Thanks to the success of an initial safety trial for an implantable device that can translate the brain’s electrical impulses into readable signals, we’re a step closer to being able to text—or otherwise interface with our devices—using just our thoughts according to a Yahoo News report.
Best of all, this new brain-computer interface (BCI)—“brain modem,” if you will—doesn’t require a hole in your head. It does, however, require a hole in your chest. And that’s just one factor that could slow the development of the tech, to say nothing of complicating any future public rollout.
Brain modems are coming, whether they’ll be delivered by Elon Musk’s Neuralink company or some other group. But how fast they’ll be ready, how well they’ll work, and how many people will want them are all big open questions.
Late last month, New York-based biotech company Synchron announced the results of a trial of its two-piece brain modem in four people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS—a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the brain and spinal cord and can lead to paralysis. It was the first time the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved a BCI for clinical trials.
“It’s going to give millions of patients the potential to improve their ability to interact with their environment and therefore have a higher quality of life,” Jay Moko, a neurosurgeon and synchrony consultant, told The Daily Beast.
Examiners monitored four volunteers for a year, looking for any negative effects from the transplant. “There was no serious adverse event that resulted in disability or death,” the company declared. Synchron’s team published their results Journal of Neurointerventional Surgery,
According to Synchron, the implants just weren’t safe. He also worked – at least at the primary level. The devices “allowed participants to communicate by text and use computers to perform daily tasks such as online shopping and banking.” It may sound like science fiction, but the idea is pretty straightforward.
Our brains move around information through subtle electrical impulses. Our thoughts, in other words, are electricity. And they glow in recognizable patterns. Put a sensor in the brain, and it can read the pattern. Connect that sensor to a radio transmitter, and you can literally beam your thoughts to a compatible device like phones connected to a phone or your computer connected to WiFi.
