eurolink is elon musk's latest company and in this video i'm going to be discussing neuralink's plans to implant devices into human brains as soon as 2022 and i'll be talking about the pros and cons of their device in the form of major advancements neurolink has made in the field of brain computer interface technology as well as the cons in the form of some major issues that neuralink will face in the future including some things that almost no one else is talking about especially here on youtube just to be clear some of the technologies that i'll
be discussing in this video do not yet exist so parts of this video will be mainly theoretical just to stimulate an interesting discussion neurolink did not invent bcis this technology has been around for decades and has been used since 1997 to treat tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of patients with brain illnesses including parkinson's disease this is a movement disorder so a device is surgically placed deep inside the brain usually in the thalamus part to help stimulate the motor cortex to allow these patients to move more freely and smoothly and has been used
to great success eurolink have developed their own device called the link and plan to commence human trials as soon as 2022 the initial application is to treat patients with severe spinal cord injury to allow these patients to control a virtual mouse for example and even sync up to the neural link up later as these patients get better at doing this and as ai algorithms improve they can move on to control things like game controllers or keyboards or even control artificial limbs to allow these patients to walk again so we may well be facing a feature
of cyborgs although in our way most of us are already cyborgs in that we heavily rely on our smartphones the link device has over a thousand electrodes which allow a computer to measure parts of the brain activity as well as stimulate these parts of the brain this is surgically placed inside the skull through a very small hole and they do this using a robot to thread individual threads into the brain to avoid blood vessels this is very advanced technology and is similar to the vinci machine that is a surgical robot that is used in many
different surgeries today and neurolink has developed their own robot to allow this to be done accurately neurolink plan to eliminate the need for general anesthesia in the future to make this procedure much safer they plan to initially target medical devices only which is great from a business perspective to prove the model that it works so that people in the future may consider using it for other purposes let's look at the advantages of the neuralink device the first is they've made some major advancements in material science technology they needed to do this because the threads that
they use need to be very flexible so that they don't damage the surrounding brain tissue and they've done this by developing threads that are made out of thin film metals and polymers and are a similar size to neurons at 4-100 microns they also need to be long-lasting and withstand corrosion from fluid so they have developed a new micro fabrication process including the integration of corrosion resistant adhesion-based threads and rough electrode materials to increase the surface area to have a stronger signal without increasing the size they've also developed that neurosurgery robot that i mentioned earlier and
this was developed at california university and the link has already been used on 19 animals including a peak in 2020 and a monkey in 2021 the monkey was able to play pong using just his thoughts alone after calibrating it with a joystick but they did unplug this joystick and it's a super interesting video to watch hopefully i'll be able to find that video so you guys can have some footage here so neuralink has already made some huge strides in this field of neuroscience and are hugely pushing forward the technology and the brain computer interface world
so it's super fascinating to see how far they've come but they are going to face some major issues which i'll discuss now neuralink plans that initially target patients with spinal cord injuries but they do plan to implant these devices and to help human brains in the future for many different applications so for example a technology that doesn't yet exist is using these devices to control computers and allowing you to look up stuff on google or the internet directly this brings up a lot of ethical implications including what other point of school tests if we can
just look up everything directly on the internet and nobody will be able to tell so something really interesting to think about the second issue that i see and the most important in my opinion is the security issues of such a device being implanted directly into our brain if this device is able to read our brain signals and our faults for example it will require heavy security so that these devices don't get hacked and aren't being able to access by other people you also don't want other people to be able to control your movement or override
what you want to do so this brings up some really big security issues that neuralink will have to face in the future and overcome the third major issue is internal disagreements they have famously been some major disagreements within the company and most of the founding research members have actually already left the company so this apparently i wasn't there so i don't know for sure was because elon musk tended to favor the engineers over the scientists and researchers so there have been some internal struggles as with any company these issues need to be overcome for the
future success of the company the fourth major issue that i personally think may be a problem is the fact that you have hardware and wires implanted into your brain this may disrupt with the brain's usual activity and its ability to adapt and change for neuroplasticity if there are wires in the way so this also may hypothetically cause brain injury and brain damage in some people and the fifth issue is that the device only has a thousand electrodes the human brain has around 86 billion neurons or brain cells so a thousand is a very small number
in comparison to that so the initial device will have very limited uses and they will need to develop this technology further to allow for more electrodes to be able to measure and control even greater parts of the brain so this one will require a lot more advancements in material science technology in order for this problem to be overcome and for these devices to be able to use for even greater uses i don't know if neurolink will succeed as a company i'm personally hoping that they do so that severe spinal cord injury patients can have a
successful treatment that is viable because at the moment there really isn't much for these patients unfortunately so super exciting to see these advancements in science being made even if it means we may head towards a cyborg future elon musk has publicly stated that he wants to commence human trials in 2022 but elon musk also has a very strong reputation for having an overly optimistic view of time schedules maybe he doesn't realize not everyone is as productive as him so i'll be watching this very closely and i'll keep you guys updated if any interesting news comes
out about it i want to know do you guys think that neurolink will succeed as a company and if i missed out any pros and cons in this video please put them in the comments below subscribe to achieve better brain health and gain a deeper understanding of how the human brain works i will leave a link to another video on human brain waves which i think you may find interesting in the end cards right now i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day i will see you guys in the next video
