SAN FRANCISCO: To help paralyzed people control devices and empower people with brain disorders enrich their lives, Elon Musk-led startup Neuralink has revealed tiny brain "threads" in a chip which is long lasting, usable at home and has the potential to replace cumbersome devices currently used as brain-machine interfaces.
The company is seeking the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to start clinical trials on humans in 2020.
The technology has a module that sits outside the head and wirelessly receives information from "threads" embedded in the brain.
Controlled by an iPhone app, the chip called "N1 sensor" with just a USB port coming out can have as many as 3, 072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 "threads" -- each "thread" smaller that the tiniest human hair.
The chip which will be wireless in the future can read, transmit high-volume data and amplify signals from the brain. The aim is to drill four 8mm holes into patients' skulls and insert the "threads" each of the size between 4 and 6 micrometre -- about one-third the diameter of a human hair.
Currently, there is a robot to do the brain surgery which, according to a research paper released by Neuralink, has performed surgeries on animals and successfully placed the "threads".
"This has the potential to solve several brain-related diseases. The idea is to understand and treat brain disorders, preserve and enhance your own brain and create a well-aligned future, " Musk told the audience at an event here late Tuesday.
A staunch critic of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Musk said that long-term goal is to find a way to "achieve a sort of symbiosis with AI but that is not a mandatory thing. This is something you can choose to have if you want".
"With a high-bandwidth brain-machine interface, I think we can actually help scores of patients, " said the Tesla founder who also said he is looking to hire more talent in Neuralink.
According to Max Hodak, President of Neuralink, he wasn't originally sure "this technology was a good idea" but Musk convinced him.
"We didn't want any connectors or wires coming through the skin. It had to be something that would last for a longer period of time, not something that you'd have to take out after two-three years; it had to have practical bandwidth, " said Hodak.
Founded as a medical research company in 2016, Neuralink has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities.
The company is focused on creating devices resembling tiny sewing machines that can be implanted in the human brain - to improve memory or more direct interfacing with computing devices.