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I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

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Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#51

Post by nabla9 »

vansul wrote: post #31

To me (neuro undergrad, comp sci masters), the demo seemed underwhelming but encouraging. As far as I can tell the tech was not doing anything particularly novel and the 'fitbit in your skull' analogy was personally uninspiring. [edit: the volume of reads /form factor is a step forward] That said, the demo was mostly for attracting talent - lots of money and a great team will likely get them somewhere. In terms of th…

I have problem with the two different narratives.

Neuralink has two goals:

1) short term. better BMIs to to treat serious brain diseases with more bandwidth and more and better electrodes. I can see this happening.

2) long term. Invasive BMI for something other than treating diseases. Better electronics is not going to make invasive brain implants safe for consumer use, they just reduce certain risks.

To solve (2) Neuralink must solve fundamental issues in medicine related to body implants and brain surgery. It would be groundbreaking and probably revolutionize medicine even outside brain implants. Neuralink researchers might get Nobel in Medicine.

Breakthrough in brain surgery. To get FDA to approve brain surgery (making holes in the dura mater) even brain surgery to open and close the brain for no good medical reason would be insanely hard. Any form of brain surgery has lots of risks. Bleeding in the brain, seizure, scarring of the brain, immediate infection risk and late infection risk. Inserting lace with thousands of electrodes is huge operation even if you could do with with endoscope.

Breakthrough with implants. With the BMI ther are issues with coagulation and constant low level inflammation. It's both health risk and gradually degrades the effectiveness of electrodes. Electrode must be in contact with tissue and interact with it. There is risks even with teeth implants, artificial knees and hips. They collect bacteria around them and they are just inert objects.

Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#52

Post by SiempreViernes »

Prof Andrew Jackson, Professor of Neural Interfaces, Newcastle University, said:

> “Neuralink are progressing through the steps that have been taken with previous neural interface technology. They have moved from rodents to a large mammal (pigs), and are apparently seeking FDA approval for a human trial. I had some sympathy with Elon, having also had experience of animal experiments that don’t work perfectly the day we have visitors in the room! But proving the safety of new biomedical implants in animals is always a vital step towards a clinical trial.

> “I don’t think there was anything revolutionary in the presentation, but they are working through the engineering challenges of placing multiple electrodes into the brain. In terms of their technology, 1024 channels is not that impressive these days, but the electronics to relay them wirelessly is state-of-the-art, and the robotic implantation is nice.

> “But the biggest challenge is what you do with all this brain data. The demonstrations were actually quite underwhelming in this regard, and didn’t show anything that hasn’t been done before (e.g. decoding limb position during walking). There is a big difference between recording brain cells and ‘reading thoughts’, especially when it comes to higher-level cognitive functions that we don’t understand as well. The idea of ‘writing to the brain’ is even more questionable – there are fundamental limitations to targeting specific networks of neurons in a meaningful way using electrical stimulation.

> “So in summary I would say this is solid engineering but mediocre neuroscience. Finally, I think it is unfortunate that they are presenting their work in this way, rather than publishing peer-reviewed papers that would allow their claims to be scrutinised, but I guess this is something that we will have to get used to as neural interfaces move from the academic to the commercial sector.”

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-elon-m...

Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#53

Post by genidoi »

sidlls wrote: post #44
genidoi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...by governments motivated to have launchable nuclear weapons, not by private citizens creating profitable companies through venture capital. Reusable rockets put his companies work way ahead of government rocketry capabilities.

What do you think Musk’s company relied on for their space program? The novel aspects of that company are a tiny blip on all the government-funded research incorporated into its launch and vehicle systems. Saying a private company put that vehicle in space is technically true but also at the same time highly misleading.

By the same logic no internet company has ever done anything more than a tiny blip of work compared to the accumulated effort of millions of scientists spanning many years that lead to mass produced GHz microprocessors.

Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#55

Post by yholio »

Neuralink is not a startup, it is a research lab dabbling in a very speculative area. Something might come out of it in the very long run, or it might not. The demo showed essentially a tool they are using in this research, a miniaturized brain implant which is technologically superior to what competing researchers are using. They showed an application of that research tool, a recorded session (not included in the actual demo, probably hard to reproduce) where they claim to have "predicted" the movements of a pig. "Predicted" is probably a strong word since the brain controls motor functions.

So they showed progress and proved they are actually a lab and actually perform research. That being said, there was absolutely nothing in the demo remotely related to a "brain-computer" interface, nor are they likely to get there for many, many years. That's the speed when doing hard science, and pumping more money only has a marginal efect.

Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#56

Post by me_me_me »

moontear wrote: post #11

I am not an expert, but what I thought was remarkable is the 12000 channels Musk talked about. New cochlear implants have 120 channels - one channel is one neuron (AFAIK) - more neurons is better results. I would love some expert take on this, but my first reaction was „12000 sounds like a lot - they all work? That’s cool“. Also check out this wait but why article which I think explains the resolution pretty well: ht…

a honey bee has roughly 960,000 neurons.

To do bee stuff.

It just show a scale off human brain. And while its brain size is not equivalent to the intelligence/capabilities, pluggin into our brain is going to be a bit more complicated than 12000 wires.

Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#57

Post by rini17 »

nabla9 wrote: post #51
vansul wrote: post #31

To me (neuro undergrad, comp sci masters), the demo seemed underwhelming but encouraging. As far as I can tell the tech was not doing anything particularly novel and the 'fitbit in your skull' analogy was personally uninspiring. [edit: the volume of reads /form factor is a step forward] That said, the demo was mostly for attracting talent - lots of money and a great team will likely get them somewhere. In terms of th…

I have problem with the two different narratives. Neuralink has two goals: 1) short term. better BMIs to to treat serious brain diseases with more bandwidth and more and better electrodes. I can see this happening. 2) long term. Invasive BMI for something other than treating diseases. Better electronics is not going to make invasive brain implants safe for consumer use, they just reduce certain risks. To solve (2) Ne…

Cochlear implants are established technology, and they also interface with nerves, just not with brain matter. Is this really so much harder?

Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#58

Post by drcongo »

visarga wrote: post #34
CPLX wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. He also launches supposedly self-driving passenger cars into concrete barriers. It’s the latter that’s causing some concern I’d think.

> He also launches supposedly self-driving passenger cars into concrete barriers. Planes used to fall a lot in the beginning, computer hardware was once finicky and unreliable, even rockets used to blow up before they got it right. Takes time, and sometimes it takes early adopters trust to get to safety.

How many public deaths is an acceptable number? What about those dead who, rather than being "early adopters", just happened to be in the way of one - is there a line in the sand where we say "OK, we've sacrificed enough humans now, let's try something else"?

Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#59

Post by vansul »

frisco wrote: post #50
vansul wrote: post #31

To me (neuro undergrad, comp sci masters), the demo seemed underwhelming but encouraging. As far as I can tell the tech was not doing anything particularly novel and the 'fitbit in your skull' analogy was personally uninspiring. [edit: the volume of reads /form factor is a step forward] That said, the demo was mostly for attracting talent - lots of money and a great team will likely get them somewhere. In terms of th…

> the tech was not doing anything particularly novel Where are all these people apparently doing long term, low latency wireless 1024 channel ephys with stim capability?

Apologies I spoke too soon, you're absolutely right that the volume is an impressive achievement.

Re: I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

#60

Post by hprotagonist »

moontear wrote: post #11

I am not an expert, but what I thought was remarkable is the 12000 channels Musk talked about. New cochlear implants have 120 channels - one channel is one neuron (AFAIK) - more neurons is better results. I would love some expert take on this, but my first reaction was „12000 sounds like a lot - they all work? That’s cool“. Also check out this wait but why article which I think explains the resolution pretty well: ht…

and of those 120, about 18-24 actually wind up being useful on average.

Also, CIs are not brain implants.

In 2016 I got the chance to do a few month’s work on some cortical recodings in mice with a 512-electrode patch, and when i left the lab was complaining about how to modernize up to 1024 while still keeping their calcium imaging working well.

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