Neuralink Elon Musk. Part four: brain-computer interfaces

Eccentric in the best sense of the word entrepreneur, playboy, philanthropist Elon Musk known around the world. He decided to bring humanity into space, to colonize Mars, to abandon a disposable rockets. He decided to make the world cleaner, transplanted us from cars with internal combustion engines to self-driving cars. While unfolding these businesses, he does not sit idly by. He conceived Neuralink that will help us become new people. Without borders and without weaknesses, as it should be in the new world (Elon musk). To document the crazy ideas Mask, as always, volunteered Tim urban from WaitButWhy (he wrote about artificial intelligence, colonization of Mars and SpaceX). We present one of the best works of modern popular science journalism. Further, in the first person.

In 1969, a scientist named Eberhard, FETs connected single neuron in the brain of a monkey with a dial in front of her face. The arrow had to move when the neuron is activated. When monkey thought, that activated a neuron and the arrows shifted, she got a candy flavored banana. Over time, the monkey began to improve in this game because I wanted more of that delicious candy. The monkey learned to activate individual neurons, and was the first character who received brain-computer interface.

Over the next few decades, the progress has been quite slow, but by the mid 90-ies the situation began to change and since then all dispersed.

Because our understanding of the brain and electrode equipment is rather primitive, our efforts are usually aimed at creating simple interfaces that will be used in areas of the brain that we understand best, such as motor cortex and visual cortex.

And since human experimentation is possible only for people who are trying to use CQM for relief from suffering — and because market demand is concentrated on that our effort was almost entirely devoted to restore lost functions to people with disabilities.

The Largest industry CQM future, which will provide people with magical abilities and transform the world are now in embryo — and we have to be guided by them, and guesses, and thinking about what may be the world in 2040, 2060 or 2100.

Let's go through them.

This is a computer created by Alan Turing in 1950. It's called the Pilot ACE. A masterpiece of its time.

Now look at this:

As you read the examples below, I want you to keep before the eyes of an analogy

ACE Pilot is for iPhone 7 the same

each example below NKI is ______________

and try to imagine what must be in place of the dash. To him we will return later.

In any case, from what I've read and discussed with people in the field, currently in development is the three major categories of brain-computer interfaces:

the

First, NKI type #1: using motor cortex as a remote control

If you forget, the motor cortex, it's this guy:

Many areas of the brain to understand, but a motor cortex incomprehensible to us less than others. And more importantly, it is well Cartaromana, parts of it are in control of specific areas of the body.

What's important is one of the major parts of the brain that is responsible for our work. When a person does something, the motor cortex is almost certainly pulling the strings (at least the physical side of the action). Therefore, the human brain does not need to learn to use the motor cortex as the remote control, because the brain is already using it as such.

Raise your hand. Now omit. See? Your hand looks like a small toy drone, and your brain just uses motor crust as a remote control to the drone took off and returned.

The goal of the CQM on the basis of the motor cortex is to connect to it, and then when the remote control will cause the team to hear this command and send it to some device that will be able to respond to it. For example, on the arm. A bundle of nerves — the intermediary between your bark and your hand. NKI is the intermediary between your motor cortex and the computer. It's simple.

One of the interfaces of this type allows a person, usually the man, paralyzed from the neck or amputees to move the cursor on the screen by thought.

It All starts with the 100-pin multi-electrode array that is implanted in the motor cortex of man. Motor cortex of the paralyzed man, works perfectly — just the spinal cord, which served as a mediator between the bark and body stopped working. Thus, implanted with an electrode matrix, the researchers gave people the ability to move your arm in different directions. Even if he can not do this, the motor cortex is functioning normally, as if he could.

When someone moves his hand, his motor cortex bursts of activity but each neuron typically interested in only one type of movement. So one neuron can be triggered whenever the man moves his arm to the right, but will miss when moving in other directions. Then only one neuron could be identified when a person wants to move their hand to the right, and when not. But with the electrode array of 100 electrodes, each one of them will listen to an individual neuron. Therefore, during testing, when people are asked to move the hand to the right, for example, 38 of 100 neurons records the activity of neurons. When a person wants to move the hand to the left, the other is activated 41. In the process of development of movements in different directions and at different speeds, the computer receives data from the electrodes and synthesizes them into a common understanding of the activation of neurons corresponding to the intention of moving on axes X-Y.

Then, when they bring these data on the computer screen, a person can the power of thought, "trying" to move the cursor to really control the cursor. And it works. With the help of the NRI associated with the motor cortex, the BrainGate company allowed the boy to play a video game using only one power of thought.

And if 100 neurons can tell you where they want to move the cursor, why can't they tell you when they want to raise a Cup of coffee and take a SIP? That's what made this paralyzed woman:

Another paralyzed woman was able to fly on a simulator of the F-35, and the monkey recently with the brain traveled in a wheelchair.

And why be limited to one hand? Brazilian pioneer NKI Miguel Nicolelis and his team have built an exoskeleton that allowed a paralyzed person make the opening kick at the World Cup.

the

digression on the subject of proprioception

All of these "neural prosthesis" is almost entirely dependent on the recording of neurons, but that these devices were truly effective, it should not be unilateral, but rather a loop, a connecting track recording and stimulation. We rarely think about it, but a large part of your ability to lift things required of incoming sensory information, which the skin of your hands sends to the brain (called "proprioception"). Numb fingers are very hard to light the match, even if you are completely healthy. Therefore, to bionic limbs worked well, they have to take and touch information.

Stimulation of neurons harder read them. Says researcher Flip Sabes:

"If I record an activity diagram, it does not mean that I will be able to easily recreate this activity diagram, just lost its Vice versa. But if you all messed up, and then go to recreate the original movement of one of the planets, you cannot just go and get her back into orbit, because it will affect all other planets. Similarly, neurons do not work in isolation, so there is a fundamental irreversibility. In addition, with all the nerve and dendrites of hard to just stimulate the neurons that you need because they are very closely related."

Laboratory of Flip is trying to solve these issues with the brain. Turns out that if you reward a monkey juicy gulp of orange juice, when triggered by a single neuron, over time the monkey learns to activate the neuron on demand. The neuron will act as a kind of remote control. Therefore, the normal commands of the motor cortex is just one of the possible mechanisms of control. Similarly, while the technology, the NKI will not be good enough for perfect stimulation, you can use the neuroplasticity of the brain to bypass. If it is too difficult to make the tip of bionic finger touched something and sent back information which will be similar to the touch sensation your person, a hand can send any other information to the brain. At first it will seem strange to the patient, but eventually the brain will learn to interpret this signal as a new sense of touch. This concept is called "sensory substitute (replacement)" and the brain contributes to the creation of NRI.

These developments are the seeds of other future revolutionary technologies — like interfaces "the brain — the brain".

Nicolelis conducted an experiment in which the motor cortex of one rat in Brazil, Nazimova one of two levers in a cage — one from which...