing the game "Pong" using the Neuralink implant. The probes, composed mostly of polyimide, a biocompatible material, with a thin gold or platinum conductor, are inserted into the brain through an automated process performed by a surgical robot. Each probe consists of an area of wires that contains electrodes capable of locating electrical signals in the brain, and a sensory area where the wire interacts with an electronic system that allows amplification and acquisition of the brain signal. Each probe contains 48 or 96 wires, each of which contains 32 independent electrodes, making a system of up to 3072 electrodes per formation.

 

Robot|

 

Neuralinkhave engineered a surgical robot capable of rapidly inserting many flexible probes into the brain, which may avoid the problems of tissue damage and longevity issues associated with larger and more rigid probes. This surgical robot has an insertion head with a 40 μm diameter needle made of tungsten-rhenium designed to attach to the insertion loops, inject individual probes, and penetrate the meninges and cerebral tissue; it is capable of inserting up to six wires (192 electrodes) per minute.

 

Neuralink has developed an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) to create a 1,536-channel recording system. This system consists of 256 amplifiers capable of being individually programmed ("analog pixels"), analog-to-digital converters within the chip ("ADCs") and a peripheral circuit control to serialize the digitized information obtained.It aims to convert information obtained from neurons into an understandable binary code in order to achieve greater understanding of brain function and the ability to stimulate these neurons back. With the present technology, electrodes are still too big to record the firing of individual neurons, so they can record only the firing of a group of neurons; Neuralink representatives believe this issue might get mitigated algorithmically, but it is computationally expensive and does not produce exact results.

 

In July 2020,Neuralink obtained a FDA breakthrough device designation which allows limited human testing under the FDA guidelines for medical devices.

 

On May 25 2023, Neuralink finally received FDA approval for its first human clinical trial.

 

 

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