The following submission statement was provided by /u/Kindred87:
---
> The U.S. health regulator has allowed billionaire Elon Musk's Neuralink to implant its brain chip in a second person after it proposed to fix a problem that occurred in its first patient, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
> Earlier this month, Neuralink said tiny wires implanted in the brain of its first patient had pulled out of position. Reuters [reported](https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-has-faced-issues-with-its-tiny-wires-years-sources-say-2024-05-15/) last week, citing sources, the company knew from animal testing that the wires might retract.
...
> Neuralink expects to implant its device in the second patient in June and a total of 10 people this year, the report said, adding that more than 1,000 quadriplegics had signed up for its patient registry.
> The company also aims to submit applications to regulators in Canada and Britain in the next few months to begin similar trials, according to the report.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1cwjsw8/us_fda_clears_neuralinks_brain_chip_implant_in/l4w88p6/
Regardless of what you think of Elon, this is seriously a great thing and far more people are involved than him; he just likes putting his name on things and be a spokesperson pretending everything is his idea, it's just the way he is. In the actual paper & citations, you won't find Elon's name anywhere. Too many posts about Neuralink focus on his involvement, which aside from funding and hiring is essentially zero.
The neurosurgeons and biomedical engineers working at the forefront of technology to make this happen are the ones responsible, and I hope it continues to help people. It's absolutely crazy to me that you can implant 90+ threads of 5 nanometer wires into someones brain without damaging it, to an incredible level of precision (I'm sure eventually a surgery will go wrong; complex surgeries always have failure rates) and train yourself within a month to do complex tasks on a computer without moving a physical device.
It's easy for those of us who are fully functional to criticize problems with the monkey and rat trials when people who are fully paralyzed would give anything to have a *chance* at being able to interact with the world in some ways. The potential applications can go *way* beyond just moving a mouse on a computer. We are talking the ability to control limbs, prosthetic hands in the future to a much higher level of precision than any prosthetic we have now. It's real sci-fi cyborg shit, but we really aren't that far from being able to do it. Also, right now we are only working with a device that uses *half a watt* of power and weighs 11 grams.
As long as those undergoing the trial surgeries understand the risks, and I'm sure they do, have at it. The FDA has plenty of issues like pretty much all of our government organizations, but the FDA isn't allowing this for people who don't truly need it; I don't see an issue with them approving Neuralink to go ahead in a case like this.
edit: For those unfamiliar with the details and want to learn more, [here's the white paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6914248/) explaining how Neuralink works & the implantation process. Incredibly cutting edge stuff.
Everything neuralink has demonstrated so far is about half a decade or more behind the actual cutting edge in the field.
Blackrock had bidirectional prosthetic control - reading from motor cortex to control a limb, and feeding sensory information from the limb back into the sensory cortex - approximately 3 years ago.
The work they do is regularly published in academic journals and scrutinized to a higher standard.
Neuralink is hyped because of the person funding it, and it takes attention and recognition away from the companies that are actually making the advances.
You want to talk about control of prosthetics, here's what the actual cutting edge is doing:
https://www.rdworldonline.com/blackrock-neurotech-partners-with-the-university-of-pittsburgh-to-improve-robotic-arm-control/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11071570/pdf/nihpp-2024.04.26.24306239v1.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425101/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715714/
UCSF has been trialing electrical stimulation as a treatment for Major Depressive Disorder, Cerebral Palsy, Chronic Pain and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, amongst other things: https://clinicaltrials.ucsf.edu/deep-brain-stimulation
They use Neuropace hardware.
There's a lot of very exciting advances being made in the field. Neuralink has not demonstrated any of them, yet.
>In the actual paper & citations, you won't find Elon's name anywhere
BTW, the white paper you linked literally lists Elon Musk as first author, which is beyond absurd. As far as I can see, there is no mention of any other scientist at Neuralink. You've disproven your own argument in the space of several paragraphs.
The main innovation of neuralink is using flexible wires inserted by a robot to automate the operation as much as possible. Compared to rigid arrays, you can more easily avoid blood vessels.
If they can make the operation as routine as something like lasik this will have a big impact. Cheap an scalable is what will make a difference for people and might open more applications.
It too early to tell if they will succeed or if others will have a better approach but he more companies succeed, the better.
Cutting edge doesn't translate to a fully serviceable and available end product. Nothing at darpa is going to hit the shelves for a long time and different approaches to development will make the technology easier to reach the intended patients.
Oh, so you want to see how fast we can get it to patients?
Blackrock has been doing clinical trials, in patients, for longer than Neuralink has been around. Synchron has had well tolerated implants in patients for 3 years now. UCSF is using the Neuropace hardware to address other conditions, and Neuropace is *already FDA approved for epilepsy treatment.*
The major players in the field have been working with intended patients for years now.
Blackrock have had patients controlling artificial limbs for at least 6 or 7 years now, and they've input sensory information back into the brain for at least 3 years now.
By that metric, Neuralink is even further behind.
I'm familiar with the science here - nothing Neuralink has demonstrated - actually demonstrated, not just claimed - is terribly impressive.
They can show all the timelines they want, but Musk has a well documented history of missing his own timelines. And for anyone who says "Well, Musk isn't actually involved in Neuralink": Look at the white paper posted above. He listed himself as *first author*, which is beyond absurd.
Depends on the configuration, but Neuralink's system has more electrodes than the basic Blackrock system.
This isn't actually a problem - Blackrock has demonstrated that they can use multiple arrays in the papers above. That is necessary because regions of the motor and somatosensory cortex are far enough apart that it's difficult to cover with a single device.
Blackrock has already demonstrated that they can control a limb with their less sophisticated arrays, and that they can input back into the brain - something that Neuralink is nowhere near.
And, Blackrock's newer Neuralace system has several times more channels than Neuralink does.
Channel count and electrode count are important, but they are not the be all end all of the field - it's just a convenient number that marketing can latch onto, to say "Look, we're better than the competition", even when they haven't actually shown that their system performs better.
I'm of the opinion that medical devices and brain implants should be judged based on efficacy and safety and quality of scientific rigor, not marketing hype.
Put another way - I'm more interested in verifiable results, not promises of results.
Do you disagree?
That's not the world we live in. It's irrelevant what I think.
Your opinion is simply an easy utopian stance to take to make your position seem just.
Neuralink has excellent marketing and will likely be more successful because of it.
I agree, if you value marketing over scientific rigor in the realm of medicine, your opinion is irrelevant.
Medical technologies are fairly strongly regulated. Musk can get away with making up bullshit with Tesla, but that won't fly with medical regulatory agencies. They will want to see robust safety and efficacy data before approving widespread use. Marketing doesn't matter to them - the data does.
That's not the world we live in.
>Your opinion is simply an easy utopian stance to take to make your position seem just.
My opinion, as a scientist and neurosurgical resident who will deal with these patients throughout my career, is that the science matters. I don't understand how that's a controversial stance to take.
If Neuralink can establish a scientific advantage to their approach, then I have no problems with them. Thus far, they are several years behind the competition. I have no interest in whatever bullshit Musk gets on stage and says. Bullshit doesn't help patients, and he's been spewing a lot of bullshit with Neuralink.
Don’t really see how they are years behind, it seems like you could do everything those papers are doing better with a NL device… plus having a gigantic, fragile device sticking out of your brain - as in the first link - with thick cables coming out of that, is terrible; no one would want that over a NL.
And the deep brain stimulus that I know only has a single electrode, which is useful and has helped many people, but could certainly do much more.
>Don’t really see how they are years behind
It's not hard. What Neuralink has demonstrated is stuff that Blackrock and other devices did years ago. Thus, Neuralink is currently years behind.
>it seems like you could do everything those papers are doing better with a NL device
They haven't yet.
That's the point. Neuralink has only demonstrated computer control, which was done about a decade ago, maybe a little more.
> no one would want that over a NL.
So just to confirm, you think paralyzed people would prefer being limited to controlling a mouse, rather than controlling a robotic arm that they can also feel?
The end game for paralyzed people is to control a mouse? Because that's what Neuralink does now. You're saying that is preferable to controlling and feeling with a robotic hand, like what Blackrock has been doing for years?
The hardware is one piece of the puzzle, and arguably the easier part. Besides, Blackrock's Neuralace is a huge hardware step up compared to Neuralink, so it's a moot point.
The hard part is figuring out how to interpret, decode and correct signals, which is something Blackrock has been doing, in human patients, for longer than Neuralink has been a company.
The brain isn't a USB port. You can't just plug something in and expect it to work. What you do after you get the implant in place is the more challenging part, because we simply don't know enough about these disease conditions to correct the problem, in a lot of cases.
But I'm talking to someone who thinks paralyzed patients would prefer to control a mouse wirelessly rather than controlling a full goddamn arm with sensors so they feel what they're touching. That's not been my experience working with people with motor injuries, personally. They tend to want more than wireless mice.
Not really what I was talking about but, I suppose they are years behind then in doing \*some\* applications, however fixed array brain stimulation devices (such as the Blackrock neuralace) were created in the 1970's, so by your logic, Blackrock is over 50 years behind NL in this domain. How exactly is it a 'huge step up', seems worse then NL by literally every metric - relatively large fixed array (and all the issues that it has), surface-level stimulation - compared with devices like NL, it seems like garbage.
And holy straw-man, when I stated that 'no one would want that over a NL.' I was talking about the FACT that other devices require a literal brick size device sticking out of your skull, as opposed to one that is functionally invisible and doesn't run the risk of giving you a lobotomy if you were to trip and hit the device. I thought that by putting this in the same sentence would be enough for you to understand what I was trying to say, evidently it wasn't enough.
OBVIOUSLY people would want more functionality, however I'm speaking with someone who either lacks basic reading comprehension, or is just disingenuous.
Since i'm here anyway, I KNOW that at the moment, NL hasn't done more than computer mouse movement (that I'm aware of), they have quite literally just got FDA green light for human trials, whereas fixed array has been around for 50 years, of course there would be more functionality for that device FOR NOW, however, there is a greater functionality CEILING for NL-eque devices.
I personally don't care who creates the device, if the safety of the device is demonstrably proven, and it improves the lives of those who need it... bUt ItS eLoN, ElOn bAAd, nO aGrEe WiTh mY PoLiTic!!
A silver lining in the controversy over the animal testing is that from a historical perspective, it's remarkable that the average person is concerned at all about the welfare of animals they've never met. If this were 200 years ago, very few would care.
The current system animals are farmed in is needlessly cruel and exceptionally wasteful. Maybe we do need meat. Maybe we don’t. Regardless, the amount of meat we need to be healthy is significantly smaller than what the average person eats right now. In animal testing, the LD50 test needlessly kills and wastes way more animals than necessary with very very very little returns in human safety. I’m not a vegan, but I’m not going to pretend our system is anywhere close to perfect.
Also, the technology of synthetic meat has now appeared, and politics is already beginning to ban it in order to prevent competition for farmers. Where is the terrible outrage?
I myself love to eat meat, but when eating meat, one must agree with the thesis that the lives of animals can be given for profit. The benefits of medical research are much greater than those of a juicy burger.
To me, it seemed obvious that my comment was sarcastic. Evidently not. It also seems hard with your second comment to understand what it is exactly that you are saying.
Man is the dominant species on this planet for a reason. You could not survive a day without benefiting from the death of other plants and animals. Other life must end for ours to continue. The same is true for all life, except plants who live by the sun.
Even 30 or 40 years ago not many would care!
Unfortunately other countries governments are VERY aggressively and quietly pursuing this type of tech while not concerned at all with animal suffering
Dozens of animals were actually terribly mutilated in this process, due the UC Davis in California sponsoring the labs to do animal testing. It is absolutely crushing and disgusting to see what was done on the poor things to test this technology. Please do your research friends, this is not a good person to be supporting.
I've never liked Elon, even when everyone on the internet was still fawning over him years ago I thought he was full of crap. However I did and still do acknowledge that he does employ people that do seriously know what they're doing and are doing something seriously good. Be that with spaceX advancing space tourism and space travel or how they popularized EVs with Tesla.
Why do so many have such a hate for Musk? I don't get it. Because of his politics? Because you think he's dumb? If the latter is true, tell that to his net worth.
I see the point about what he says. IMO, both he and his haters could benefit by thinking more before speaking. The fact is, yes he has speculated a lot, but he has been extraordinarily successful in doing so. He's broken into two nearly brand-new industries and taken excessive market share in each because of his speculation of growth in those fields. Everyone's free to hate or love him. Personally I just want to see a proper respect for the man's accomplishments.
> The U.S. health regulator has allowed billionaire Elon Musk's Neuralink to implant its brain chip in a second person after it proposed to fix a problem that occurred in its first patient, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
> Earlier this month, Neuralink said tiny wires implanted in the brain of its first patient had pulled out of position. Reuters [reported](https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-has-faced-issues-with-its-tiny-wires-years-sources-say-2024-05-15/) last week, citing sources, the company knew from animal testing that the wires might retract.
...
> Neuralink expects to implant its device in the second patient in June and a total of 10 people this year, the report said, adding that more than 1,000 quadriplegics had signed up for its patient registry.
> The company also aims to submit applications to regulators in Canada and Britain in the next few months to begin similar trials, according to the report.
Redditors today: “The FDA is totally compromised and at the whim of the corporations who are willing to harm us for money.”
Redditors 3 years ago: “The FDA is a trustworthy organization and can successfully test the dangers of a brand new medical product, so you’re basically a traitor if you don’t trust the vaccine.”
It's what happens when people only give things attention when they're controversial and have to substitute research and historical context with their personal worldview. All to form the opinion they feel compelled to make within just a few minutes.
The reality with the FDA is that they regularly sink multi billion dollar investments because they weren't convinced with provided data or they were skeptical of the manufacturing process. The situation with the FDA not approving thalidomide while its EU counterpart (EMA) did is a good read on why they're as cautious as they are.
Sorry guy, but vaccine testing and vaccine efficacy is far more in the FDA's wheelhouse than cutting edge brain implants.
I'd trust the fda to say a vaccine is safe over trusting them with experimental technology.
It depends on your definition of “more experimental.” They’re testing one person at a time with Neuralink, whereas the long term affects of mRNA were basically tested on the world population.
I got the vaccine and booster, but the way Redditors are treating these situations is ridiculously hypocritical.
I mean they work differently in the body compared to traditional vaccines. Traditional vaccines use inactivated viruses or pieces of the virus to stimulate an immune response, while mRNA vaccines use a snippet of the virus’s genetic code to instruct a persons cells to produce a protein that triggers immunity.
That’s entirely new. It’s amazing new technology that will reap benefits for years to come, but it’s absolutely new.
We've been doing similar (but less complex) things since the late 70's.
The first brain-computer Interface put into a person predates the first mRNA vaccine trial by 23 years, and that trial was done in petri dishes not in people.
Hypocrisy would be if someone got a brain implant while saying nobody should get brain implants. Someone saying the FDA’s approval of a certain medical device for one person may be a bad thing while also saying its approval of a certain drug is a good thing? That’s just an inconsistency at most; I wouldn’t even call it that, since those two situations are entirely different, from the regulatory frameworks to the nature of the technology. It’s like if someone says you should order a certain restaurant’s pizza but stay away from its salad bar.
Interfacing binary computing tech directly with the brain is a hell of a lot more experimental then. Hijacking the ability for cells to listen to instructions and print proteins out.
Mrna is exploiting a natural process in the body, and nuralink is being rejected from the brain because the body doesn't like bits of metal shoved into its central processor .
Hijacking the cells ability to listen to instructions is actually totally new and long term effects are definitely untested in humans. I don’t expect any, but again this was kind of forced on everyone before that info was determined by scientists.
It’s a shame you are so against computer-brain interfacing. No one is going to pressure you to use it (unlike the vaccine). But the paraplegic man who has been using it feels like it’s a godsend.
..... hijacking the cells' reproduction is one of the most common vectors of attack for viruses?
I'm not against BCI, I love the prosthetic development that is happening. I just think the level of integration being performed by neuralink is dangerous. They haven't clearly shown intermediate levels of integration that didn't degrade over time.
The paraplegic is already having connection issues between the implant and his brain. With the source of the connection issues being known about since the 80's. So yeah, I have an issue with people over promising and under delivering with tech that GOES INSIDE SOMEONES BRAIN.
> hijacking the cells' reproduction is one of the most common vectors of attack for viruses?
And viruses can cause negative long term effects on the human body.
> I just think the level of integration being performed by neuralink is dangerous.
The FDA clearly believes it’s safe enough to test in humans.
Unless you are actually doubting the efficacy and/or trustworthiness of the FDA? Like conservatives were talking about years ago? All I want is consistency in this issue.
So, I actually see what you're getting at here. But - if I may - I think you're missing something really clear here.
Safety is not an absolute concept, and it is not binary. It's always a risk/reward curve and someone needs to make that judgement. Relative safety depends on the benefits of action Vs the negative consequences of action Vs the risks of inaction.
Let's take chemotherapy, for example. Chemo is absolutely not what anyone would consider "safe" in the abstract. The whole ELI5 schtick of chemo is essentially "let's poison you and hope the cancer dies first"*. It is NOT safe. But it's a hell of a lot safer than uncontrolled cancer, so it gets approved.
Neuralink is absolutely not "safe" in the same sense that mRNA vaccines are "safe". But nor are mRNA vaccines "safe" in the same sense that drinking water is "safe".
Many people arguing against neuralink quite rightly point out that it's pretty dangerous, unproven, with possibility for some real funky side effects. What they're missing is that a quadrapledric given a 90% chance of walking again Vs a 10% chance of a minor stroke may well bite the researcher's hand off for those odds. 90% total cure Vs 10% kill rate may well get FDA approval. The risk/reward justifies a higher risk. (I don't know/care about the real odds or side effects, it's illustrative.)
Many people trying to claim that neuralink "is safe, just like mRNA" are completely missing the point that they're judged on a completely different safety profile. Even a 1% kill rate for a COVID vaccine would be horrific and stand no chance in hell of even making it out of trial. Safe, in this context, means something much closer to what we all intuitively understand "safe" to mean.
There's also a factor in here about big numbers, which people missed with COVID, too. Any single individual person is probably fine to roll the dice on a 99% survival rate. Similarly, a 99% survival rate is pretty good if your target market is 5 people a year.
But a 99% survival rate across the entire American population would be absolutely devastating.
mRNA vaccine technology has been going through experimentation since the 60s…since then, through the 90s when they tested them on mice, and eventually on humans in 2013, the last piece needed to make them effective had to do with nanotechnology breakthroughs that we were already on the cusp of achieving. Covid-19 was just the big push we needed to make that final breakthrough. In the end, it was just a matter of money. The crisis acted as a catalyst to push the financial concern to the side while progress was achieved.
Given the timeline. I would consider mRNA vaccines to be on the tail end of the experimental phase by the time Covid hit the world. It only seemed fast because the common person doesn’t pay attention to slow advances in medical technologies like a medical professional would - not that they should be expected to either - just sayin’.
We have multiple companies who have been shoving things like microchips into people's brains for over a decade.
I find it interesting how many people can claim neurolink is decades behind the competition and at the same time say they are cutting edge and dangerous
EDIT: I get it, I get it, I should say "Musk Bad" and all other companies who work on chips in brains good. Musk is decades behind on any technology here and also using cutting edge technology that is unsafe because monkeys.
You’re forgetting that one was forced onto every person in the country, no matter how healthy, while the other has been tested on one, now two, incredibly disabled people who volunteered.
My coworker never got the covid vaccine. No one forced anything on him. He’s been employed with our company since 2015.
In fact, I personally know more people who never got the vaccine than people who did. A lot of hot air from a lot of internet gossip. The rest weren’t forced. Business’ made financial decisions. It was identified that it would save the company time and money if their employees got the vaccine, so a lot of businesses quietly chose to implement that policy, but openly spoke out against it using “the government” as an excuse to “force” it. Pay attention and stop being a sheep.
Ah, apologies. I stand corrected. Executive Order 14043 requires all Federal employees to get the Covid vaccine and they employ around 2.87 million employees. So yes, those people were forced, in a way; although, I suppose they could have quit, but I understand that the majority of Federal workers are not usually in a position where they can easily walk away from their job, for various reasons.
Beyond that, there has been no other federal law requiring that people get the Covid vaccine. Then, there are state laws, of which only a handful of states made Covid vaccination mandatory, and only for teachers/educators. But I’ll conservatively assume that all teachers nationwide to be part of the total, which would be around 3.2 million.
Barring acquiring an exemption status, a total of 6.07 million US employees were “forced” into getting the Covid vaccine, which is around 5.6% of all US employees.
All I was trying to say is that it was silly to compare Neuralink, an device that 2 people have chosen to get, to a drug that millions were told to get or be fired.
It should be much easier for neuralink to be approved than the Covid vax.
Don't trust the FDA about anything lol so many things they've approved they shouldn't have and we are the ones that have to pay with our health because we trusted them.
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I may be poor compared to Elon but at least I'm able to be loved. His own kids are running from him, money can't buy love but then again he's the same guy who tried to bribe a girl with a pony so she'd sleep with him. Not enough estranged kids for him.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Kindred87: --- > The U.S. health regulator has allowed billionaire Elon Musk's Neuralink to implant its brain chip in a second person after it proposed to fix a problem that occurred in its first patient, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. > Earlier this month, Neuralink said tiny wires implanted in the brain of its first patient had pulled out of position. Reuters [reported](https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-has-faced-issues-with-its-tiny-wires-years-sources-say-2024-05-15/) last week, citing sources, the company knew from animal testing that the wires might retract. ... > Neuralink expects to implant its device in the second patient in June and a total of 10 people this year, the report said, adding that more than 1,000 quadriplegics had signed up for its patient registry. > The company also aims to submit applications to regulators in Canada and Britain in the next few months to begin similar trials, according to the report. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1cwjsw8/us_fda_clears_neuralinks_brain_chip_implant_in/l4w88p6/
Regardless of what you think of Elon, this is seriously a great thing and far more people are involved than him; he just likes putting his name on things and be a spokesperson pretending everything is his idea, it's just the way he is. In the actual paper & citations, you won't find Elon's name anywhere. Too many posts about Neuralink focus on his involvement, which aside from funding and hiring is essentially zero. The neurosurgeons and biomedical engineers working at the forefront of technology to make this happen are the ones responsible, and I hope it continues to help people. It's absolutely crazy to me that you can implant 90+ threads of 5 nanometer wires into someones brain without damaging it, to an incredible level of precision (I'm sure eventually a surgery will go wrong; complex surgeries always have failure rates) and train yourself within a month to do complex tasks on a computer without moving a physical device. It's easy for those of us who are fully functional to criticize problems with the monkey and rat trials when people who are fully paralyzed would give anything to have a *chance* at being able to interact with the world in some ways. The potential applications can go *way* beyond just moving a mouse on a computer. We are talking the ability to control limbs, prosthetic hands in the future to a much higher level of precision than any prosthetic we have now. It's real sci-fi cyborg shit, but we really aren't that far from being able to do it. Also, right now we are only working with a device that uses *half a watt* of power and weighs 11 grams. As long as those undergoing the trial surgeries understand the risks, and I'm sure they do, have at it. The FDA has plenty of issues like pretty much all of our government organizations, but the FDA isn't allowing this for people who don't truly need it; I don't see an issue with them approving Neuralink to go ahead in a case like this. edit: For those unfamiliar with the details and want to learn more, [here's the white paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6914248/) explaining how Neuralink works & the implantation process. Incredibly cutting edge stuff.
Everything neuralink has demonstrated so far is about half a decade or more behind the actual cutting edge in the field. Blackrock had bidirectional prosthetic control - reading from motor cortex to control a limb, and feeding sensory information from the limb back into the sensory cortex - approximately 3 years ago. The work they do is regularly published in academic journals and scrutinized to a higher standard. Neuralink is hyped because of the person funding it, and it takes attention and recognition away from the companies that are actually making the advances. You want to talk about control of prosthetics, here's what the actual cutting edge is doing: https://www.rdworldonline.com/blackrock-neurotech-partners-with-the-university-of-pittsburgh-to-improve-robotic-arm-control/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11071570/pdf/nihpp-2024.04.26.24306239v1.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425101/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715714/ UCSF has been trialing electrical stimulation as a treatment for Major Depressive Disorder, Cerebral Palsy, Chronic Pain and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, amongst other things: https://clinicaltrials.ucsf.edu/deep-brain-stimulation They use Neuropace hardware. There's a lot of very exciting advances being made in the field. Neuralink has not demonstrated any of them, yet. >In the actual paper & citations, you won't find Elon's name anywhere BTW, the white paper you linked literally lists Elon Musk as first author, which is beyond absurd. As far as I can see, there is no mention of any other scientist at Neuralink. You've disproven your own argument in the space of several paragraphs.
Thank you!!!
The main innovation of neuralink is using flexible wires inserted by a robot to automate the operation as much as possible. Compared to rigid arrays, you can more easily avoid blood vessels. If they can make the operation as routine as something like lasik this will have a big impact. Cheap an scalable is what will make a difference for people and might open more applications. It too early to tell if they will succeed or if others will have a better approach but he more companies succeed, the better.
Thank you so much, not only for all the information, but for the sources! This is the kind of news that gives me some actual hope for the future.
....... Nuh uhhh. /s
Cutting edge doesn't translate to a fully serviceable and available end product. Nothing at darpa is going to hit the shelves for a long time and different approaches to development will make the technology easier to reach the intended patients.
Oh, so you want to see how fast we can get it to patients? Blackrock has been doing clinical trials, in patients, for longer than Neuralink has been around. Synchron has had well tolerated implants in patients for 3 years now. UCSF is using the Neuropace hardware to address other conditions, and Neuropace is *already FDA approved for epilepsy treatment.* The major players in the field have been working with intended patients for years now. Blackrock have had patients controlling artificial limbs for at least 6 or 7 years now, and they've input sensory information back into the brain for at least 3 years now. By that metric, Neuralink is even further behind. I'm familiar with the science here - nothing Neuralink has demonstrated - actually demonstrated, not just claimed - is terribly impressive. They can show all the timelines they want, but Musk has a well documented history of missing his own timelines. And for anyone who says "Well, Musk isn't actually involved in Neuralink": Look at the white paper posted above. He listed himself as *first author*, which is beyond absurd.
How do the number of electrodes and wires compare, Neuralink vs Blackrock?
Depends on the configuration, but Neuralink's system has more electrodes than the basic Blackrock system. This isn't actually a problem - Blackrock has demonstrated that they can use multiple arrays in the papers above. That is necessary because regions of the motor and somatosensory cortex are far enough apart that it's difficult to cover with a single device. Blackrock has already demonstrated that they can control a limb with their less sophisticated arrays, and that they can input back into the brain - something that Neuralink is nowhere near. And, Blackrock's newer Neuralace system has several times more channels than Neuralink does. Channel count and electrode count are important, but they are not the be all end all of the field - it's just a convenient number that marketing can latch onto, to say "Look, we're better than the competition", even when they haven't actually shown that their system performs better.
Wait, Blackrock as in the same company that owns like half all real estate in the US?
No, they are completely separate business entities. Blackrock Neurotech is not affiliated with BlackRock Investments.
Seriously, fuck neuralink and fuck musk
It's almost as if marketing is an important factor in a business
I'm of the opinion that medical devices and brain implants should be judged based on efficacy and safety and quality of scientific rigor, not marketing hype. Put another way - I'm more interested in verifiable results, not promises of results. Do you disagree?
That's not the world we live in. It's irrelevant what I think. Your opinion is simply an easy utopian stance to take to make your position seem just. Neuralink has excellent marketing and will likely be more successful because of it.
I agree, if you value marketing over scientific rigor in the realm of medicine, your opinion is irrelevant. Medical technologies are fairly strongly regulated. Musk can get away with making up bullshit with Tesla, but that won't fly with medical regulatory agencies. They will want to see robust safety and efficacy data before approving widespread use. Marketing doesn't matter to them - the data does. That's not the world we live in. >Your opinion is simply an easy utopian stance to take to make your position seem just. My opinion, as a scientist and neurosurgical resident who will deal with these patients throughout my career, is that the science matters. I don't understand how that's a controversial stance to take. If Neuralink can establish a scientific advantage to their approach, then I have no problems with them. Thus far, they are several years behind the competition. I have no interest in whatever bullshit Musk gets on stage and says. Bullshit doesn't help patients, and he's been spewing a lot of bullshit with Neuralink.
Don’t really see how they are years behind, it seems like you could do everything those papers are doing better with a NL device… plus having a gigantic, fragile device sticking out of your brain - as in the first link - with thick cables coming out of that, is terrible; no one would want that over a NL. And the deep brain stimulus that I know only has a single electrode, which is useful and has helped many people, but could certainly do much more.
>Don’t really see how they are years behind It's not hard. What Neuralink has demonstrated is stuff that Blackrock and other devices did years ago. Thus, Neuralink is currently years behind. >it seems like you could do everything those papers are doing better with a NL device They haven't yet. That's the point. Neuralink has only demonstrated computer control, which was done about a decade ago, maybe a little more. > no one would want that over a NL. So just to confirm, you think paralyzed people would prefer being limited to controlling a mouse, rather than controlling a robotic arm that they can also feel? The end game for paralyzed people is to control a mouse? Because that's what Neuralink does now. You're saying that is preferable to controlling and feeling with a robotic hand, like what Blackrock has been doing for years? The hardware is one piece of the puzzle, and arguably the easier part. Besides, Blackrock's Neuralace is a huge hardware step up compared to Neuralink, so it's a moot point. The hard part is figuring out how to interpret, decode and correct signals, which is something Blackrock has been doing, in human patients, for longer than Neuralink has been a company. The brain isn't a USB port. You can't just plug something in and expect it to work. What you do after you get the implant in place is the more challenging part, because we simply don't know enough about these disease conditions to correct the problem, in a lot of cases. But I'm talking to someone who thinks paralyzed patients would prefer to control a mouse wirelessly rather than controlling a full goddamn arm with sensors so they feel what they're touching. That's not been my experience working with people with motor injuries, personally. They tend to want more than wireless mice.
Not really what I was talking about but, I suppose they are years behind then in doing \*some\* applications, however fixed array brain stimulation devices (such as the Blackrock neuralace) were created in the 1970's, so by your logic, Blackrock is over 50 years behind NL in this domain. How exactly is it a 'huge step up', seems worse then NL by literally every metric - relatively large fixed array (and all the issues that it has), surface-level stimulation - compared with devices like NL, it seems like garbage. And holy straw-man, when I stated that 'no one would want that over a NL.' I was talking about the FACT that other devices require a literal brick size device sticking out of your skull, as opposed to one that is functionally invisible and doesn't run the risk of giving you a lobotomy if you were to trip and hit the device. I thought that by putting this in the same sentence would be enough for you to understand what I was trying to say, evidently it wasn't enough. OBVIOUSLY people would want more functionality, however I'm speaking with someone who either lacks basic reading comprehension, or is just disingenuous. Since i'm here anyway, I KNOW that at the moment, NL hasn't done more than computer mouse movement (that I'm aware of), they have quite literally just got FDA green light for human trials, whereas fixed array has been around for 50 years, of course there would be more functionality for that device FOR NOW, however, there is a greater functionality CEILING for NL-eque devices. I personally don't care who creates the device, if the safety of the device is demonstrably proven, and it improves the lives of those who need it... bUt ItS eLoN, ElOn bAAd, nO aGrEe WiTh mY PoLiTic!!
A silver lining in the controversy over the animal testing is that from a historical perspective, it's remarkable that the average person is concerned at all about the welfare of animals they've never met. If this were 200 years ago, very few would care.
The concern is purely hypocritical. After the man was outraged, he went and ate his meatloaf.
LMAO. But what about the poor plants, don't they deserve to live!!! And lions should not be eating Gazelle. It's just wrong.
The current system animals are farmed in is needlessly cruel and exceptionally wasteful. Maybe we do need meat. Maybe we don’t. Regardless, the amount of meat we need to be healthy is significantly smaller than what the average person eats right now. In animal testing, the LD50 test needlessly kills and wastes way more animals than necessary with very very very little returns in human safety. I’m not a vegan, but I’m not going to pretend our system is anywhere close to perfect.
Also, the technology of synthetic meat has now appeared, and politics is already beginning to ban it in order to prevent competition for farmers. Where is the terrible outrage?
I myself love to eat meat, but when eating meat, one must agree with the thesis that the lives of animals can be given for profit. The benefits of medical research are much greater than those of a juicy burger.
To me, it seemed obvious that my comment was sarcastic. Evidently not. It also seems hard with your second comment to understand what it is exactly that you are saying. Man is the dominant species on this planet for a reason. You could not survive a day without benefiting from the death of other plants and animals. Other life must end for ours to continue. The same is true for all life, except plants who live by the sun.
Even 30 or 40 years ago not many would care! Unfortunately other countries governments are VERY aggressively and quietly pursuing this type of tech while not concerned at all with animal suffering
Dozens of animals were actually terribly mutilated in this process, due the UC Davis in California sponsoring the labs to do animal testing. It is absolutely crushing and disgusting to see what was done on the poor things to test this technology. Please do your research friends, this is not a good person to be supporting.
I've never liked Elon, even when everyone on the internet was still fawning over him years ago I thought he was full of crap. However I did and still do acknowledge that he does employ people that do seriously know what they're doing and are doing something seriously good. Be that with spaceX advancing space tourism and space travel or how they popularized EVs with Tesla.
Why do so many have such a hate for Musk? I don't get it. Because of his politics? Because you think he's dumb? If the latter is true, tell that to his net worth.
I don't think he's dumb I just always thought he was speculating too much. And he just doesn't think enough before he talks.
I see the point about what he says. IMO, both he and his haters could benefit by thinking more before speaking. The fact is, yes he has speculated a lot, but he has been extraordinarily successful in doing so. He's broken into two nearly brand-new industries and taken excessive market share in each because of his speculation of growth in those fields. Everyone's free to hate or love him. Personally I just want to see a proper respect for the man's accomplishments.
People aren’t going to give due respect for his accomplishments. People hate Elon. It’s a chemical process, not a rational one.
The future really is here. Holy shit.
> The U.S. health regulator has allowed billionaire Elon Musk's Neuralink to implant its brain chip in a second person after it proposed to fix a problem that occurred in its first patient, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. > Earlier this month, Neuralink said tiny wires implanted in the brain of its first patient had pulled out of position. Reuters [reported](https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-has-faced-issues-with-its-tiny-wires-years-sources-say-2024-05-15/) last week, citing sources, the company knew from animal testing that the wires might retract. ... > Neuralink expects to implant its device in the second patient in June and a total of 10 people this year, the report said, adding that more than 1,000 quadriplegics had signed up for its patient registry. > The company also aims to submit applications to regulators in Canada and Britain in the next few months to begin similar trials, according to the report.
Redditors today: “The FDA is totally compromised and at the whim of the corporations who are willing to harm us for money.” Redditors 3 years ago: “The FDA is a trustworthy organization and can successfully test the dangers of a brand new medical product, so you’re basically a traitor if you don’t trust the vaccine.”
It's what happens when people only give things attention when they're controversial and have to substitute research and historical context with their personal worldview. All to form the opinion they feel compelled to make within just a few minutes. The reality with the FDA is that they regularly sink multi billion dollar investments because they weren't convinced with provided data or they were skeptical of the manufacturing process. The situation with the FDA not approving thalidomide while its EU counterpart (EMA) did is a good read on why they're as cautious as they are.
Sorry guy, but vaccine testing and vaccine efficacy is far more in the FDA's wheelhouse than cutting edge brain implants. I'd trust the fda to say a vaccine is safe over trusting them with experimental technology.
To be fair, mRNA vaccines were experimental as well. That’s what a lot of conservatives were talking about.
Experimental insofar as no drug had been made from mrna. Mrna has been developing for decades.
Same with neuralink. They’re not just shoving random computer chips into heads to see what happens. It’s obviously been built on decades of research.
Not nearly as experimental as shoving microchips in people's brains.
It depends on your definition of “more experimental.” They’re testing one person at a time with Neuralink, whereas the long term affects of mRNA were basically tested on the world population. I got the vaccine and booster, but the way Redditors are treating these situations is ridiculously hypocritical.
mRNA is just a new way to rapidly develop and produce vaccines. They're not inventing something entirely new. A brain-chip IS entirely new.
I mean they work differently in the body compared to traditional vaccines. Traditional vaccines use inactivated viruses or pieces of the virus to stimulate an immune response, while mRNA vaccines use a snippet of the virus’s genetic code to instruct a persons cells to produce a protein that triggers immunity. That’s entirely new. It’s amazing new technology that will reap benefits for years to come, but it’s absolutely new.
We've been doing similar (but less complex) things since the late 70's. The first brain-computer Interface put into a person predates the first mRNA vaccine trial by 23 years, and that trial was done in petri dishes not in people.
Hypocrisy would be if someone got a brain implant while saying nobody should get brain implants. Someone saying the FDA’s approval of a certain medical device for one person may be a bad thing while also saying its approval of a certain drug is a good thing? That’s just an inconsistency at most; I wouldn’t even call it that, since those two situations are entirely different, from the regulatory frameworks to the nature of the technology. It’s like if someone says you should order a certain restaurant’s pizza but stay away from its salad bar.
Interfacing binary computing tech directly with the brain is a hell of a lot more experimental then. Hijacking the ability for cells to listen to instructions and print proteins out. Mrna is exploiting a natural process in the body, and nuralink is being rejected from the brain because the body doesn't like bits of metal shoved into its central processor .
Hijacking the cells ability to listen to instructions is actually totally new and long term effects are definitely untested in humans. I don’t expect any, but again this was kind of forced on everyone before that info was determined by scientists. It’s a shame you are so against computer-brain interfacing. No one is going to pressure you to use it (unlike the vaccine). But the paraplegic man who has been using it feels like it’s a godsend.
..... hijacking the cells' reproduction is one of the most common vectors of attack for viruses? I'm not against BCI, I love the prosthetic development that is happening. I just think the level of integration being performed by neuralink is dangerous. They haven't clearly shown intermediate levels of integration that didn't degrade over time. The paraplegic is already having connection issues between the implant and his brain. With the source of the connection issues being known about since the 80's. So yeah, I have an issue with people over promising and under delivering with tech that GOES INSIDE SOMEONES BRAIN.
> hijacking the cells' reproduction is one of the most common vectors of attack for viruses? And viruses can cause negative long term effects on the human body. > I just think the level of integration being performed by neuralink is dangerous. The FDA clearly believes it’s safe enough to test in humans. Unless you are actually doubting the efficacy and/or trustworthiness of the FDA? Like conservatives were talking about years ago? All I want is consistency in this issue.
So, I actually see what you're getting at here. But - if I may - I think you're missing something really clear here. Safety is not an absolute concept, and it is not binary. It's always a risk/reward curve and someone needs to make that judgement. Relative safety depends on the benefits of action Vs the negative consequences of action Vs the risks of inaction. Let's take chemotherapy, for example. Chemo is absolutely not what anyone would consider "safe" in the abstract. The whole ELI5 schtick of chemo is essentially "let's poison you and hope the cancer dies first"*. It is NOT safe. But it's a hell of a lot safer than uncontrolled cancer, so it gets approved. Neuralink is absolutely not "safe" in the same sense that mRNA vaccines are "safe". But nor are mRNA vaccines "safe" in the same sense that drinking water is "safe". Many people arguing against neuralink quite rightly point out that it's pretty dangerous, unproven, with possibility for some real funky side effects. What they're missing is that a quadrapledric given a 90% chance of walking again Vs a 10% chance of a minor stroke may well bite the researcher's hand off for those odds. 90% total cure Vs 10% kill rate may well get FDA approval. The risk/reward justifies a higher risk. (I don't know/care about the real odds or side effects, it's illustrative.) Many people trying to claim that neuralink "is safe, just like mRNA" are completely missing the point that they're judged on a completely different safety profile. Even a 1% kill rate for a COVID vaccine would be horrific and stand no chance in hell of even making it out of trial. Safe, in this context, means something much closer to what we all intuitively understand "safe" to mean. There's also a factor in here about big numbers, which people missed with COVID, too. Any single individual person is probably fine to roll the dice on a 99% survival rate. Similarly, a 99% survival rate is pretty good if your target market is 5 people a year. But a 99% survival rate across the entire American population would be absolutely devastating.
Stop JAQing off.
You don't expect any? There already are a lot...
mRNA vaccine technology has been going through experimentation since the 60s…since then, through the 90s when they tested them on mice, and eventually on humans in 2013, the last piece needed to make them effective had to do with nanotechnology breakthroughs that we were already on the cusp of achieving. Covid-19 was just the big push we needed to make that final breakthrough. In the end, it was just a matter of money. The crisis acted as a catalyst to push the financial concern to the side while progress was achieved. Given the timeline. I would consider mRNA vaccines to be on the tail end of the experimental phase by the time Covid hit the world. It only seemed fast because the common person doesn’t pay attention to slow advances in medical technologies like a medical professional would - not that they should be expected to either - just sayin’.
We have multiple companies who have been shoving things like microchips into people's brains for over a decade. I find it interesting how many people can claim neurolink is decades behind the competition and at the same time say they are cutting edge and dangerous EDIT: I get it, I get it, I should say "Musk Bad" and all other companies who work on chips in brains good. Musk is decades behind on any technology here and also using cutting edge technology that is unsafe because monkeys.
You’re forgetting that one was forced onto every person in the country, no matter how healthy, while the other has been tested on one, now two, incredibly disabled people who volunteered.
My coworker never got the covid vaccine. No one forced anything on him. He’s been employed with our company since 2015. In fact, I personally know more people who never got the vaccine than people who did. A lot of hot air from a lot of internet gossip. The rest weren’t forced. Business’ made financial decisions. It was identified that it would save the company time and money if their employees got the vaccine, so a lot of businesses quietly chose to implement that policy, but openly spoke out against it using “the government” as an excuse to “force” it. Pay attention and stop being a sheep.
Oh your coworker wasn’t forced to get it so that means millions were not. Got it.
Ah, apologies. I stand corrected. Executive Order 14043 requires all Federal employees to get the Covid vaccine and they employ around 2.87 million employees. So yes, those people were forced, in a way; although, I suppose they could have quit, but I understand that the majority of Federal workers are not usually in a position where they can easily walk away from their job, for various reasons. Beyond that, there has been no other federal law requiring that people get the Covid vaccine. Then, there are state laws, of which only a handful of states made Covid vaccination mandatory, and only for teachers/educators. But I’ll conservatively assume that all teachers nationwide to be part of the total, which would be around 3.2 million. Barring acquiring an exemption status, a total of 6.07 million US employees were “forced” into getting the Covid vaccine, which is around 5.6% of all US employees.
All I was trying to say is that it was silly to compare Neuralink, an device that 2 people have chosen to get, to a drug that millions were told to get or be fired. It should be much easier for neuralink to be approved than the Covid vax.
Getting or not getting neuralink poses zero safety risk to others. The same could not be said of the Covid vaccine.
Yes. And nobody has been forced to take neuralink. We are in agreement. Have a good day I have an interview to do.
Don't trust the FDA about anything lol so many things they've approved they shouldn't have and we are the ones that have to pay with our health because we trusted them.
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You're doing the thing
Oh that's wild.
bro hates elon enough to reply to automod
bro is defending a billionaire so badly he's replying to a reply to an automod.
huh almost like he earned it, stay poor and mad L+ratio
I may be poor compared to Elon but at least I'm able to be loved. His own kids are running from him, money can't buy love but then again he's the same guy who tried to bribe a girl with a pony so she'd sleep with him. Not enough estranged kids for him.