How Neuralink Will Heal The Human Brain
Alright, so billionaire mad scientist and infamous Twitter troll Elon Musk wants to put microchip implants in our brains. What’s the worst that could happen? Well, a lot could go wrong there, admittedly he could turn us all into an army of meme zombies and that would be fun to think about, but that’s not the point of this video. Today we’re going to be talking about the best thing that could happen from the invention of the Neuralink device - a cure for serious brain diseases and disorders like Alzymers, Parkinsons, ALS and mental illness. These conditions have so far proven to be incurable by even the best of modern medicine, so a leap forward in technology is going to be needed to get ahead of these terrible diseases. The Neuralink device could very well be that crucial next step. Obviously this is a very complex and nuanced topic, so as a person who is not a doctor or a scientist, I’m going to try my best to break it down for you today. So let’s get going.
If you’re not super familiar with the Neuralink, we’ve made a couple of videos that really explain what the device is and how it works, you can check those out for a thorough rundown, I’ll put links in the description. Elon Musk has described the implant simply by calling it, “A Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires.” The short form explanation would be that the Neuralink is a brain computer interface device or BCI. The implant itself is a micro computer that’s about the size and thickness of a small wrist watch, it has bluetooth connectivity and a battery that can charge wirelessly, just like a smartphone. Neuralink is connected into a subject’s brain with a series of ultra thin and flexible probes that conduct electrical signals between the brain and the Neuralink. Because the probes are so small, they can only be installed by an automated robot, basically a sewing machine for your brain. The procedure to instal one involves folding back a flap of skin on your head, drilling a round hole out of your skull, sewing in the probes, placing the device in the hole so that it sits flush with the skull and then folding the skin back down and stitching you up. No sweat, right? Aside from a chunk of hair missing, there wouldn’t be any indication that you’ve just become a cyborg.
So, you’ve got a computer wired into your brain. Now what? Well that’s where things start to get weird. What even is your brain anyway? Well, obviously it’s the most complex part of your entire body. The brain is about 3 pounds of semi solid, electrified biomass that contains everything that makes you who and what you are right now. For 99 point 9 percent of human existence, we have not had a damn clue about what the brain is or how it works, it’s only been in the last 30 years or so that we’ve really started to figure this out. So, we’re still relatively new to all of this.
The easiest way to look at the brain is to think of it not as one singular entity, but more like a team of experts that are each responsible for a very specific aspect of human function and all work together to make that happen. There are three main sections: you’ve got the cerebellum, that primarily keeps your heart beating and your lungs pumping while also being responsible for what you might call muscle memory, like when you play piano or tennis, the cerebellum is guiding those learned movements. There’s a little sliver of material above that called the midbrain, that controls your reflexes. The forebrain or cerebrum, the big round part - this is the place where the magic happens, all of your memories are stored here, this part allows you to make a plan, enables you to imagine or think. That’s all wrapped by the cerebral cortex, which is like a thin layer of tissue only a few millimeters thick that covers the forebrain, this is often referred to as grey matter. This is what creates that wrinkly, bulging texture on the brain that we all know. Most of the actual information processing in the brain takes place in the cerebral cortex. And this is the part of the brain that the Neuralink is being wired into, that top layer of information processing material. Elon has said the probes will only go about 2 or 3 millimeters into the brain material.
Elon Musk and the Neuralink team look at the cerebral cortex as a kind of circuit board, where your brain activities are pretty much electrical signals that are flowing along defined paths. The hope is the disorders and diseases of the brain are just broken connections or malfunctions on this circuit board. And that the Neuralink device could function to bridge those gaps, bypassing damaged areas of cortex and helping brain signals to get where they need to go. Another idea would be that the Neuralink could send an input signal into the cortex, like a stimulation to reactivate an area of the brain that has stopped functioning or even sending a corrective signal to an area that is malfunctioning and needs to be brought back to normal.
When someone on Twitter asked Elon if Neuralink could be used to re-train the part of the brain which is responsible for causing addiction or depression, Elon replied, “For sure. This is both great & terrifying. Everything we’ve ever sensed or thought has been electrical signals. The early universe was just a soup of quarks & leptons. How did a very small piece of the Universe start to think of itself as sentient?”
That’s all getting a bit wild, I know. Here’s a specific example that Elon has given on an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast. When Elon was explaining how Neuralink might function, he used epilepsy as an example and said that a Neuralink device could be able to detect a seizure episode forming in real time and fire a counter pulse into that area of the brain to stop the epilepsy from happening. This would all occur in tiny fractions of a second. Elon went on to say that in theory, the Neuralink should be able to fix any kind of brain injury or disease just by fixing those broken circuit connections. After that, Elon goes off on a tangent about AI symbiosis, so we never got anything more in depth than that. The whole AI thing is a totally separate video that we’ll have coming soon, so subscribe for that.
The next question would be, is there any credence to any of these claims? Is there any science to back up this idea about just fixing the brain with electrical implants? The good news is, yes, there is already a groundwork that has been laid for the kind of treatment that Neuralink are hoping to perform. This is called Deep Brain Stimulation and it works in the same general fashion as a Neuralink device, doctors implant electrodes within certain areas of your brain. These electrodes produce electrical signals that regulate abnormal impulses in the cortex. Or the electrical impulses can affect certain cells and chemicals within the brain. The amount of stimulation is controlled by a pacemaker-like device placed under the skin in your upper chest. A wire that travels under your skin connects this device to the electrodes in your brain.
Deep Brain Stimulation has already been approved as a treatment for Dystonia, Epilepsy, Obsessive-compulsive disorder and even Parkinson's disease. And it’s currently being studied for effectiveness in a number of conditions ranging from addiction, to depression to tourette's syndrome.
The biggest advantage of the Neuralink over current Deep Brain Stimulation devices is the advanced technology and simplicity of the implant. The existing procedure surgically installs a control device in the chest, then runs wires up under the skin, through the neck and into the electrodes in the brain. That’s not exactly the most comfortable situation for the patient and this all requires a very experienced surgeon or multiple surgeons to pull off. Neuralink takes more inspiration from the smart watch and wearable tech industry than they do from traditional medical devices, so everything is as compact and efficient as possible, everything is self-contained in that one implant. And each Neuralink can manage around 1,000 electrode probes. And because the installation of the Neuralink is done by that autonomous robot machine, the implant can be done anywhere at any time and for a relatively low cost. Elon’s goal with Neuralink is for the brain implant procedure to become as commonplace and affordable as laser eye surgery. Elon has also stressed that the Neuralink will be 100 percent removable with no unwanted side effects. I mean, you would still have a hole in your skull, you couldn’t get that chunk of bone back, but I’m sure they’ve got some kind of plug or something they could hook you up with.
Neuralink are still hoping to begin their first human trials by the end of this year. And we expect that the first medical treatment done using Neuralink will be helping people who suffer from paralysis. At first, they’ll start off with something simple, using Neuralink to send signals from the patient's brain to their smartphone or computer. The paralysied individual will be able to control the device without the need for a keyboard or mouse, using just their thoughts alone.
The next step up from that is giving people back the use of their paralysed limbs. That sounds pretty crazy, but in terms of major medical procedures, this should be pretty easy. When the spine is injured, it just means that the connection between the brain and the body is disrupted, the circuit is broken. Damaged limbs can heal, but the spine isn’t so easy. A Neuralink in the brain can pick up on those neural impulses that are supposed to be going to the muscles, the implant can broadcast those signals wirelessly to a secondary implant or even a whole series of implants that are placed in the limbs and wired into the muscles. Now, instead of travelling through the spinal cord, brain impulses are travelling through bluetooth.
From there, the possibilities are basically endless. Once Neuralink is approved for these Deep Brain Stimulation treatments, they could be helping people with every kind of brain disease or disorder imaginable. I think this is going to ramp up very quickly from something that we are talking about in a purely speculative manner, to a device that is used to help thousands, maybe millions of people all around the world. I’m sure we’ve all known someone affected by mental illness or brain disease, just imagine a world where one simple and affordable procedure could help them to live a more normal, comfortable life.
