(Original title: A Hardware Update for the Human Brain)
(Photo: DOUG CHAYKA, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal on June 10th, the brain-computer interface (BCI) became a research topic for scientists and engineers from the Silicon Valley startup and the US Department of Defense. The ultimate goal of this technology is to make people think like computers. Realize free debugging and upgrading.
Emily BORGHARD implanted a microcomputer on his skull. Her appearance looks just like ordinary people. A small bulge behind her left ear suggests a subcutaneous implant.
Before the surgery, Emily experienced spikes of up to 400 epileptic seizures every day. This irresistible abnormal nerve activity has turned her childhood into a horrible nightmare. She couldn't drive and attend classes unaccompanied, and she could be alone more than half an hour at risk. "People find me lying on the ground or nervously walking around the university city."
In 2011, Emily, 19, received radical surgery for drug-resistant epilepsy. The surgeon cut her skull and implanted a small stand-alone computer, equivalent to implanting a Zippo lighter in her hippocampus area. The microcomputer detects irregular nerve activity in the brain through a pair of slender electrodes and releases corresponding pulses to adjust. Emily will transmit the information collected by the implant to the laptop once every two days and then send it to Neuropace in Mountain View, California. Emily's "responsive neural stimulation system" (RNS) is the company's product. The doctor constantly evaluates and adjusts the treatment plan based on the data returned.
Emily's epileptic seizures dropped to 2 times a month with the help of implanted chips, surgery and drugs. At the age of 27, she had recently obtained a master's degree in social work. She hopes that one day she will be able to work in the hospital for patients' rights.
Emily's renaissance of new life is Neurotechnology, a new field of neurology, neurosurgery and intelligent hardware. Today, most neurotech companies focus on medical applications, the latter being considered a multi-billion dollar market. More than 100,000 people around the world have received deep brain stimulation implants that use implants to reduce tremors like Parkinson's disease.
Preliminary studies have shown that targeted brain stimulation with similar technologies can help memory loss people recover memories, and this application is expected to bring 5.4 million American Alzheimer patients with gospel. Despite the large number of research companies, Neurospace's RNS system is currently the only implantable treatment approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The RNS system can sense neural activity and respond. Other companies in the field, such as Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and Stryker, are also conducting research.
In addition to sound medical use, some practitioners have also proposed a more radical goal: to achieve healthy people's cognitive enhancement through human-computer integration.
A major player in the field of neuroscience is Darpa, a research agency affiliated with the US Department of Defense. Standing at the intersection of military and science, Darpa has been pushing scientists and engineers for seemingly impossible things for a long time. A few decades ago they developed a project called Arpanet that gave birth to the later Internet. Darpa's participation was also seen in the GPS and autonomous driving areas. Darpa Medical Research is also currently funding the use of brain implants for brain injury and mental illness studies.
Darpa promised to invest 60 million US dollars to create a "direct cortical interface". Currently Emily uses implants that can only interact with a small number of neurons, and Darpa wants to create a neural interface that can connect up to 1 million neurons at the same time.
Such a human-machine interface will turn the human brain into a computer-programmable and debuggable machine. The goals that were previously achieved through drugs, training, education and psychotherapy can be achieved in the future through more straightforward means. It is like the "Matrix" (The Matrix) described in the sci-fi movie "The Matrix". After downloading a piece of code, the new skills are learned. Justin Sanchez, director of the Darpa Biotechnology Office, compares the process to the "design-build-test" cycle of software and hardware development - establishing prototypes, measuring their performance in the real world, and adjusting accordingly - this is human Improve the consistent approach of new technologies. Perhaps with the help of neural technology, we can upgrade our brain in the same way in the future.
(The microcomputer produced by Neuropace can implant in the patient's brain and suppress seizures.)
Elon Musk, a celebrity entrepreneur known as Silicon Valley Iron Man, also attracted the idea of ​​a brain-machine interface, which was specifically created for Neuralink. Neuralink is committed to a technology that Marsk called "neural lace," which uses billions of microelectrodes to upload and download brain ideas like data. Musk stated that he hopes to achieve interpersonal communication without words and stress, and that Musk is already trying to get rid of the input method and only use telepathy to send text messages. Neuralink declined to disclose any form of information to the outside world.
Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson sold his startup project to PayPal for $800 million in 2013. He funded the creation of the neuroscience company Kernel and served as CEO since August of last year. Johnson referred to the new project as the most important thing in all human work, and firmly believes that the future realization of cognitive enhancement through neural technology will bring significant progress to each field.
In addition to recruitment, there has been little known about the progress of the companies such as Neuralink and Kernel. Michael Kahana, head of the Computational Memory Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, said that there is a lot of talent flow in the academic and business world. Professors from Stanford University and Caltech helped Silicon Valley become a center of innovation in the world. The close integration of academic and business has enabled many long-term technologies to be quickly commercialized. Neurotechnology is one of the newest industries cultivated here.
Embedding the hardware in the brain first needs to address how to choose the implantation site without damaging the skull, which was also the original intention of the startup company Longeviti Neuro Solutions. The startup was co-founded by Chad Gordon, plastic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Jesse Christopher, a healthcare facility industry veteran. Dr. Gordon originally developed a filling prosthesis for those patients who lost their skull due to surgery or other reasons. Later, they realized that these prostheses could be fitted with functional components, such as drug injection ports or electronic components, to make the patient happy.
One morning, Dr. Gordon showed reporters at the John Hopkins Hospital's opinion conference room that they had developed a skull plate: a smooth, transparent rectangular plastic plate that can be customized according to the user's needs. The center of the plastic board is hollowed out to accommodate the hardware and the battery that powers it.
The staff said that neither hardware development nor access to surgery is a problem. The difficulty in research is that people's understanding of the brain's working mechanism is still very limited. As the name "neural technology" implies, "nervous" is more important than "technology."
Andy Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh who is also a brain-machine interface pioneer, criticized the industry for unrealistic arrogance and believed that basic science must be applied before commercialization.
Just look at the current level of animal nerve repair work, and you can roughly imagine how long the brain-computer interface research process will be. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has experimented with trying to use a brain chip plant with an artificial stimulator to regain the ability of a baboon monkey to regain its ability to walk. It is hoped that the relevant research will one day bring a gospel to the sufferer. However, the monkeys in the experiment could only be reluctant to restore their ability to act. They were as stiff and clumsy as marionettes. The operation of the sports cortex is still the same, and the difficulty of thinking and language can be imagined.
However, the insufficiency of basic science will not allow Musk to retreat. This one must, however, turn rockets from ground transportation to revolutionize the technological madman in human society. However, it remains to be seen whether Silicon Valley’s “rapid action and breaking stereotypes†style can be effective in the field of neuroscience.
The founder of Kernel regularly organizes gatherings of intellectuals, scientists, and entrepreneurs, and he is often asked about brain-computer interfaces. The participants have been able to accept that this technology has gradually become a reality, but they are uneasy about the ethical issues behind it. Once cognitive enhancement has been achieved, is this technology used for the benefit of all human beings as a monopoly or open use by a few? Will the government allow the people to upgrade their "intellectual wisdom?" Will companies and companies upgrade their brains as employee benefits, even further, as a recruitment threshold? Will this unprecedented technology exacerbate social injustice or contribute to the world's common prosperity? Behind the entrepreneurial boom, people need to be cautious.
Johnson and neuroscientist James Giordano believe that people overestimated their control over technology development. "Whether you like it or not, neural technology is happening. The secret has been vented and the box is open. The idea that you can stop it is either innocent or stupid." (Sun Wenwen)
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