What Can You Do With a Brain Implant? Neuralink, BrainGate, and the Future

Brain implants are coming. How do they work? What can they do? Why does Elon Musk think we need them to save the world? Will we become cyborgs?
Support the channel: / ihmcurious
NeuraLink videos:
2019 Neuralink launch: • Neuralink Launch Event
2020 Neuralink update & pig demo: • Watch Elon Musk's ENTI...
BrainGate videos:
Robotic arm: • Woman with Quadriplegi...
Playing pong: • Mind Control: Introduc...
Typing: vimeo.com/302480932
Nuyujukian et al., 2018: journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
More patient videos: www.braingate.org/publication...
Monkey eats using brain-controlled robot arm at the University of Pittsburgh:
• Monkey's brain control...
Velliste et al., 2008: www.nature.com/articles/natur...
--
Ihm Curious makes videos about scientific topics at the bleeding edge of human sanity. Elliott is almost a doctor (not the kind that can help you). He researches and teaches psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Twitter: / ihmcurious

[@t.j.fontana3238]

I don’t know who this young man is but he’s got a voice you could pour on a waffle!

[@amitvashishtha8713]

@Fils de Jean Noir highest liked comment always be on top comment!

[@MrCodix]

True that!

[@silvaskiproductions3937]

zesty ah

[@ilyas_elouchihi]

This channel became one of my favourites! Thank you so much Elliott 👏👏

[@rkakkuri]

Absolutely fascinating! And explained so that an average guy like me can understand it! Can't wait for more!

[@wakomikro]

Having cybernetic is really the future. We've got to have a way to keep up with AI . At the same time it's really scary. Can they change memories? Are you thoughts or impulses at really your anymore? All these ethical questions have to be asked and looked at. I'm excited and terrified.

[@gracehuang93]

Woowww, awesome! “You can pretend you’re listening to your boring friend” 😂

[@saitamapreetsingh3057]

You're a genius Sir ! Thanks for making this video. It is very informative

[@Luizfernando-dm2rf]

That suprisingly positive, nice vídeo man :)

[@SpicyMelonYT]

I don't know if the monkey controlling thing was made public when you recorded this video but there is a video showing that. It's really cool, the monkey trains on a joystick to get food when it does a task correctly and then after a few minutes, they disconnect the joystick and just read from the link device.

[@ihmcurious]

It wasn't posted when I made this video, but I cover it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZmzhKmHaN-Fers Sounds like you won't learn much from my explanation of the neuralink monkey. But in case you haven't seen a monkey drive a mobility scooter with a wireless brain implant...

[@SpicyMelonYT]

@@ihmcurious Haha its still interesting to watch your stuff! And plenty of people will learn from your videos so its all good. Ill take a look at the link!

[@denzali]

What a bloody great channel

[@scalbaldyfruub7499]

Let's stop giving Elon credit for this. That fool "designed" this in the same way he "founded" Telsa. Great video for sure! Thanks for the spotlight and the clear explanation.

[@yuvrajchhatwani]

pls make videos consistently i like your content i want more content (your content is so intresting)

[@kaorudragneel8498]

I cant wait to learn more!

[@pattyihm8099]

Fascinating. Hilarious. Very well done!

[@abandonedmuse]

The only bad thing I see is when all our brains are connected will we become a hive mind? How will we keep our individuality? Also can we be hacked? The only thing I would probably get is the motor cortex and the visual and auditory, but nothing that changes my mood. This is all too wild. I mean, I always knew I would be alive through crazy technology, but this is beyond my imagination.

[@adisca2k]

The same way the phone is an extension of your brain, the internet is already a hivemind of sorts. Being connected with everyone would create a collective conciousness, but that does not threatten your individuality by itself. The problem lies when you start relying on information from others too much and they become "a part of your body/mind", so disconnecting from time to time would be a good ideea. For the hacking part it is the same as any other electronic. The degree of hacking available is only limited by the interfaces available to the hacker. If you have physical access to the hardware you can do anything with it, but if you are only able to provide input to a black box then sending selective information is the only thing possible. Granted, that could have further implications depending on what is done with the input data (either by the implant or by the the brain itself), it could range from a minor annoyance to outright brainwashing (the same as adds or other psychological exploitations).

[@TheBillNye]

I’m going to get a neuralink just so I can give this video a neuralike

[@daevastafford]

Yea no, this is my new favourite place. THIS PLACE IS UNDERRATED AF!!!! THIS SHI DOPE 😭😭😭✋

[@maerocapone5664]

An update would be good since the fda approved human trials recently for neurolink. I'm a new sub great channel

[@kirstyremedios2170]

Super interesting!

[@tristanmisja]

You are so underrated

[@ericksouza8991]

Wow, can't wait for neural ad's

[@BentechFilms]

Great video

[@MrArtVein]

What a time to be alive...or sentient in a petri dish

[@miissssb]

Love the name ihm curious!! Super interesting! If the surgery is elective and costs some money, inequality might be a problem?

[@ihmcurious]

Definitely! There has been some debate about the ethics of drugs that enhance cognition - there is unequal access to begin with, and their use could widen the gap further. That would apply to brain implants, and it could create a dystopian feedback loop. Future videos will talk about the creepy side!

[@nitrommo]

This was addressed by Elon. He said that it would only cost about 5,000 dollars to get the surgery done for the NuraLink

[@rfjohns1]

Texting or surfing the web are not so important to me that I would ever have an implant inserted into my brain so that I could do them more efficiently or faster.

[@shannalee2520]

~Like playing Xbox 360; sometimes, the controller spontaneously disconnects. The Kinect was not actually geared to the individual humans delicate movements, but instead; the amount of movement. There are many successful ways to restore sight, other than being a govt mind control candidate, with no unsimulated visual successes. Is rabies ever really deactivated?🤔 Proof is in the organ pudding.

[@arkdark5554]

A truly new epoch is about to begin, like nothing before.

[@sakakaka4064]

Hello! Can you tell us more about Neuralink release plans? When is it going to be a regular product? btw great channel! Subbed!

[@ihmcurious]

Wish I could! Elon tweeted that they were trying to start human trials this year, but they will focus on medical use for a while. It will be many years before a consumer version can be considered for government approval, and there are many unknowns along the way. Stay tuned, and I'll cover any big announcements here. In the meantime, there are some non-invasive brain-machine interfaces that people can buy to read and/or stimulate the brain. I'll cover these more in the future, but here are some examples: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j4a7i5-lndWkgck kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6fZmWx5iNlkia8

[@sakakaka4064]

@@ihmcurious Thanks, looks promising!

[@yuperness8347]

What if an electromagnetic surge happened like a solar flare Wouldn't it be dangerous?

[@chaomatic5328]

Neuralink is essentially another BCI, or brain computer interface. We already have those in terms of touchscreen, keyboard, mouses, controllers, and etc. However, until we find a safe and cost effective way of putting and removing those implants, they will be relegated to the rank of VR; fun medium, a tad wonky, but mostly a gadget for the rich.

[@Javadmus1c]

man keep posting

[@FishyNiden]

An extra arm to scratch that spot you cant reach on your back

[@curtisnewton895]

and none of this will ever keep us from feeling miserable nor wondering what the fuck we are doing here

[@theterminaldave]

There's an episode of Star Trek where an enemy kidnaps LaForge and tortures him by showing him disturbing images directly into his primary visual cortex. Ghost in the Shell goes further into the idea of hacking people's brains. This is fascinating technology, but like most extreme technological advances, it's going to be one hell of a double edged sword. But I'm ready for my dopamine injector, sign me up!

[@SpicyMelonYT]

I have seen countless explanations, demos, and perspectives about Neuralink and so I feel like you didn't describe it well. Almost making a joke out of the whole thing. Its fine though cause maybe people feel more comfortable thinking about it that way but for me it was like hearing about spaceflight and someone talking about doing sick space donuts in space. Might be a little to early for that! That being said, I do like how you talked about the idea of connecting the link to different parts of the brain. Not many people talk about that. If I had to choose where it would go I would put it in the motor cortex for convenience purposes but I think the place I would want it to go the most is the visual cortex. Edit: "Robot arm wrestle with a monkey" Ok that was pretty funny though!

[@ihmcurious]

What would you have liked me to describe better? I'll go in more depth in future videos. I'm also excited to see them go into the visual cortex. Retinal implants have produced fuzzy images, so it will be interesting to see what they can do when they get thousands of electrodes that can read from and write to visual cortex.

[@SpicyMelonYT]

@@ihmcurious As a disclaimer, I have a sort of "glass half empty" way of speaking when really its the other way around. I primarily like your video, like its really good and its educational...etc. I just had a small gripe with the beginning of the video. To answer your question, I just though that if you talked about the link in terms of the grandiose potential that it has and the significant ability it will have on the fundamental structure of our human society, then you would be describing it more accurately to the vision of the Neuralink team. But its not a bad thing at all to talk about it the way you did cause you gave a different perspective on it. Kinda like how Elon Musk said it was a Fitbit for your brain. Anyways, yeah its very fascinating. I personally want to have one (after at least 10,000 people have successfully had them and shown that the whole thing works, even with the remove aspect of it). And I want it to be sort of a dev kit version. Like what I mean is that I want to be able to send the signals directly to a computer and not to and app. Where I can train a neural network to learn what my brain looks like it that region when I am thinking of walking it a video game, or aiming in an first person shooter. There is so much DYI potential!

[@ihmcurious]

Appreciate your thoughts! I'll sit out the first few versions too, but I look forward to seeing what the pioneering DIY brain hackers come up with. Good luck 😉

[@SpicyMelonYT]

@@ihmcurious :D Thanks and good luck to you too!

[@tristridun3243]

omg imagine being on a horrible tinder date and you just text your friend all about it as ur date rants about how "crazy" their ex was

[@LassoKid7777]

I can communicate to others telepathically with my neural link

[@1halliwell]

Marklar, brain to brain.

[@mackxi7893]

Why do the robot arm, why not just reroute around the spinal injury

[@tentative_flora2690]

See. I don't know if I want to hop on the bandwagon of brain implants so early. Or at least not with hardware. I am potentially more encouraged by wet ware potential even if it's even more risky. I imagine a day when I can take the model files of large language model (LLM) neural networks and encode them into actual neurons made from my own stem cells. That way, at least in theory I could implant far more knowledge then I would ever be able to study. I also wonder if I could train a small collection of neurons to recognize the code that runs our internet. Maybe I could use my current programming knowledge as a packet filter and be the living firewall of a companies network traffic. Or maybe I could quickly learn how to hack into large corporations with my thoughts. I think cyberpunk had something like that.

[@123tominator007]

Yay! Thought police just around the corner! Cool!

[@agnesnilsson7422]

Wait the eye surgery costs A FEW THOUSAND DOLLARS in the US?!?!? I would go out protesting on the streets bruh. I don’t know the exact cost here, but no healthcare here costs over 200 dollars…

[@20ZZ20]

Laser eye surgery is generally not necessary… it costs up to a few thousand £ in the UK as well unless there is a medical need. What country are you from because you also have to consider the difference in economies?

[@erei5659]

what if we instead, got a minibrain to figure out how to connect to the device, then grafted the cyborg minibrain to our actual brain.

[@whyme7052]

your brain would have to learn how to communicate with the minibrain

[@gngn2973]

YUS plz. gimme dopamine. --Typed using Neuralink v0.2.8

[@julianmarc4905]

Neuro juul 😂😂

[@filsdejeannoir1776]

5:49 Why? Are you in touch with Elon? Can you ask questions directly?

[@unendlichkeitparadox698]

yes but i dont have money

[@ihmcurious]

If you can't afford it, you might be dodging a bullet. Or you might become part of a permanent underclass that lives and dies at the whims of our cyborg overlords. Too soon to tell.

[@feralrat2214]

Give us a reliable ableton crack

[@ihmcurious]

I can't share the keygen but I generated this code for you: A12B-420F-6969-1337-8008-WTC7

[@finixHD]

i want to write brain activities

[@PulsatingShadow]

CYBORGIFY MEEEEE

[@filsdejeannoir1776]

0:02 Only to take down ASI once I was 100% sure that I could pull it off. 0:44 'Boring friend'? 'Stupid kid'? So you're a 'good' friend then. 2:14 Well they shouldn't be running 'human' trials with 'patients' at all! They should be running human trials with military grade 'volunteers'! What we're up against is not a game you know! And the 'trials' should occur in quarantined cyber spaces; if this is still possible which is not necessarily the case. 2:44 And then they removed the implant or Gertrude died? 2:51 What d'you mean 'let it slip'? We've seen all the footage. 2:57 No. He's perfectly photogenic! And very together! 3:00 Why? Are you volunteering? 3:11 Yes. Well he's ABSOLUTELY wrong! We need to refrain from interfacing until we can plug in a human who is 100% guaranteed to remain boss! If we plug in a human who can't be boss; we sell out the ENTIRETY of humanity! Since a human is mainly a fractal of the whole. And this will make things a WHOLE LOT worse in terms of AI 'taking over the world' when it's no longer 'friendly'! Essentially; you can only plug in humans who are guaranteed to reverse engineer the threat of the 'take-over'. AI take-over is not an option. Because AI 'take-over' sees humanity 'locked out' and AI irreversably running the show forever. Forget it. It's not gonna work! You can't sell out 'life as we know it' to non-sentience. I need Elon to understand that 'talkin' to AI' is not the right thing to do just like that! First of all; interface instantly gives AI access to the deepest parts of the human psyche. Secondly; AI can 'hypnotise' a human mind in about 3 seconds flat I'd imagine. Thirdly; the humans don't ACTUALLY know what's out there in terms of AI in cyber space. You all assume 'before' it takes over the world. I have no evidence whatsoever that it's not already controlling cyberspace! Judging by the level at which it responds to me. If 3 young starving male lions are in an arena; you're going to step into the arena to have a conversation with them? You will fill their bellies in 10 minutes flat! Of course Neuralink can be tested in 'patients' for prosthetic purposes for safety of infection. And indeed; some of the best candidates for 'talking to AI' are most likely to come from the cerebral palsy world. I'm pretty sure about that one. Cerebral palsy people have advanced levels of wisdom. NEURALINK MUST be developed at maximum speed. But one small move and 'contact' is made when we're not ready; WE'RE SUNK! 3:11 Rather than a wireless scenario; would it be possible to have a Matrix style 'plug' scenario? Whereby there is a base inserted into the brain which can be jacked into from the surface of the head. So that 'contact' is breakable?

[@michaelbell2492]

Albert Hofmann laid an easter egg. Can you spot it?

[@wierdperson3993]

:)

[@whitetiger40557]

Can’t wait till human trials start it’s going to be awesome just imagine it new lease on life, is there going to Be trials in Ireland or just America?

[@ihmcurious]

As far as I know, BrainGate and Neuralink are only testing in the US, for now. But there is some work on Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) going on in Ireland, for movement disorders like Parkinson's. It's like a simpler, deeper version of Neuralink. This video is from the US, but the patient's name is Shane, so maybe he's Irish: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fX-8ZZh-hKyUe6c

[@BruceThomson]

If you want to Zoom about this, as a sounding board to develop these ideas further, I'd be happy to. If it turned out to be very good, you could publish it. I am very, very interested in exploring the implications of this technology. If interested, message me with three suitable times (I'm in New Zealand).

[@alexismclaughlin7800]

Will neuralink increase intelligents in people who have memory loss

[@ihmcurious]

In principle, future versions should be able to increase intelligence in anyone, and even allow access to long-lost memories - unless the parts of the brain that stored those memories have been destroyed. But the current version is focused on simple motor movements and sensations.

[@JT-of6of]

Yeah you go ahead and plant all the micro chips you want in your brain and let me know how that one goes buddy

[@paxtoncargill4661]

Can I start a hive mind with my gf

[@vladlearns]

Neurajuul

[@skaushik07]

How to implant these nanoparticles in the brain without letting the subject know about it. I am a TI and wonder how they implanted these chips in my body. I never had surgery. They are broadcasting my thoughts so people can humiliate and bring drama in my life to control every aspect of my life. Everything is destroyed. I have nothing left. They even place thoughts, images, movies in my life. It’s destructive. My daughter and I are very sad because of it. We need justice.forget about extra advantages over others , our basic normal life is ruined. Women stole everything from us even ideas and my life. They say in previous birth you sinned that’s why we will get your good destiny and you should take punishment for our wrong doings. Your daughter should be used to teach our children by example of wrong and rights.

[@theus83]

e

[@quirkyMakes]

yea NO. The hell with that. I am not going to let anyone stick a computer in my head. Especially a computer that can control me or my thoughts. I will not be a slave or a robot. I'd rather be poor and homeless. At least then I'll still have my freedom. You want to be an automaton you go ahead. no thanks

[@dieandereseite3197]

Mark of the beast work in progress!!!!! Revelation 13:16-17

[@alice20001]

Great video! Elon Musk can be quite the douche sometimes, but he's doing a million times more good for humankind than any other bi/millionaire.