Neuralink: Elon Musk's Brain Chip | Sci Guys Podcast #73

This week Luke takes over to give us the lowdown on Elon Musk’s new venture that will hopefully link your mind to almost any kind of tech you could want! Are these brain chips dangerous? Can they meet the expectations Elon has set? Find out in this week’s episode on Neuralink!
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[@thiel_spencer]

Whenever someone says anything about Elon Musk I immediately hear "elongated muskrat" in my friend's voice within my head.

[@alphabetadams1024]

I can’t wait for people to start Rick Rolling me directly into my brain

[@wig1433]

As someone working in this general field, I'll stick my oar in: I think the most important thing to point out is that Musk is really not showing anything new with the Neuralink. The basics of listening to neurons fire has been done for a long long time and is relatively simple, to the point where there’s a company which makes kits for you to do your own cockroach experiments at home (backyardbrains.com/ - you can record spikes from sensory neurons, exactly Musk did with his pig, and even use electrodes to stimulate antennae to direct a cockroach, which is a rudimentary form of what Musk sees in the future. Great fun and really good for teaching electrophysiology). His ‘visionary’ ideas are also not really groundbreaking, people in academia have been thinking about this stuff for a long time. I personally know researchers working on ‘closed loop’ systems (where a device interprets signals from the brain, then responds in some way, such as stimulation) for preventing fits in epilepsy, for example. The main things Musk brings to the table are money and slick engineering (things like the wireless/bluetooth set-up, which is often passed over for cost-cutting in academia but definitely make things much simpler); but these don't necessarily solve more fundamental problems that researchers face, such as the fact that (as pointed out by Corry, I think) we simply don’t know yet how to interpret the data we record reliably enough to use it to solve a lot of these problems. For example, the bionic limbs pick up signals from motor neurons in the body, rather than from the motor cortex. Decoding signals from nerves in the muscle is far simpler than decoding anything from the brain itself, so while very impressive, it doesn't mean we're so close to interpreting even the same intention in the motor cortex. In the relatively (sometimes painfully) slow-moving world of academic research, this isn’t so much of an issue: even small increases in our knowledge are advantageous, and help build a bigger picture and direct future research. But Musk’s ambition/ego isn’t going to solve these challenges, and although money and attention help, in practical terms grand declarations probably don’t do much except build expectations, encourage short cuts and make incremental progress look like failure. To then stick my other oar in, on the topic of using stimulation for treating things like depression: the most common application is via deep brain stimulation (DBS), where a fine electrode is surgically implanted into a target structure, and a continual current of high frequency electrical stimulation is applied. It can sound a lot like electroshock therapy, but it’s very different! DBS has actually been used to treat Parkinson’s patients for decades, and it’s considered very safe, although obviously still an invasive surgery, so will likely never be considered a solution except in extreme cases (there’s some pretty amazing videos of DBS for Parkinson’s in action, like this one kzbin.info/www/bejne/n3XampaGj6Z8eas&ab_channel=MedtronicDBSTherapy). Because it’s an established surgery, DBS for depression has already been trialled in human patients with extreme, treatment-resistant depression, with varying success depending on where the electrode is targeted. Again, the major stumbling block is how little we know about the neurobiology of depression. The targets for DBS are areas we know are implicated in depression, but we’re not sure exactly what is going wrong at these sites; although DBS has shown excellent results in many patients, we also don’t know what it’s changing to have its therapeutic effect - we don’t even know if it’s returning the brain to a ‘normal’ healthy condition, or a new condition entirely which just happens to ease the symptoms. (I will point out here that the same is basically true for anti-depressant drugs too - we know a lot about what they do, but we don’t know what it is precisely that makes them anti-depressant. If we did, we’d be much better at treating depression) What we do know is that depression (and healthy emotional states) are much more complicated than simply turning up the amount of one neurotransmitter, or any other simple-sounding fix. So the idea of a closed-loop system for depression (detecting pathological activity and correcting it) is definitely a long way off. From what I can see, Musk dresses quite normal things up as revolutionary, then uses them as evidence that he will be able to do fantastic things in the future. He's putting lipstick on the pig, then telling you next time the pig will do it itself. Computer-brain interfaces exist and can do some quite impressive things already, but it's going to take a giant shift in our understanding and technological ability to take it to that sci-fi level. Throwing money at the problem doesn't guarantee that shift in understanding (see also: the Human Brain Project), so I don't see much to suggest Musk is the one who's going to take us there.

[@CarqlineCupcake]

If you have ADHD and can’t listen to podcasts or audiobooks, try playing a game on your phone (i play top soil) or doing smt else that satisfies your brain. It helps a lot!! I used to not be able to use audiobooks but I can now. I read a lot more now!

[@tomerangelina1622]

Agreed. I like to sew or play candy crush

[@thnksfrthdnkmms1069]

I can only ever concentrate on audiobooks and podcasts when I'm walking so they're good for ur journey to the shops or work :)

[@ImNotThatInt3resting]

Meta tip: do your dishes. It occupies the hands, eyes and with the podcast, your brain! And you can’t really get too distracted because you can’t find yourself on reddit suddenly brought back by the end of the podcast

[@adamphilip1623]

Regarding altering brain chemistry. I would argue that emotional experience and thought are so intertwined that without the full breadth of emotional experience we would not have the same capacity for original thought and imagination. So many of our great breakthroughs have come not from pure rationality but from imagination and creativity, Einstein and his thought experiments are one great example. We don't understand these things well at all on their own let alone how they're linked but there have been studies suggesting two way interaction between emotion and imagination so altering our brain chemistry towards being constantly level could rob us of many of the tools we use to advance our knowledge.

[@monicaherrera2224]

My Siri is also Australian! Everybody thinks it’s weird ‘cause I’m from Mexico, but I just really enjoy the accent 😬

[@sophie8251]

Sciii guuuys COOOOOORP I can already hear the song for the adverts!! But seriously, the idea of having a chip in my brain like this scares me

[@cez_is_typing]

Woah rewatching this years later and hearing them reference open AI is INSANE now

[@mr.felixisagirlbossking9983]

The intro to the topic " BUG DADDY MUSK" cracked me up i went back to it

[@fhskshkdhjbd0379]

hello sciguys! I’ve found your channel recently and been binge watching your videos since haha. I wish I could support you guys on patreon, your content is amazing, keep it up

[@pereraddison932]

... there was a movie, staring William Shatner, made aways back in the 1960's. Based on a sci-fi novel that tells the story about an institutionalised, murderous psychopath who was given a direct brain-chip interface that activated the pleasure center in his brain, intending to allay his murderous urges. It failed to belay his instinct to kill, only making him desire more chip activation, etc. It's a high quality film, and "well" worth a look, if you can find it... Prophetic-? Or just maybe more predictive programming, like Brave New World, and 1984...

[@madisonv5897]

I love your podcast! I hope you all are doing well. It really shows how much fun you all have!

[@More13Feen]

My father in law had a brain chip inplanted for his parkinson. And it realy helped. That was 15 years ago.

[@SpaceFactsWax]

Thanks for posting. I got to see a rocket launch in 2018. Incredible experience. I shared a pretty awesome clip of the trip to my page.

[@literal-tree]

ayyyyy i called that corry is scottish last week

[@miiasutherland852]

I'm sorry but right around the 19 minute mark I started envisioning elon musk standing on a puppet box, marketing his magic potions to the passing masses. "Step right up, this wonderpotion will heal all your ails....". Not making fun of elon, honestly love his tenacity, just found it comical.

[@planetaryg0]

i was today yrs old when i realised luke cutforth wasn't pronounced cut-ferth like in corry's accent😭😭😭

[@konzertina9685]

When you’re a patron, but isn’t written in the slide. Lol, typical me

[@SciGuys]

They’re updated monthly, so if you became a patron last month you may not see your name until the Patreon vote episode this month! If you’ve been a patron since before August then just shoot us a message over there and we’ll sort it out

[@konzertina9685]

Sci Guys . Yeah i thought so. I think it was beginning of August, so that’s probably why. Also it’s not like that’s the reason I’m a patron. I just want to support the pod.

[@johnnyspacer9488]

Jesus Elon!

[@danielrobinson7769]

Ever seen Kingsman? Mmmhmmmm we got your number Mr Musk 😂

[@kTondi]

Watch black mirror

[@literal-tree]

dissociation is just the sedative wearing off

[@literal-tree]

isn't full automation in medicine/surgery illegal or something? shouldn't there still be at least a surgeon supervising and helping to guide the robot, since robots can't think for themselves and it's very likely that software engineers didn't think of every possible way it could go wrong and ways around it?

[@pereraddison932]

... yah, Rowie-! ... Tis Murpheeze Law, directing human kind. But never fear, for bacteria always was, is, and shall be here, evolving, and sheparding all sentient life, within, upon, over and around The Earth...

[@literal-tree]

@@pereraddison932 wh-

[@literal-tree]

@@pereraddison932 I'm sorry what??

[@caitlincooke93]

"mines south african" REPRESEEEENT

[@daemeecampbell2614]

Did you guys hear about Starlink's user agreement? You have to agree that mars is a free planet and no power can take claim of it, so it sounds loke Elon plans on becoming king of mars lol

[@cez_is_typing]

WHAT LMAO

[@AskhErBiDoY]

Elon musk is amazing. I created a video of his successes, and shared it on KZbin. People really love it ♥️

[@literal-tree]

this probably came out absolutely horribly, so please understand that I mean it in the best possible way. corry, we love you, but sometimes it's a nice change to have someone else take the steering wheel.

[@nananyantakyi1549]

He should keep it in his house and use it on his family

[@adamphilip1623]

Elon musk has a tendency to oversimplify things a lot and then try to find enough clever people to work out the details.