Watch A Monkey Play Video Games With Its Mind Using Elon Musk’s Neuralink
Back in early February, Elon Musk announced that his Neuralink project had successfully enabled a monkey to play video games with its mind. Following up on this claim, the company has now released a video of a 9-year-old macaque named Pager using a fully wireless brain-machine interface (BMI) to play the classic game Pong.As the video’s narrator explains, the Neuralink device was first implanted into Pager’s brain some six weeks before the footage was shot. Initially, the monkey was trained to control a cursor on a screen by manually moving a joystick for a tasty reward, while the implant recorded his brain activity.
Consisting of 1,024 electrodes, the device monitored spikes in electrical impulses generated by neurons within Pager’s motor cortex, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for planning and executing movements. More specifically, the Neuralink was wired up to the hand and arm regions of the animal’s motor cortex, allowing it to create a detailed picture of the activity patterns associated with the movement of the joystick.Decoding this neural activity using specialized algorithms, the device ultimately learned to predict the direction and speed of Pager’s upcoming or intended hand movements. When the joystick was unplugged, Neuralink continued to track the monkey’s neural activity, wirelessly transmitting this data to a decoding system that produced the corresponding movements on the screen.Ultimately, Pager was able to play Pong using only his mind, and proved to be remarkably good at the classic game.The release of this video coincides with some disturbing news reports regarding the treatment of animals at certain product testing facilities, and will undoubtedly lead to discussions about the ethics of conducting experiments like this on monkeys. Previously, Neuralink has placed implants into the brains of rodents and pigs, though Musk insists that the animals are treated as humanely as possible.
In a Clubhouse meeting earlier this year, he explained that Pager “looks totally happy” and is “not uncomfortable”. He went on to claim that “When the [United States Department of Agriculture] person came through and inspected our monkey facilities, she said it was the nicest monkey facilities she’s ever seen in her entire career.”In a blog post, Neuralink explained that the implant is ultimately intended for use on humans. “Our first goal is to give people with paralysis their digital freedom back: to communicate more easily via text, to follow their curiosity on the web, to express their creativity through photography and art, and, yes, to play video games,” it stated.“After that, we intend to use the Link to help improve the lives of those with neurological disorders and disabilities in other ways. For example, for people with paralysis the Link could also potentially be used to restore physical mobility.”“To achieve this, we'd use the Link to read signals in the brain and use them to stimulate nerves and muscles in the body, thereby allowing the person to once again control their own limbs.”
How To Control Someone Else's Arm Using Your Brain
The brain is a complex wonder of the human body. I mean, it pretty much named itself. And it’s a great shame that relatively little is known about the brain.Greg Gage is a man on a mission to make neuroscience more accessible to all students—at all educational levels. “We still know very little about how the brain works,” said Gage onstage at a TED2012 talk, “and we need to start inspiring kids early to want to know more.”Speaking at a recent TEDTalk in Vancouver, neuroscientist and engineer Greg Gage demonstrated a modified SpikerBox—a non-invasive device simple enough for high school and elementary kids to use to learn about the electrical impulses of the nervous system. The SpikerBox was the first of many DIY products he has developed with Backyard Brains, which aims to entertain and engage kids in learning about the brain’s capacities and hopefully to stimulate an interest in neuroscience.
"The brain is an amazing and complex organ, and while many people are fascinated by the brain, they can't really tell you that much about the properties about how the brain works,” Gage told the TEDTalk audience, ”because we don't teach neurosciences in schools.”The device requires two (willing) volunteers to be connected merely by electrodes and a computer system, which detects electrical signals of movement, creating a human-to-human interface. Losing free will, one volunteer has his arm jerked towards him by the connections sent from the other volunteer’s brain as she moves her arm.As the nerves are close to the skin, the entire process is non-invasive and as such, the device is perfectly safe for kids to use and only requires self-adhesive conductive sticky pads affixed to the arms to work. Sure, it’s a creepy step towards total mind-control of another person. But it’s also a fun way for anyone to learn about the power of the human mind.
