Elon Musk's Neuralink Chip Helps Monkey Telepathically Play Pong

ABSTRACT: 

A monkey playing Pong is the first demonstration of Neuralink, Elon Musk's project to connect the brain with computers.

Neuralink aspires to connect brains and computers. It is Elon Musk's latest project. After several years of tests with mice, pigs, and samples of various prototypes, now they finally showed the first demonstration of the supposed capabilities of Neuralink applied to "intelligent" beings. Neuralink takes the next step in the development of its ultimately intended human brain interface.

Why experiments on a monkey?

In a blog post, Neuralink explains why experiments on monkeys are important to achieve the desired result. This can easily be broken down to the fact that pigs have no arms and hands, which are the most important "controllers" for humans. After all, a brain that has no hands at its disposal cannot send any control signals to these extremities.

In the introductory videos, Neuralink shows a monkey playing Pong. Initially, the primate is using a joystick but later, according to the narration, the game moves only wirelessly, through the mental reactions of the animal.

'Pager', the monkey who plays Pong with his mind

As Neuralink explains on his website, the macaque, called 'Pager', moves the course on a computer screen using his mind, thanks to the 1,024 electrodes that are implanted in the N1 Link device.

"We implanted the N1 Link in the hand and arm areas of the motor cortex, the part of the brain that is involved in planning and executing movements. We placed Links bilaterally: one in the left motor cortex (which controls movements on the right side of the body) and another in the right motor cortex (which controls the left side of the body) ", said the company.

Neuralink states that decades of research have been needed to achieve this and that its mission is to "build a safe and effective clinical direct neural interface (BMI) system that is wireless and fully implantable that users can operate over themselves and take them wherever they go. "

Coinciding with the demo, Elon Musk has posted several of his popular tweets. In them he describes the goals of Neuralink, stating that the first Neuralink product will allow someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone who uses their thumbs. Later versions will be able to divert signals from Neuralinks in the brain to Neuralinks in clusters of sensory / motor neurons in the body, thus allowing paraplegics to walk again.

 

The use of Pong for the demonstration is quite common in brain experiments, although it is strange that the animal is presented playing almost like a commercial video when the usual thing in this type of research is to present the video as a complement to a study or analysis.

CLICK ON THE LINK TO WATCH THE  WHOLE VIDEO : Monkey MindPong

Following the video, it is difficult to appreciate anything beyond what they promise from Neuralink. It does seem feasible that the brain can make the courses move or even play Pong. One type of project, that of brain-computer interfaces, will grow in popularity over the next few years. At least that is what stems from initiatives such as Neuralink or Facebook itself, which recently showed its bracelet to click with the mind.