Hi, everyone, and welcome to one more 365
Data Science Special!
Neuralink, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company,
made headlines in July of 2019 when they announced
their brand-new product – a futuristic technology
that would allegedly allow humans to merge
with machines and become cyborgs.
Everything was fine though, as it would save
us from the otherwise imminent overtake of
an ultra-smart AI Overlord.
In this video, we’ll try to look beyond
the hype and hullabaloo of the presentation
and reveal some groundbreaking information
about Neuralink’s technology.
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Now, back to Neuralink – groundbreaking
or treading on familiar ground?
What exactly is Neuralink?
Basically, what Neuralink invented is a cognitive
implant, which will store information from
electrical signals in the brain and will use
that information to create impulses of its
own, thus helping us combat neurodegenerative
diseases, such as Parkinson’s, and paralyses.
Furthermore, it could enable amputees to use
and navigate prosthetics.
If you’ve seen the presentation, you probably
wonder: “Is this technology completely groundbreaking
or is it old news, just packaged in a shiny
paper of great advertising?”
Let’s find out together, as we delve into
what Neuralink does and the challenges it’s
currently facing.
And, as an extra bonus point, we’ll also
see an application of a machine learning technique
in the context of neuroscience, so stay tuned!
But first, let’s start by explaining the
essence of BMIs:
BMI stands for brain machine interface and
is a direct communication pathway between
an enhanced or wired brain and an external
device.
The Neuralink implants are a type of BMI,
comprised of threads that contain multiple
electrodes.
Once implanted in the brain, these electrodes
detect brain activity, and, more specifically
- neuron spikes.
Not everyone is familiar with neurons and
neuron spikes, so bear with us while we briefly
explain this.
Neurons are cells in the brain, which communicate
with each other via electrical impulses.
When a neuron fires an impulse, this means
it wants to say something to another neuron,
for instance: “Move your hand!” or “It’s
time to speak, buddy!”.
Basically, anything you want to do is controlled
by and goes through the neural network of
the brain.
So, when a neuron fires an electrical impulse,
that’s what scientists call a spike.
These spikes are extremely important because
they control the motor functions of the body.
In fact, the ability to move, speak, and see
are all controlled by the brain and the neurons.
Back to the Neuralink implants: Apart from
the implants in the brain, they’ll have
a connector, looking similar to a hearing
aid, which will store information about neuron
spikes.
On top of that, they’ll come with an interface
– a phone app, which will read this information
and input new commands for the BMIs.
You may have already seen something resembling
a BMI since similar implants are already being
produced by other companies and implanted
into patients.
The most recent advanced research in this
area has come from a Belgian company called
Imec.
Its product Neuropixels was made public in
October 2018 and is capable of gathering data
from thousands of separate brain cells.
Speaking of current FDA approved implants,
the ones available on the market contain around
100 electrodes on their chips, whereas the
Neuralink technology has about 1,500.
So, a factor of 15 more.
Now, during the event, Elon Musk did say that
their technology has an order of magnitude
1000 greater than what is currently on the
market.
This doesn’t exactly add up, because their
technology currently has 1536 electrodes.
(For the record, they had chips with 3076
electrodes at first.
However, they decided to scale back to optimize
safety, longevity, and bandwidth, as stated
by Max Hodak, president of Neuralink)
So, let’s say it was a heat-of-the-moment
thing which caused the Space-X inventor to
mix up his numbers.
We’re certainly not suggesting Elon Musk
is bad at math.
Another difference is that Neuralink implants
use flexible threads, which can be implanted
fully automatically with the help of robots.
This would allow a faster implantation process
and possibly the insertion of more implants.
Their aim is to read data in real-time and
write on the spikes, whereas current technologies
can only read neuron spikes.
So, what comes next for Neuralink?
At this stage, Neuralink devices have been
implanted in rats.
What Elon Musk promises, is that the interface
for the Neuralink technology will be completely
wireless.
We won’t go into all the issues associated
with such an implementation, but there are
quite a few.
We’ll just say, that, according to their
paper in rat testing, they used a wired connection
to maximize bandwidth for raw data streaming.
Who knows, maybe they already have the technology
to make the whole thing wireless but… we
haven’t seen it yet.
Currently, the company hopes to start human
trials by the end of 2020 and is waiting for
FDA approval.
Of course, there are some significant challenges
the company faces before they can enter the
human trial phase.
And the first problem is an algorithmic one.
Neuralink implants contain threads with an
amplifier at their end which is used to detect
neuron spikes.
Now, these threads are not actually connected
to a single neuron.
They are in the vicinity of several distinct
neurons.
So, here’s the problem: When one of these
neurons fires, how do we know which one exactly
the spike has come from?
Well, we don’t.
In fact, this is what’s called spike sorting-
finding the origin of a neuron spike.
So how do you solve this problem?
For the time being it’s too computationally
expensive to solve in real-time and lacks
accuracy.
So instead, scientists focus on a different
problem - spike detection- which can actually
be achieved in real-time.
But what are different methods of detection?
They range from more naïve approaches like
thresholding to more advanced techniques using
principal components analysis.
Neuralink does a real-time on chip detection
directly characterizing the shapes and thus
inferring general information about the shape.
Alright!
Now let’s discuss spike detection using
PCA!
Recent advancements in recovering the geometry
of low dimensional manifolds have inspired
the use of PCA reduction techniques in a neurological
context.
They suggest one can accurately estimate the
geometry of low-dimensional manifolds from
a small number of linear projections of the
data.
What methods like PCA, GPFA or LFADS typically
do is use linear combinations of presorted
information about individual neurons and try
to infer important information about the population
response.
This represents an ongoing problem.
And it’s one of the many the Neuralink technology
is yet to deal with.
Other problems raised in light of their presentation,
concern the durability of electrodes.
Why?
Because this technology needs to last long
once implanted, and since the implant is made
out of a plastic polymer, it could possibly
deteriorate due to the salt solution in the
brain.
Another concern is the appearance of glial
scarring after implantation.
If this is the case, the chip becomes useless
in a manner of weeks and as it stands, it
cannot currently be removed and fixed, once
implanted.
So, at the end of the day, Neuralink evaluated
what is currently on the BMI market and has
endeavored to make a more advanced product.
The process, of course, is surrounded by some
serious issues.
Still, this is an ambitious project, which
is greatly advertised by the company’s Rockstar
co-founder and we can’t wait to see how
it develops in the future!
That’s it!
We looked behind the curtain of what Neuralink
is and what we can realistically expect from
it in the future.
We hope you enjoyed watching this this video
as much as we enjoyed making it!
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Thanks for watching!
