Elon Musk. Love him or hate him, one cannot deny the sheer impact he and his companies have had on the world. SpaceX has aided in the innovation of space travel, and Tesla has been making electric cars as great as they should be for over a decade, even though its stock price is as stable as an active seesaw. Neuralink is the newest venture of the Richest Man in the World, focusing on implanting a computer chip into the minds of human beings to help us interface with computers and other technologies around us with our brain instead of a cursor. At least, that’s the goal right now. Everyone knows what the advancements of Neuralink may lead up to, and with its recent progress, we might be heading towards a technological revolution bigger than the creation of the smartphone. So, here’s everything you may need to know about it, from how it’s made and how it functions, how it came to be and its current progress, to what it holds for the future.

What some people don’t know about Neuralink, however, is that Elon Musk never really “founded” it in the first place. The idea was the brainchild of electrical engineer Pedram Mohseni, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, and Randolph Nudo, his lab partner, who works at the Kansas University Medical Center. Starting the company in 2011, their idea was to help people recover from brain injury by recording neurons on one side of the brain and transmit that chatter to the other. By 2013, they had evidence of the product being able to help brain damaged rats, and called the company NeuraLink (they capitalized the “L”, which Musk later changed). This, however, proved to be an investor’s nightmare. First off, the company dealt with technology revolving around the brain, which immediately looked like millions of dollars in testing that might not go anywhere. Secondly, the data the two of them had collected wasn’t stable enough to judge whether it would help people. Thirdly, the amount of people with serious brain injuries that could benefit from this product is not enough for investors to safely greenlight the amount of money necessary to test the product. Overall, they had a tough time finding someone to invest in their dream, and for the longest time, it looked like their company would join the likes of BrainGate and Northstar as failed neurotechnological enterprises [1]. 

Breaking that chain, however, they were approached by a mysterious group for the work of “Neuralink” around a year later and after 5-figure negotiations, the interaction ended successfully. In June of 2016, after a year of development and readying, Musk launched Neuralink, adding the company to his collection of technological adventures. However, Neuralink gained fame much later in March of 2017 after being reported on by the Wall Street Journal [1]. Jared Birchall, Musk’s right-hand-man and wealth manager, as well as the CEO of the Boring Company, was appointed as Neuralink’s CEO, CFO and President in 2018. The company is based in Fremont, a city on the eastern side of the Bay Area, with just 300 employees. Neuralink aims to treat and research brain diseases, mainly Parkinson’s and Alzheimers, the cause Musk’s predecessors advocated for, with a long-term goal of human advancement with technology, such as the concept of “brain lace” in the book series The Culture by Ian McCain [2]. They also aim to help paralyzed people control laptops or external robotic prosthetics [5].

Now comes the question: How would a chip that directly accesses the human mind even begin to work? Well, it’s actually rather simple. It uses threads weaved by surgical robots equipped with 1,024 electrodes to record neuron activity, and decodes those neural signals into binary. It then transmits those signals to a digital device through a standard Bluetooth connection [4]. The chips are made of polyimide, a biomaterial, and conductors made of gold and platinum. The surgical robot uses a 25 micrometer made of a hybrid of Tungsten and Rhenium to attach the wires in a seamless manner to avoid brain tissue damage [2]. The device is installed by drilling a hole into the skull, cutting through the dura (protective layer of tissue around the brain), and implanting the device on the surface of the brain. This induces the risks of infection and tissue damage. The FDA has assigned the product as a Class 3 medical device, meaning it is the first of its kind, so its documents should be thoroughly looked over before being approved by the FDA for human trials [3]. 

In 2020, Neuralink, after obtaining an FDA approval for animal testing, implanted a chip inside of a pig named Gertrude, and it was shown that the chip could accurately predict her movements while on a treadmill, as well as record her neural activity while searching for food. In 2021, Neuralink themselves released a video with a monkey named Pager playing games such as Pong for banana-smoothie-esque rewards. He played with a controller disconnected from the console, so the chip itself recorded his arm movements and transmitted them through to the console itself. Even though it seems impressive, most neuroscientists have seen this tech being used in apes since 2002 — Neuralink was just one of the first to do it wirelessly. However, the means of achieving this synthesis while having the monkeys stay healthy was quite dubious [5].

In February of 2022, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a complaint against the US Department of Agriculture after rifling through 700 pages of documents that related to monkeys used in the Neuralink research at UC Davis between 2017 and 2020. These pages, found after a Public Records request was filed, claimed that the monkeys went under extreme suffering due to the lack of animal care in Neuralink facilities and the sheer invasiveness of the chips themselves. A spokesperson for UC Davis outlined that in its research with Neuralink, all research protocols were approved by the campus’s own Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and in accordance with the US Department of Agriculture’s laws and regulations. Neuralink themselves refuted the claims as well, and maintained that the animals were housed by UC Davis in keeping with federal regulations, while Neuralink themselves built their own housing for the animals. This housing included a 6,000 square foot common area and individual enclosures for the animals that contained pools, swings and treehouses. After this residential project was constructed by Neuralink and their test subjects were moved there, the collaboration between them and UC Davis ended in 2020 [5]. 

Of course, putting these brain interfaces into a human being is another story entirely. Neuroscientists in general have detested this research because of ethical concerns. Putting a brain chip into a human who is not severely or mentally limited, and doesn’t need the technology to survive, is obviously unnecessary and it is not reasonable to experiment with someone not limited simply for the fun of it [5]. Not much information about these tests has been released publicly, human or otherwise, and it has been proven that the company is only sharing the best of results. Even though there were successes like Pager and Gertrude, many monkeys and pigs were reported to have issues of paralysis and seizures when testing the brain-computer interfaces. Bearing in mind that long term effects are still unknown, since testing has still only been going for less than half a decade, neurotechnological researchers maintain that the clinical trials of the product should remain safe and transparent [4].

The first human trial began in early 2024, where Elon Musk himself posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the patient was recovering well from the implantation, and there was a promising spike in their neural activity. A few weeks after the announcement, the patient made a full recovery, and Musk said they could move a cursor on a computer screen with just their thoughts. This demonstrated Musk’s first idea, Telepathy, as a product that would allow people to use electronics by just thinking about it, and initial users of the product would be people who had lost use of their limbs, such as paraplegics. Later on, the identity of the patient was revealed to be a 29-year-old man who had lost control of his limbs in a diving accident eight years prior. He was shown to move a cursor, and even play video games without assistance. He himself said the chip “was not perfect,” but it made a significant improvement on his life [5]. Even though Neuralink is most often in the news, it is not the only manufacturer of brain-computer interfaces with this much success. There are many others working on similar technologies, the most notable of which being Synchron [6]. 

Synchron was founded in 2012, and they also manufacture a product like Telepathy, known as the Synchron Switch, which is inserted through the patients blood vessels instead of direct neural connection. They connect the main stent (tube-like support structure) to a large vein next to the motor cortex. Although this means their connection is less strong than Neuralink’s, they believe it would be more accessible due to the procedure being less invasive. The company has six patients in the US, as well as four patients in Australia with the Switch implanted in them; the company is waiting for FDA approval to commercialize the product further. Synchron has also invested in the German company Acquandas, who make an implant of their own with an advanced layering technique. The CEO of the company, Tom Oxley, believes that millions of people deserve the implants with their techniques, and Synchron is ready to produce them. Even though Synchron is largely unheard of, the people investing in it will certainly ring a bell. In 2022, $75 million was put into it by investing firms owned by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Elon Musk himself has openly admitted that Neuralink should be well ahead of Synchron, but if anything it’s the other way around [6]. 

When it comes to future prospects, however, it’s safe to say that Musk is a little more ambitious than factual. He believes that Neuralink’s work will lead to humanity integrating with machines and artificial intelligence in symbiosis [5]. Most experts in the field of neuroscience know that coming close to this sort of technology is far out of reach with our current state, and it could take decades beyond this point to make progress into symbiotic relationships with machines [3]. So, that’s the history of Neuralink and brain-computer interfaces. Now comes the big question: Are we the next Terminators? Will we be implanted with a chip that allows us to see everything technological with our mind instead of a phone screen? Sadly, no, as this portion of neuroscience is not even close to being figured out yet, but the next couple of generations might be able to experience something close to that. Will it be a commercial product? Will it be government mandated? We don’t know yet, but we do know that before the turn of the century (which is still a lot of time), we will have the answers. So if you were to have grandchildren, just know that half of them will probably be converted into the enemy by a tech corporation called Cyberdyne Systems, and that there’s not much you can do about it.

Sources:

1. https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/04/04/152788/meet-the-guys-who-sold-neuralink-to-elon-musk-without-even-realizing-it/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuralink
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv_XB6Hf6gM
4. https://www.captechu.edu/blog/neuralinks-brain-chip-how-it-works-and-what-it-means#:~:text=The%20Technology%20Behind%20the%20Neuralink,drive%20nearly%20all%20human%20functions.
5. https://www.businessinsider.com/neuralink-elon-musk-microchips-brains-ai-2021-2
6. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/01/neuralink-competitor-synchron-buys-equity-stake-in-manufacturer.html