If you enjoy watching Sci-fi movies, then you must be fascinated by the concept of a world with self-driving cars, easy space travel, and most importantly, communication through brain signals. Well, through Elon Musk, we’re a few decades away from living in such a world.
Apart from electric cars, space exploration, computer tunnels, and electronics, Elon is interested in communication. His company, Nueralink, has recently released a video showing a monkey that is seemingly playing ‘Pong’ with its mind. The nine-year-old macaque is known as Pager and can play the game from a Neuralink device implanted in its brain.
The company is currently working on tiny chips that can communicate with computers through receivers. This technology has already been tested and proved to work on pigs.
The narrator in the video describes Pager, the macaque, by saying that it learned how to interact with the computer for a banana smoothie. The macaque can move an on-screen cursor with a joystick.
The two Neuralink devices transmit the brain through 2000 tiny electrodes implanted in the motor cortex., which controls movements. Neuralink feeds the information from the monkey’s brain to a decoder, which can then predict movements.
After some calibration, the narrator adds that the cursor can be programmed to move from Pager’s brain waves from the decoder. The joystick is then disconnected, and Pager moves the cursor with his brain.
According to the narrator, the main aim of this project is to allow people living with disabilities to operate computers and smartphones with their brains alone. The narrator also explains that people would be able to regulate their decoders by imagining hand movements.
Elon Musk said on Twitter that the first versions of the Neuralink devices would enable people with disabilities to use smartphones faster than people who have thumbs. He added that later versions would transmit signals from the Neuralink in the brain to a Neuralink in-body motor, which would allow people with paraplegia to walk again.