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Neuralink

Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company founded by Neuralink Corporation

Elon Musk and others, developing implantable brain–machine
interfaces (BMIs). The company's headquarters is in San Francisco;[6]
it was started in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March
2017.[1][2]
Type Private
Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile
Industry Brain-computer
neuroscientists from various universities.[7] By July 2019, it had
interface
received $158 million in funding (of which $100 million was from
Neuroprosthetics
Musk) and was employing a staff of 90 employees.[8] At that time,
Neuralink announced that it was working on a "sewing machine-like" Founded July 2016[1]
device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width[9]) threads Founder Elon Musk[2][3]
into the brain, and demonstrated a system that read information from a
Headquarters Pioneer Building,
lab rat via 1,500 electrodes, they had anticipated starting experiments
San Francisco,
with humans in 2020;[8] but have since moved that projection to California, U.S. (as
2021.[10] of 2020)[4]

Some claims made by Musk in relation to the technology have been Key people Max Hodak
criticized by several neuroscientists and publications, including the (President)
MIT Technology Review.[11][12] Elon Musk (CEO)
Owner Elon Musk
Number of Around
Contents employees 100[5] (08/2020)

Overview Website neuralink.com (http

s://neuralink.com)
Members
Technology
Probes
Robot
Electronics
Reception
Criticism
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Overview
Neuralink was founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and eight partners;
Ben Rapoport, Dongjin Seo, Max Hodak, Paul Merolla, Philip Saps,
Tim Gardner, Tim Hanson and Vanessa Tolosa, a group of experts in
different areas. (see #Members)[6]

In April 2017, the blog Wait But Why reported that the company was
aiming to make devices to treat serious brain diseases in the short-
term, with the eventual goal of human enhancement, sometimes called The Pioneer Building in San
Francisco, housing the offices of
transhumanism.[13][6][14] Musk said his interest in the idea partly
Neuralink and OpenAI
stemmed from the science fiction concept of "neural lace" in the
fictional universe in The Culture, a series of 10 novels by Iain M.
Banks.[14][15]

Musk defined the neural lace as a "digital layer above the cortex" that would not necessarily imply extensive
surgical insertion but ideally an implant through a vein or artery.[16] Musk explained that the long-term goal is
to achieve "symbiosis with artificial intelligence",[17] which he perceives as an existential threat to humanity if
it goes unchecked.[17][18] As of 2017, some neuroprosthetics can interpret brain signals and allow disabled
people to control their prosthetic arms and legs. Musk spoke of aiming to link that technology with implants
that, instead of actuating movement, can interface at broadband speed with other types of external software
and gadgets.[18]

As of 2020, Neuralink is headquartered in San Francisco's Mission District, sharing the former Pioneer Trunk
Factory building with OpenAI, another company co-founded by Musk.[19][4] Musk was the majority owner of
Neuralink as of September 2018, but did not hold an executive position.[20] Jared Birchall was listed as CEO,
CFO and president of Neuralink in 2018; his role has been described as formal.[21][19] An August 2020 tweet
confirmed past reports that Musk is the current CEO.[22] The trademark "Neuralink" was purchased from its
previous owners in January 2017.[23]

Members
The company is made up of a group of experts in different areas such as neuroscience, biochemistry, robotics,
applied mathematics, machinery, among others. It is currently looking for experts in different scientific areas to
shape his team.[24]

Its founding members are:

Elon Musk.
Max Hodak, president of the company. He previously worked on the development of brain-
computer interfaces at Duke University.[25]
Matthew MacDougall, Head of Neurosurgery at Neuralink and neurosurgeon at California
Pacific Medical Center. He was previously working at Stanford where he worked in labs that
implemented and designed brain-computer interfaces.
Vanessa Tolosa, Director of Neural Interfaces. She previously led a neurotechnology team at
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that worked with a wide variety of technology on
technology prostheses that were used in clinical and academic settings.
DJ Seo, director of the Implantation System. He was the co-inventor of "neural dust" a
technology he developed while studying at UC Berkeley.
Philip Sabes, senior scientist. He was a professor of physiology at UC San Francisco and led a
lab that studied how the brain processed sensorial and motor signals.
Tim Gardner, professor of biology at Boston University, in which they have worked on the
implementation of brain-computer interfaces in birds.
 Ben Rapoport, neurosurgeon with a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from
MIT.
Tim Hanson, researcher at the Berkeley Sensor and Acuator Center.

By August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained at the company, according to an article
by Stat News which reported that Neuralink had seen "years of internal conflict in which rushed timelines
have clashed with the slow and incremental pace of science."[26]

Technology
By 2018, the company had "remained highly secretive about its work since its launch", although public
records showed that it had sought to open an animal testing facility in San Francisco; it subsequently started to
carry out research at the University of California, Davis.[19] In 2019, during a live presentation at the
California Academy of Sciences, the Neuralink team revealed to the public the technology of the first
prototype they had been working on. It is a system that involves ultra-thin probes that will be inserted into the
brain, a neurosurgical robot that will perform the operations and a high-density electronic system capable of
processing information from neurons.

Probes

The probes, composed mostly of polyamide, a biocompatible material, and coated in a thin gold thread, will be
inserted into the brain through an automated process performed by a surgical robot.

Each probe consists of an area of wires that contains electrodes capable of locating electrical signals in the
brain, and a sensory area where the wire interacts with an electronic system that allows amplification and
acquisition of the brain signal.

Each of the probes contains 48 or 96 wires, each of which contains 32 independent electrodes; achieving this
way a system of up to 3072 electrodes per formation.[9][27]

Robot

Studies involving the insertion of probes in the brain have shown that, due to their rigidity, the body recognizes
them as an unknown material and, consequently, generates tissue to get rid of them, which, in turn, long term,
makes them unusable.[28]

For this reason, Neuralink has developed a robot capable of inserting flexible probes, allowing the rapid
insertion of multiples of these to minimize trauma that can trigger a bounce reaction.[29][30]

This robot has an insertion head with a 40 μm diameter needle made of tungsten-rhenium designed to attach to
the insertion loops, made to transport and insert individual probes, and to penetrate the meninges and tissue
cerebral. The robot is capable of inserting up to six probes (192 electrodes) per minute.[29]

Electronics

Neuralink has developed an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to create a 1,536-channel

recording system.
This system consists of 256 amplifiers capable of being individually
programmed ("analog pixels"), analog-to-chip converters within the
chip ("ADCs") and a peripheral circuit control to serialize the
digitized information obtained.[29]

It aims to convert information obtained from neurons into an

understandable binary code in order to achieve greater understanding
of brain function and the ability to stimulate these neurons back.
Elon Musk discussing the Neuralink
Currently, electrodes are still too big to record the firing of individual
neurons, so they can record only the firing of a group of neurons;
Neuralink representatives believe this issue might get mitigated
algorithmically, but it's computationally expensive and does not produce exact results.[31]

In July 2020, according to Musk, Neuralink obtained a FDA breakthrough device designation which allows
limited human testing under the FDA guidelines for medical devices.[32][33]

Reception
Several neurology scientists have commented on the intention of Musk and members of Neuralink to build a
brain-computer interface.[34] The response from the scientific community has been mixed.

At a live demonstration in August 2020, Musk described one of their early devices as "a Fitbit in your skull"
which could soon cure paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities. Many neuroscientists and
publications criticized these claims.[11][12][35] For example, MIT Technology Review described them as
"highly speculative" and "neuroscience theater".[11]

Mary Lou Jepsen, founder of Openwater, a company that also works in the area of brain-computer interfaces,
with the goal of creating a telepathy system, has expressed concern about the rejection reactions that probes
can cause.

Thomas Oxley, MD, PhD, CEO of Synchron, an Australian company that is also developing a system to insert
brain probes via blood-vessel-borne catheters that avoid any direct penetration of brain tissue, and therefore do
not cause trauma, says no efficacy results from Neuralink are expected soon, as the technology is not advanced
enough to achieve this. However, he believes that because Musk is willing to invest large sums of money in
his company, it will be "exciting to see what he will develop."

Criticism
Neuralink tests their devices by surgically implanting them in the brains of live monkeys, pigs and other
animals.[36] These methods have been criticized by groups such as PETA.[37]

See also
Brain-computer interface
Cortical implant
Kernel (neurotech company)
Neurorobotics
Surface chemistry of neural implants
Stentrode
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Further reading
Neuralink; Musk, Elon (August 2, 2019). "An integrated brain-machine interface platform with
thousands of channels" (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/703801v4). bioRxiv.
doi:10.1101/703801 (https://doi.org/10.1101%2F703801). (whitepaper)
External links
Video recording (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vbh3t7WVI) of Neuralink's presentation
on July 16, 2019

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