UTRGV experts shared their thoughts on Neuralink’s recent achievement in surgically implanting a computer chip in a living person’s brain.
Elon Musk is one of the co-founders of Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces. The company was founded in 2016 by Musk and a group of scientists.
“So there’s obviously a significant achievement,” said Dr. Ihsan M. Salloum, director of the UTRGV Institute of Neuroscience. “I think [Neuralink has] a lot of advanced and futuristic technology that they’re applying in order to get this into real life and make it available to people.”
On Jan. 28, the first human received an implant from Neuralink. Musk wrote the following day on platform X (formerly known as Twitter) that the patient was recovering well.
He also said in the Jan. 29 tweet that the first Neuralink product is called “Telepathy,” which enables people to control their phone or computer just by thinking.
“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer,” Musk wrote. “That is the goal.”
On Sept. 19, 2023, Neuralink announced the start of human trials to conduct the PRIME Study, short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface.
The study is an investigational medical device trial for the brain-computer interface (BCI).
Dr. Salloum said there are always ethical concerns with every new technology.
“Every new advance, obviously, opens the possibility to provide a lot of help for a lot of people who need them, but it also has the possibility of being used for, you know, things that are unethical,” he said.
The study is being conducted under the investigational device exemption (IDE) awarded by the Food and Drug Administration in May 2023.
“During the study, the R1 Robot will be used to surgically place the N1 Implant’s ultra-fine and flexible threads in a region of the brain that controls movement intention,” the Neuralink website states. “Once in place, the N1 Implant is cosmetically invisible and is intended to record and transmit brain signals wirelessly to an app that decodes movement intention. The initial goal of our BCI is to grant people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone.”
In the future, Neuralink hopes to restore capabilities such as vision, motor function and speech, and eventually expand how people experience the world.
Anyone in the United States who is at least 18 years old, able to consent and has certain physical disabilities, such as quadriplegia, paraplegia, vision loss, hearing loss, the inability to speak, and/or major limb amputation is invited to join the patient registry on its website.
“This is all experimental,” Dr. Salloum said. “So really, for anybody, you know, being able to be part of an experiment is really a contribution to science as well. … When you sign in for a study, you don’t know what the outcome is going to be, right? And people do studies hoping for the best, but also they don’t know the outcome. And so, in that sense, people are making a tremendous contribution to science.”
An estimated 5.4 million people live with paralysis in the U.S., according to the Administration for Community Living.
Dr. Salloum encourages people who are considering brain chip implantation to have a clear understanding of the risks, benefits and what to expect.
Cynthia Jones, a professor of philosophy and director of the Office for Advocacy and Violence Prevention, said ethical concerns have been raised by the announcement of Neuralink’s approval to do human trials.
“Just think of all the amazing thoughts of brilliant people like Stephen Hawking’s that we probably didn’t get to see as fully because his body did not function properly,” Jones said. “So the benefit is really significant … but dystopian novelists demonstrate quite clearly the worry about privacy issues. I mean, there’s a narrow chip in your head that is able to communicate your thoughts.”
She said her concern about the chip is that people’s private thoughts are not safe.
“It raises all sorts of interesting moral questions,” Jones said. “I would like to think that we have some measure of free will. … So, the worry is will technology ever be able to distinguish between us having a thought or an urge that our higher moral brain is able to overlook? As opposed to just spilling it out for all to see.”
Neuralink has conducted different testing on animals like sheep, pigs and monkeys.
Overall, the company has killed around 1,500 animals, according to a Dec. 6, 2022 report from Reuters.
“I know they have done lots of trials on these things,” Jones said. “So, one is assuming that they assess the risk on biological mechanisms, but we are far more complicated than animals.”
Pedro Fonseca, a computer science lecturer, said it’s important to understand that the brain controls people’s actions.
“I have worked a little with brain interfaces before,” Fonseca said. “What you are measuring is just electrical impulses that occur in your brain whenever you have a thought, feeling or whenever something happens. So what the chip is measuring are those electrical impulses, which can be interpreted or can be translated into an action or something that you are thinking or feeling.”
He said it’s important to take into consideration how the brain chip is going to change people’s daily lives.
“I think Elon Musk, of course, had his plans,” Fonseca said. “But in my opinion, I think that he’s not looking at all of the other implications like laws, politics, even religion, because at the end, all of those aspects are parts of the human lives. So, whenever we talk about these new technologies, I think that we need to bring to the table how all of the other aspects of our human life are going to interact with these new devices and innovations.”
Dr. Salloum said the technological advancement is “wonderful.”
“This tremendous effort to bring it to fruition and make it available is also remarkable,” he said. “We have, at the Institute of Neuroscience, scientists who are also helping people with spinal cord injury, chronic pain [and] people with psychiatric disorders. And so we’re very much, you know, attuned to these advances.”
