This New Implant Hacks the Brain by Going Through Your Chest
A simple outpatient procedure could one day link up your thoughts with a computer.
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.
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 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 provide the potential for millions of patients to have improved abilities to interact with their environment and therefore have a higher quality of life,” J Mocco, a neurosurgeon and Synchron consultant, told The Daily Beast.