Monkey MindPong
neuralink.com
Monkey MindPong
1–10 of 291 posts
Re: Monkey MindPong
#2I don't understand how you can gather such a targeted signal by sticking wires in just a few places.
Like, you can't just tape a metal coat hanger to an iPhone and start getting text messages through it.
But somehow you can put some wires just as few mm into the surface of a brain and extract fine motor signals??
Re: Monkey MindPong
#3>>> Our first goal is to give people with paralysis their digital freedom back
PKD's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" notwithstanding, "Consumer Neurotech" feels like one of those categories that even the most visionary of sci-fi writers failed to build into all aspects of human existence in the future ;)
Re: Monkey MindPong
#4I don't understand how you can gather such a targeted signal by sticking wires in just a few places. Like, you can't just tape a metal coat hanger to an iPhone and start getting text messages through it. But somehow you can put some wires just as few mm into the surface of a brain and extract fine motor signals??
The location of the electrodes aren't arbitrary. The region of implantation is likely the hand-motor cortex (which has thickness on the order of mm), the area associated with arm movements (check out somatotopy), so the signals acquired are actually targeted for the demo task. This relationship has been known in neuroscience for almost a century and has been validated in decades of brain-machine interface experiments.
They are also recording from up to 1000 channels, which is probably overkill for mind pong, tbh. But you'll need that many implanted electrodes to study long term electrode biocompatibility.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#5Really amazing demo. The moment that they just unplug the controller is impressive.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#6[deleted]
Re: Monkey MindPong
#7I don't understand how you can gather such a targeted signal by sticking wires in just a few places. Like, you can't just tape a metal coat hanger to an iPhone and start getting text messages through it. But somehow you can put some wires just as few mm into the surface of a brain and extract fine motor signals??
The location of the electrodes aren't arbitrary. The region of implantation is likely the hand-motor cortex (which has thickness on the order of mm), the area associated with arm movements (check out somatotopy), so the signals acquired are actually targeted for the demo task. This relationship has been known in neuroscience for almost a century and has been validated in decades of brain-machine interface experiments…
Even outside of primary motor/somatosensory areas, 2D cursor control is a pretty standard BMI paradigm.
Not exactly “Hello, World” but maybe “ToDo List App”.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#8I don't understand how you can gather such a targeted signal by sticking wires in just a few places. Like, you can't just tape a metal coat hanger to an iPhone and start getting text messages through it. But somehow you can put some wires just as few mm into the surface of a brain and extract fine motor signals??
The most interesting thing here is not the mind reading, it is the miniaturization of computing and sparse data transfer. Neuralink off-loaded the computation to the sensor, sending back aggregate data snapshots. Usually you will need massive ASIC/FPGA computation banks with a lot of messy to handle the data transfer and readout but they took a shortcut bye sending only counts of spikes that exceeds a certain threshold.
There is nothing stopping you from using a cloth hangar. You just need to make sure it is impedance matched and properly sanitized for subdermal use. The signal will be much worse as a cloth hangar had gauge/diameter that is several magnitudes bigger than that of a neuron. Nothing here is particularly "novel" that it cannot be trivially replicated if you have the budget of one of the FAANGs. If you have 100million in capital, you can easily find poor neuroscience and EE PhDs who will be willing to work for you for <80K a year just for the opportunity to build something like this. The reason it is difficult and out of reach for smaller companies is because small amplifiers and electronic packages that can be subdermally implanted requires significant manufacturing capital as they fall under semiconductors and biomedical devices. Once the industry settle on a design expect the price to drop dramatically as the core chips and parts become commoditized.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#9I don't understand how you can gather such a targeted signal by sticking wires in just a few places. Like, you can't just tape a metal coat hanger to an iPhone and start getting text messages through it. But somehow you can put some wires just as few mm into the surface of a brain and extract fine motor signals??
MI5 were lifting crypto keys based on keypress acoustics in the 50s, I wouldn't be so certain. If you put the phone up an expensive enough tool you can at very least find side channels
Re: Monkey MindPong
#10It looked like the dexterity of the mind was quicker than the dexterity of the hand.