\n\tBrain implants are very much part of the popular imagination right now \u2014\u00a0the hit show Severance fictionalizes a worst-case scenario for the technology \u2014 and Elon Musk<\/a>\u2019s BCI company Neuralink<\/a> has swallowed most of the news attention, like the videos of Neuralink\u2019s participants playing video games and moving robotic arms<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tCaltech postdoc David Bjanes works with a patient who has brain implants.<\/p>\n \n\tBut Neuralink\u2019s headline-grabbing work builds on the painstaking achievements of research labs like Caltech\u2019s. \u201cThe BCI companies of today are standing on the shoulders of academic giants who have been developing BCIs for decades,\u201d says Rajesh Rao, co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tMusk\u2019s goal for his company also diverges from his academic forbearers. The world\u2019s richest man is explicitly focused on \u201cenhancement\u201d \u2014 his sci-fi dream is to turn BCIs into mass products for able-bodied people, merging our brains with computers. While academic labs like Caltech are focused on better understanding the brain so they can help people with conditions like Buckwalter\u2019s, Musk wants to give people superhuman vision and total recall: \u201cIf it\u2019s extremely safe, and you can have superhuman abilities, and let\u2019s say you can upload your memories, so you wouldn\u2019t lose memories, then I think probably a lot of people would choose to have it,\u201d he told podcaster Lex Fridman last year<\/a>. \u201cIt would supersede the cellphone, for example.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tDr. Richard Andersen, one of the world\u2019s foremost neuroscientists, runs Caltech\u2019s lab and has been working on implants for decades.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLance Hayashida\/Caltech<\/p>\n \n\tNeuralink\u2019s staff has basically said<\/a> that they don\u2019t need to understand how the brain works to roll out this cyborg future. To those in the know, this seems short-sighted. \u201cNew knowledge of how the brain works leads to more advanced neural prosthetics,\u201d as Andersen says. Musk\u2019s pushy approach also risks setting back this work at a crucial moment, according to others in the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe top leaders at Neuralink in place right now are definitely trying to do the right thing,\u201d one expert, who is in touch with Neuralink staff and asked to remain anonymous, tells Rolling Stone. But they point to \u201ccrazy pressure from the top,\u201d while raising some of the same concerns highlighted in a 2020 STAT News investigation<\/a> that reported a \u201cchaotic internal culture\u201d and a Reuters<\/a> 2023 report on \u201ctensions inside Neuralink over development pace.\u201d Neuralink and Musk did not respond to a detailed list of questions from Rolling Stone.\u00a0Current individual employees also did not respond to requests for comment for this piece.<\/p>\n \n\tWith Musk\u2019s recent cost-cutting role in government \u2014 already linked<\/a> to the firing of those in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including some staff overseeing Neuralink\u2019s clinical trial applications \u2014 there\u2019s more attention on the company than ever, with some wondering if the guardrails have come off.<\/p>\n \n\tIN JULY 2019, MUSK strode onstage<\/a> in San Francisco wearing a suit with a white shirt, no tie, to make his first presentation about Neuralink. While the first human volunteers would be paralyzed patients, the ultimate goal was to avoid mankind being \u201cleft behind\u201d<\/a> by advancing tech, namely AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis is going to sound pretty weird,\u201d he said, shoulders hunched, but the objective was to achieve \u201csymbiosis with artificial intelligence.\u201d He added: \u201cThis is extremely important.\u201d The following year, in an interview with Joe Rogan<\/a>, Musk made an even bigger claim: Implantees would be able to \u201csave state\u201d like in a video game, enabling someone to \u201crestore that state into a biological being if you wanted to in the future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tElon Musk, who founded Neuralink in 2016, envisions\u00a0his venture as one day being capable of\u00a0merging brains with computers.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMarcio Jose Sanchez\/AP<\/p>\n \n\tDespite Musk\u2019s interventions bringing the field an unprecedented level of prominence in the media, brain implants have been around for decades. In the 1960s, neurophysiologist Jos\u00e9\u00a0 Delgado implanted bulls with wireless devices to stop them in their tracks as they charged toward him<\/a>. In 1973, University of California in Los Angeles\u2019 Jacques Vidal, who coined the term \u201cbrain-computer interface,\u201d used noninvasive electroencephalograms (EEGs) \u2014 small sensors applied to the scalp \u2014 to allow participants to control a cursor-like object on a computer screen. There followed considerable public blowback over fears of mind control, particularly as the Soviet Union conducted its own research<\/a>. Only in the 1990s did the pace pick up again, including the development of the microelectrode platform called the Utah Array. In 2004, Matt Nagle<\/a> became the first paralyzed person to be implanted with the Utah Array, enabling him to move a cursor, check email, operate a TV, and open and close a prosthetic hand. The Utah Array would become the gold standard for BCIs, used in many academic research labs.<\/p>\n \n\tMusk wanted to popularize a different kind of brain implant \u2014 one that was wireless.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2016, Musk founded Neuralink with eight engineers and neuroscientists, including Philip Sabes, a professor emeritus at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF); Sabes had been working at UCSF on thin-film electrodes that could be robotically implanted at the micron-scale using a \u201csewing machine.\u201d Although Neuralink was registered<\/a> as a \u201cmedical research\u201d company, a key goal was human-AI integration, as later specified<\/a> by Musk in a conversation with Wait But Why blogger<\/a> and author Tim Urban.<\/p>\n \n\tAt times in the years since Neuralink\u2019s founding, Musk was reportedly<\/a> frustrated by the company\u2019s progress. Before Neuralink could work with humans, it had to conduct extensive trials with animals. To begin with, this mostly involved rats. In his 2019 presentation, Musk revealed Neuralink had started testing primates, too. \u201cA monkey has been able to control the computer with his brain. Just FYI,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tIn a Neuralink experiment, a monkey plays the rudimentary video game Pong with its mind.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Neuralink\/DDP\/ZUMA<\/p>\n \n\tAccusations of animal cruelty led to a federal probe in 2022<\/a> for violations of the Animal Welfare Act. According to Reuters, which cited documents and interviews with 20 current and former employees, excessive pressure<\/a> and rushed timelines resulted in botched experiments causing the deaths of at least 1,500 animals \u2014 including monkeys, sheep, and pigs \u2014 over a four-year period. Neuralink denied the animal cruelty claims at the time. (In July 2023, the federal probe found no breaches<\/a> of animal welfare rules apart from a 2019 incident the company had already reported.) <\/p>\n \n\tIn 2023, Neuralink got permission from the FDA to begin testing with humans. That year, Neuralink raised around $325 million from investors who valued the company in excess of $3 billion.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2024, Neuralink announced its first human participant: Noland Arbaugh, a thirtysomething quadriplegic, was implanted with a wireless chip smaller and supposedly more powerful than the Utah Array. Although far less invasive than procedures at labs like Caltech\u2019s, Neuralink\u2019s implant still involved<\/a> a small part of the skull being permanently removed; the implant sits in this space with a flap of skin on top. A neurosurgeon oversaw the robot\u2019s surgery, but the company\u2019s ultimate goal is to fully automate the procedure<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tNoland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from an accident, was the first patient to take part in the clinical trial of humans testing Musk\u2019s Neuralink device.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRebecca Noble\/The New York Times\/REDUX<\/p>\n \n\tWith practice, Arbaugh was able to use the BCI to control a computer cursor and play video games. But there were problems. Only a month after his surgery, around 85 percent<\/a> of the threads implanted in his brain had come loose. In August 2024, it announced a second participant, implanted with a more advanced chip that enabled him to design 3D objects using computer-aided design software. In late January, Neuralink posted a clip of a robotic arm writing on a whiteboard, supposedly under the control of a third participant, and on April 27, Musk shared a video<\/a> of this participant, who has ALS and is unable to speak, describing how his implant had enabled him to communicate again via a computer. More recently, the number of patients has accelerated, with Neuralink claiming it now has nine human participants<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLike studies at academic labs, all of Neuralink\u2019s participants are paralyzed<\/a>. While Musk has more recently hailed the potential for Neuralink to restore a person\u2019s ability to walk or even cure their dementia<\/a>, he has more often alluded to a different objective. During an hourlong presentation in July 2024<\/a>, Musk claimed that anyone with his implants would soon be able to communicate faster than a person with a fully functional body.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe want to give people superpowers,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSO FAR, NEURALINK HAS LARGELY built on achievements already demonstrated in the field \u2014 cursor control, click control, and robotic arm control. \u201cHow I would see it is they\u2019re basically checking off these milestones,\u201d the expert in touch with Neuralink staff tells Rolling Stone. \u201cEverything Musk does attracts an outsized level of attention\u2026. I think most scientists prefer other people to measure the significance of their work, whereas Musk is doing the opposite, and labeling everything he\u2019s done as brand new and significant.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tA prototype illustration shows the NeuraLink integrated system.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGDA\/AP<\/p>\n \n\tThere are unique elements to Neuralink\u2019s BCI, such as the robotic surgery used to implant it, as well as the wireless technology. But other companies use even less-invasive methods. Precision Neuroscience, founded by a former Neuralink co-founder, has developed a flexible electrode array thinner than a human hair, which the company describes as \u201cminimally invasive.\u201d Synchron is testing a device that\u2019s inserted into the brain through a blood vessel; the company also uses a generative chat feature powered by OpenAI<\/a> to assist relevant participants with communication (it was recently reported<\/a> that OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman is raising funds for a BCI startup that would compete with Neuralink). And the method of implanting electrode threads into the cortex was first developed by Philip Sabes while he worked at UCSF, before he left and co-founded Neuralink.<\/p>\n \n\tThere are also downsides to going wireless. Caltech postdoc David Bjanes notes that, while Neuralink\u2019s device records neurons from more channels than, for example, the 384 channels provided by six Utah Arrays as in Buckwalter\u2019s case, it currently only records from one brain area \u2014 by contrast, Caltech\u2019s devices record from five brain areas concurrently. With different participants having implants in different parts of the brain, the researchers have a more holistic view of how the brain performs various functions.<\/p>\n \n\tNeuralink\u2019s device also transmits a compressed version of its brain signal due to bandwidth limitations from being wireless, whereas Caltech can record uncompressed, high bandwidth broadband signals on all their channels. \u201cAs a scientist, I am not willing to sacrifice signal if I don\u2019t have to,\u201d Bjanes says. \u201cA wired solution that gives me as much signal as possible \u2014 I\u2019m going to choose that every time over another technology.\u201d For patients, there\u2019s a huge advantage to a wireless BCI, but that comes at the expense of gaining new knowledge about the brain that can help future patients. \u201cI think the wireless technology will get there,\u201d Bjanes says. \u201cIt just is not quite mature enough.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPreviously, Neuralink has been pilloried for its lack of transparency. After Musk announced on X in January 2024 that the first human had been implanted with Neuralink\u2019s device, experts in the field and former regulatory staff<\/a> expressed concerns at the piecemeal doling out of information, with specific criticism for not registering its trial at the National Institute of Health\u2019s website ClinicalTrials.gov<\/a> \u2014 a common practice even for so-called \u201cearly feasibility\u201d devices like Neuralink\u2019s. Medical ethicists described Neuralink\u2019s and Musk\u2019s approach as \u201cscience by press release.\u201d<\/a> In May, Neuralink did register on ClinicalTrials.gov and has since shared more details of its studies. But it\u2019s still unclear, for example, how its robotic surgery exactly works, at least to anyone outside Neuralink.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd as Musk continues to make bold claims in an increasingly competitive field, experts note that, given past concerns raised by Neuralink employees, something could go wrong and set the field back years both in terms of willing participants and private investors due to the long shadow Musk casts. \u201cThe \u2018move fast, break things, and fix it later\u2019 philosophy of Big Tech is going to be disastrous if applied to BCIs,\u201d says Rajesh Rao, the University of Washington professor, who argues that commercial companies like Neuralink should embed ethicists in their teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tDavid Bjanes works in the lab.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPeter Holderness\/Caltech<\/p>\n \n\tA former Neuralink engineer tells Rolling Stone it is \u201chard for anything to advance super fast for a class 3 medical device,\u201d noting that every advance takes \u201cimmense effort,\u201d testing and preclinical\/clinical trials. And they claim the company moves fast \u201cwithout compromising safety.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEven so, concerns about Neuralink\u2019s impact on the field only grew in the wake of Musk\u2019s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) instigating mass layoffs of federal staff, some directly impacting Neuralink. This sparked concern that guardrails around approval for Neuralink trials had been removed. Phyllis Fong, the USDA\u2019s longtime inspector general who launched the ongoing probe into Neuralink for alleged animal cruelty, was forced out of her job in January<\/a>. In mid-February, 20 staff members in the FDA office of neurological and physical medicine devices, including several who oversaw Neuralink, were also fired. (Shortly after layoffs in the FDA, hundreds were reportedly asked to rejoin, though it is unclear if any staff specifically reviewing Neuralink were rehired.) The cuts included reviewers overseeing clinical-trial applications by Neuralink and other companies creating BCI devices. (In April, Neuralink also falsely self-certified as a \u201csmall disadvantaged business\u201d on a federal filing<\/a>, qualifying Musk\u2019s company for funding aimed at promoting racial and ethnic diversity. As of this summer, there wasn\u2019t evidence that they\u2019d received the funding.) In response to criticism that Musk was removing officials responsible for regulating his companies, the White House insisted<\/a> at the time that he had pledged to avoid conflicts of interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBUCKWALTER WAS ONLY 17 when he leapt from high rocks into the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, breaking his neck and doing irreparable damage to his spinal cord. He spent a year in a state hospital for what were then called \u201ccrippled\u201d children. While some of the other injured kids were in and out within a month, Buckwalter\u2019s convalescence was slow. \u201cI kind of had to stumble my way along,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was the dark ages of rehabilitation medicine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut Buckwalter did find his way, and he has gone on to live a full life by any measure. He ended up being a researcher for 15 years, writing a paper on estrogen replacement therapy for women diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s disease that is still cited often, as is his groundbreaking research into so-called \u201cmommy brain\u201d cognition during pregnancy, which landed him on morning news shows in the 1990s. Buckwalter conducted initial research and wrote the matching algorithm for the dating website eHarmony, founded in 2000.\u00a0For a quarter century, Buckwalter has also been the frontman of a David Bowie-inspired rock band called\u00a0Siggy<\/a>, which still performs live.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMany quadriplegics don\u2019t make it to Buckwalter\u2019s age. \u201cFifty years post-spinal cord injury is a pretty small population of folks,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tJ. Galen Buckwalter, a self-proclaimed \u201cneuronaut,\u201d has had life-changing experiences as a participant in the Caltech lab.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of J. Galen Buckwalter<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2023, a friend and colleague who had a neuroscience Ph.D. from Caltech told him about a lab at the private university in Pasadena researching brain implants. The surgery itself involved cutting into Buckwalter\u2019s skull to install six Utah arrays. The implants are designed to both \u201cread\u201d and \u201cwrite\u201d: The electrodes record neurons firing as well as stimulating activity. Buckwalter\u2019s pioneering case also involves the world\u2019s first chronic implant inside the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, where high-level reasoning and possible participation in language takes place.<\/p>\n \n\tEven in the inherently more cautious academic sphere of BCIs, there are challenges for participants like Buckwalter. After falling earlier this year, he fractured his femur and damaged one of the pedestals protruding from his head, and it has taken Caltech\u2019s neurosurgeons some time to bring the affected arrays online. He has also belatedly realized he doesn\u2019t technically have ownership of his data \u2014 the information gathered from his brain by the arrays during lab work with Caltech \u2014 which complicates a proposed collaboration over the creation of a virtual clone of Buckwalter with a former student of his, Thomas Parsons, working in AI at Arizona State University.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tParsons has been scraping anything Buckwalter has ever written or said on record to integrate into a large language model. This plan is to have Buckwalter\u2019s BCI interact directly with his virtual clone, offering unprecedented insights into the holy grail of neuroscience \u2014 the mechanics of consciousness itself. But if Buckwalter can\u2019t access his Caltech data, the ambitious project may be imperilled.<\/p>\n \n\tBuckwalter and other brain implantees are now trying to collectively organize behind a so-called BCI Pioneers manifesto, and are working with an attorney on a consent form addendum for all brain implant procedures. Buckwalter has proposed the catchy slogan: \u201cMy brain, my data.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTHERE ARE MAJOR DIFFERENCES between academic researchers and commercial companies \u2014 and yet the fates of both are bound together. \u201cThe failure and success of any one of us is all of ours,\u201d Bjanes says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOne way of warding off this danger could be by greater collaboration between companies and academic research labs. One company, Onward Medical, collaborates with Rao\u2019s center at the University of Washington, and another called Blackrock Neurotech, which produces the Utah Array, collaborates with multiple research labs. Neuralink has made no such collaboration public.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tWith a brain chip, lab participants can move a virtual hand. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLance Hayashida\/Caltech<\/p>\n \n\tExperts speaking to Rolling Stone say Neuralink clearly has an important role to play in the field\u2019s future, both in raising public awareness and the transformative potential of the company achieving its goal of implanting thousands of humans.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cNeuralink\u2019s strength is in its ability to commercialize such an intricate piece of tech,\u201d says the ex-Neuralink engineer. \u201cSure, this has existed in labs, but no one can feasibly bring it to market at scale.\u201d Currently only a handful of participants are signed up to each academic research lab. If Neuralink\u2019s work means there are many more participants with BCIs, and Musk releases the API to enable other researchers to access the data, it could be a game changer. Given Neuralink\u2019s relative opacity, that seems unlikely.<\/p>\n \n\tAt the same time, Musk continues to make fantastical-sounding claims. Last year he predicted that within two decades, hundreds of millions of people would be using Neuralink\u2019s implants. He envisions a future in which his company inaugurates superhuman cyborgs \u2014 a techno-dystopian \u201csymbiosis\u201d with machines and artificial intelligence.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAI has an important role to play with BCIs, particularly via the use of large language models (LLM) to assist the decoding of speech, learning an individual\u2019s repeated patterns of speech and generating a voice that sounds like their own. AI has also helped patients communicate as with rival company Synchron\u2019s OpenAI-powered generative chat feature. Musk\u2019s leading contribution to the AI field so far has been Grok. But his X-native chatbot has repeatedly caused controversy, whether ranting<\/a> about \u201cwhite genocide\u201d in South Africa or praising Hitler<\/a>, and replying to users with antisemitic comments. There may be reason to fear what Musk could do with experimental brain tech after seeing how Grok has turned out.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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