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Neuroscientists Weigh In On Elon Musk's Mysterious 'Neural Lace' Company (ieee.org) 103

Posted by BeauHD from the healthy-dose-of-skepticism dept.
the_newsbeagle writes: Elon Musk has set out to change the world with SpaceX's reusable rockets and Tesla's electric cars, and now he plans to change your brain. His new company, Neuralink, will reportedly build delicate brain implants called "neural lace" to help people with neuropsychiatric disorders and to give healthy people strange new mental abilities. But the news announcements about the company contained scant details about what kind of hardware Neuralink might actually build, and what engineering challenges the company will have to overcome in pursuit of miniaturized and safe brain implants. Here, five neuroscience experts describe those challenges, and give hints on what to expect from Musk's neural dust. One of the neuroscientists is Mary Lou Jepsen, founder of the Openwater startup, which is looking for ways to develop a noninvasive BCI for imaging and telepathy. Jepsen was also "an engineering executive at Facebook working on its Oculus virtual reality gear; before that she spent three years at Google X, running advanced projects on display technology," reports IEEE Spectrum. She says that Neuralink will likely face many medical hurdles, even if their process doesn't require splitting open patients' skulls. "The approach as I understand it (not much is published) involves implanting silicon particles (so called "neural lace") into the bloodstream. One concern is that implanting anything in the body can cause unintended consequences," says Jepsen. "For example, even red blood cells can clog capillaries in the brain when the red blood cells are made more stiff by diseases like malaria. This clogging can reduce or even cut off the flow of oxygen to the parts of the brain. Indeed, clogging of cerebral capillaries has been shown to be a major cause of Alzheimer's progression. Back to neural lace: One concern I would have is whether the silicon particles could lead to any clogging."
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Neuroscientists Weigh In On Elon Musk's Mysterious 'Neural Lace' Company More

Neuroscientists Weigh In On Elon Musk's Mysterious 'Neural Lace' Company

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  • .....series Continuum, you need to. This crap's (story that is) is crazy stuff. It should be banned before it's too late for us. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Cereberal Network Variability (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @09:23PM (#54226347) Homepage

    The problem with any direct connection to the brain is variability with neurons networks, entirely unique. Whilst broad cerebral manipulations are certainly doable, fine work is not, think waking and sleeping, happiness and sadness, really broad and dangerous brush strokes because you have no real idea the consequences on fine neuron networking detail. Then there is the extreme danger of hacking, whether corporate or government or just the idiot kid down the street with the wrong software. Even something as relatively safe as a sleep inducer can become very dangerous when triggered at the wrong times ie driving a car.

    Easier to tap nerve bundles than the actual brain ie eyes, ears, spinal cord and they are also quite dangerous ie stimulation of data input versus extremes of pain stimulation.

    For actual brain input, it would really have to be grown and the user and the system aligned, think useful brain tumour, with the tumour creating the communications links but the tumour also the idea representing the real risk involved.

    The biggest problems are; Would the government hack it if they could, yes. Would Corporation hack it if they could, yes. Would individuals hack it if they could, yes. The temptation to hack if for total control, is far to great for it to be done, apart from very limited medical actions, sleeping being the obvious target for simple manipulation and a real warning about the risk ie putting someone to sleep when they are driving a car.

    • The problem with any direct connection to the brain is variability with neurons networks, entirely unique.

      Actually, this is far less of a problem than you think it is. We've already created BCIs that allows basic actions to be made like manipulating a robotic arm without hooking to the circuitry for arms. How did we manage such a thing, well, the person with the BCI implant learned how to do it through practice. There are regions that typical brains have in common and if we tap into those parts, we can learn to truly interface minds with machines.

      It's not easy feat and there is a lot of work to be done and b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bongey ( 974911 )

        The brain can use different parts of the brain for new tasks. Echo location studies using MRI in blind humans the part of brain usually devoted to sight,end up processing sound for echo location. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        Crazy the blind guy can ride a bike without issue and is crazy accurate for what you would expect.

    • Re:Cereberal Network Variability (Score:4, Interesting)

      by interkin3tic ( 1469267 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @11:23PM (#54226715)
      Not "entirely unique" in all areas. Variability is a concern, however it's not like each brain's layout is completely scrambled from one to another. Deep brain stimulation [wikipedia.org] has been around for a while and is showing promise based on targeting the right areas.

      There's also nothing that says that this thing would need to be hardwired up in a certain way and if two were inverted, fuck it, it's gone. I assume there would be a training period in which the software (like electronic software) would learn what was hooked up to what.

      For that matter, there's plenty of training and learning on the wetware side that could work.

      Without real technical details, it's hard to say "This can't possibly work because of X thing that is already known." On top of that, Elon Musk is not known for proposing things that are going to run headfirst into problems one could identify just from a wiki page. I'd assume it's technically feasible.

      Then there is the extreme danger of hacking, whether corporate or government or just the idiot kid down the street with the wrong software.

      Really? You're going to poo-poo an awesome technology (again, assuming Musk hasn't just totally gone bonkers) based on "brain hacking?" After just saying "we really can't know where stuff will connect with the brain?" Some idiot kid down the street is going to know the wiring of your brain and the backdoors into it better than any neuroscientist does? Because neuroscientists don't know that level of detail. This won't be life-and-death stuff like breathing: your body does that on it's own.

      If it had the potential to do something like "press here to cause a seizure," then Musk is going to have a hard time getting that to market or past his lawyers. He can't even get his car sold in some states, he's not going to railroad this thing despite obvious safety concerns. Again, he's not an idiot. If there were any chance of someone putting someone else to sleep with it, one would assume he would put that into the "Neat but stupid" idea pile.

      Speaking of, I'm sure there are some fascinating but fatally flawed ideas that have come from Musk's team. They should publish a book of them.

    • Re:Cereberal Network Variability (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pz ( 113803 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:48AM (#54226985) Journal

      Uh, no. If what you asserted were the case, then things like cortical visual prostheses would not be a possibility. I suggest you look them up. While they are still under development, they most certainly do intend on creating fine-grained control over neural activity. Same for cortical somatosensory prostheses. On the flip side, we can definitely read-out fine-grained information about neural activity, such as is used for motor system prostheses, ranging from limb prostheses to vocal chord prostheses.

      On both the read-out (decoding) side, and the driving (encoding) side, we have the ability to receive and transmit information on an individual basis. Yes, there is a lot of variability, but that is part and parcel of the challenge. Just as individual variation in foot size and shape does not preclude the creation of shoes because there is an underlying structure, so individual variation in brain morphology and wiring is unlikely to preclude creation of brain/machine interfaces because again there is an underlying structure.

      Any time you hear someone say it is impossible to do something, it's likely they are just not thinking in advanced enough terms to overcome whatever barrier they perceive. I myself am guilty of such mistaken proclamations.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        "On both the read-out (decoding) side, and the driving (encoding) side, we have the ability to receive and transmit"

        Receiving and transmitting DATA is one thing, turning it into *information* thats useful to the implant and the brain is another entirely. We've been able to measure neural activity for decades but we've barely begun to understand what 99% of it means from the patients subjective point of view so don't pretend this is nothing more than an I/O problem - it goes WAY beyond that.

    • Re:Cereberal Network Variability (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kiuas ( 1084567 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:17AM (#54227023)

      Easier to tap nerve bundles than the actual brain

      You're right, but there are many conditions for which the brain is the problem. I've have cerebral palsy (more specifically spastic diplegia [wikipedia.org]) as a result of a brain injury caused by oxygen loss during a premature birth. Through various surgeries addressing orthopedic and muscular issues I've reached a point wherein I can now even stand still without any external support. Walking is possible with canes or as little support as one finger to hold onto with both of my hands. The core of the issue is that the part of the motor cortex that processes incoming information from the balance organs and muscles about the posture of the body is partially dead, so the brain is unable to regulate balance accordingly. Outside stem cells or other such theoretical ways of regenerating nerve tissue, implants are the only thing that may one day solve this.

      The biggest problems are; Would the government hack it if they could, yes. Would Corporation hack it if they could, yes.

      A hypothetical implant for something like my case of CP would be just a chip that sits on top of the brain and does the calculations that the dead part of the cortex would normally do. It doesn't have to be connected to the external world, and should I ever get to see a day where such an implant is a reality, I certainly would not accept one that was. I'm 26 now and realistically speaking I don't expect to see this tech becoming widespread during my lifetime, nor will I volunteer as a test subject because I've reached a point wherein I can live by myself, work and drive a vehicle, so my quality of life is pretty much as close to normal as is currently feasible for people with CP, thanks in large part to the medical expertise of the university of Helsinki hospital, so my disability does not bother me nearly enough for me to desire to try experimental high risk treatments. But having seen the already very promising results that for example deep brain stimulation has had for people with Parkinson's etc I do think this kind of solution is far more feasible after some more decades of advances than most people currently think.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rande ( 255599 )

      Yes, start smaller, with more defined outcomes by tapping the nerves on the less important things like toes that aren't going to ruin a persons life if it screws up.
      Once that's going really well, one can move up the body, and yes, eventually the eyes and the brain.

    • I wonder what became of Tan Le and her Emotiv company's neural interface, featured several years back on one of those godawful corporate TED talks? According to the depiction of it, it seemed to be very advanced (assuming it was a truthful depiction, of course!).

  • Security and Robustness (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @09:39PM (#54226411)
    I don't think anyone, well maybe aviation software developers, are capable of programming such devices. It must be efficient, secure, fault tolerant... the list goes on. By contrast, today commercial software is expected to fail and security updates are routine that nobody minds. This would be disastrous when applied to such tech. Just imagine someone figuring out how to crash your visual cortex, inducing seizures and such.

    • I guess you haven't heard of the problems with the F35. Not to mention all the avionics bugs that are quietly fixed in commercial airliners without knowledge of them ever getting out to the wider public. There's a good reason Airbus uses 3 seperate master computers with software written by 3 seperate teams.

  • Neural Lace (Score:4, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @09:56PM (#54226467) Journal

    I'm more of a neural leather guy.

  • "Neural lace" is a term invented by Iain M. Banks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @10:39PM (#54226579)

    He was the author of "The Culture" series of sci-fi novels. Which is *easily* the greatest science-fiction series ever written. It's everything you ever wanted from sci-fi. If you haven't read them, do so immediately.

    Start with "The Player of Games", or even better, "Use of Weapons" if you are an "andvanced" reader.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Boronx ( 228853 )

      His ideas are neat, but his style is plodding.

    • There are plenty of other good writers, e.g.:
       

      1. Alison Reynolds
      2. Charles Stross
      3. Ken MacLeod

      I'm bad with names, so I would need to check my bookshelf to find more.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gigne ( 990887 )

        Alison Reynold writes great kids books. My daughter loves them.
        She's not really much into Alistair Reynolds, I guess hard Sci-fi is a but too advanced yet. I love it though. I especially like Revelation Space.

  • Clean energy is so important and so impossible to compete in and succeed in, 100% of the company's resources should be dedicated to it. Instead they want to go to space which is one giant money sink. Now there's this nonsense. There's only so much investor money available. This is dangerously stupid. Don't even get my started on the Hyperloop or as I like to call it, Dook Nukem Forever-loop.

  • Change the default password is one of the oldest pieces of advice for security with new computing devices.

    We've see the importance of this advice underlined with IoT devices such as CCTV being added to BotNets.

    Today we see this advice is relevant Digital Assistants, with TV advert using the activation phrase to trigger Goggle Home.

    Today we also learn that Elon Musk is developing Neural Laces, digital to neural interface.

    We need to see security designed into these from the bottom up.

  • Are any of them more than just venture-capital-millionaire-wannabes?

  • Scary Stuff (Score:3)

    by Jim Sadler ( 3430529 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @06:10AM (#54227465)
    Such a technology could be applied without consent in many cases. For example convicts might be implanted in such a way that they could no longer commit crimes. Some of the mentally ill would fight like crazy any attempt to actually cure their mental illness. For some of these folks the illness and the person are the same thing. Remove the illness and their universe would simply cease to exists. For example a person with paranoia may feel that he is such a mess in life as that mysterious enemy has forced him into doing things. Blast that fantasy away and he will be forced to admit he is the one that failed, did wrong etc.. That could leave a man with no paranoia but an overwhelming urge to commit suicide. Changing people might have terrible consequences. A priest once told me that when dealing with some nasty, angry and bitter old folks that one had to be careful not to take away that bitterness as sometimes it was all that person had.

    • A priest once told me that when dealing with some nasty, angry and bitter old folks that one had to be careful not to take away that bitterness as sometimes it was all that person had.

      Or he could stop enabling pieces of shit to continue being pieces of shit, though I realize that is what religion is for.

      • I think he had the wrong perspective. The elderly tend to get 'cranky' for three reasons:

        One, there's a portion of the brain governing impulse control that actually atrophies with age.

        Two, their world has often shrunk drastically as their mobility is impaired, friends have died off, and younger family is busy and can't visit constantly. They're left with much less to think about, so little things become disproportionately important to them.

        Three, they're often losing control and independence, and sometime

        • Yikes... my wife gets disturbed when I talk about it, but if/when I get to such a decrepit state I intend to go on a long walk in the wilderness in January.

  • Sigh. (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    Call me back when they do the first human clinical trial.

    That'll be... what? 20-30 years from now?

    At that point, they might be able to prove they can safely do things, and then they can get started on what they actually want to fix.

    • We already have human clinical trials for stuff like this since years.

      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=brain+imp... [lmgtfy.com] about 600k hits ...

  • LIkely to be safer than oral/inhaled/absorb drugs. (Score:3)

    by BlueCoder ( 223005 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @12:32PM (#54229393)

    Imagine if you could artificial control your own mood without taking drugs. You could fall asleep when you want to and wake up quickly at a certain time. You could be happy, social, and less anxious when you want. You could turn on or off sexual desire. You could have the mental focus of a robot and feel bored. How about turning off pain in whole or selectively. Turn off anxiety and fear. These and a million other uses are guaranteed. How much would any of those be worth if you could control them? It's a guaranteed future for he that invests.

    And we haven't even gotten to the point of discussing illegal wire-heads and simply do it to get a better drug free high.

    • It'd take some failsafes to make it work, or else people are just going to hit the orgasm button until they starve. For anyone mildly susceptible to addiction, I'd expect, anyhow.

    • It's a guaranteed future for he that invests.

      Investment isn't enough. Lots of people invest in ideas that go nowhere until their investments are worthless. To win big, you have to invest at the right time with the right people.

  • I think Uncle Elon is on a pirate ship, walking out on a plank on this one.. Not too long ago there was a device that was inserted into the veins of a person and supposedly filtered out blood clots. Well the device detached itself and lodged itself in other places. Lawsuits started circulating in commercials against the device. I think he should have a "Wait and see." approach on this one.

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