Neuralink, the mysterious one start neuroscience co-founded by Elon Musk, it is even quieter than usual these days. That is, until this week when it was released a YouTube video of a monkey who appears to be playing the classic video game Pong with his mind.
The video stars Pager, a 9-year-old macaque who had a Neuralink implanted in his brain about six weeks earlier, the narrator said. And apparently he likes Pong
However, before he learned how to play the game with his mind, researchers first conditioned him to use a joystick and reward him with “a tasty banana smoothie” through a straw every time he lit a cursor on the screen at certain points. squares moved. a grid.
As he operated the joystick and gleefully slurped his smoothie, the Neuralink devices in his brain recorded his brain activity, implanting more than 2,000 electrodes in the area of Pager’s motor cortex that controls hand and arm movements. Researchers were also able to communicate with the devices in real time by pairing their phones via Bluetooth.
That Neuralink data was then fed into a “decoder algorithm” to train it to predict Pager’s intended hand movements in real time based on which neurons were triggered. After a short calibration period, the decoder understood the Pager’s neural patterns well enough that the joystick was no longer needed. The narrator says that even if the connection is lost, Pager will continue to move the cursor using only his ghost. He then turns out to be playing a game MindPong without a joystick in sight.
G / O Media can receive a commission
“A monkey literally plays a video game telepathically using a brain chip !!” Musk said inside a tweet sharing the video Thursday.
Since then, more than four million people have watched it and it is currently in the top 10 trending videos on YouTube. If you’re interested, Neuralink shared this too a video show what the raw data behind Pager’s neural activity looks like while he is playing.
Musk went on to discuss future plans for Neuralink’s devices a series of tweets, echoing the video’s narrator that the ultimate goal of this technology is to enable people with paralysis to control their computers or phones from their heads.
Early versions of the device “will allow someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind more quickly than someone using thumbs,” Musk wrote. “Later versions will be able to redirect signals from Neuralinks in the brain to Neuralinks in motor / sensory neuron clusters of the body, allowing paraplegics, for example, to walk again.”
However, in August, Neuralink showed a live demo of the Neuralink implant in action on pigs instead of monkeys.
“It’s like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires,” Musk said at the time.
Musk has a proproposed a myriad of science fiction-like applications Neuralink’s research since the company’s launch in 2017. They have ranged from more practical examples, such as treating brain conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and depression and the aforementioned mobility aid for paralyzed people, to the fantastic, namely stimulating our puny human brain functions so we can happily co-exist with our ultimate AI overlords.
Before that can happen, however, Neuralink will have to jump through a series of regulatory hoops if it ever wants the chance to become a medical device approved for human use. In July, Musk announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released Neuralink a “Groundbreaking Device”, a status that should speed up the federal review process. As much as possible, at least given the icy pace of the government for things like this. It may be years or even decades before we see any significant legal progress.
In the meantime, Neuralink Pager may be able to learn to play a few more games with his mind. I think they are missing a huge opportunity if the next one isn’t something from the Donkey Kong series. Or even better: The escape of primates