Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip to be used for human trials soon? Read details

Elon Musk' brain-machine interface company named Neuralink will be providing a progress update soon at an event to be held on August 28, 2020. Musk had previously shared that he will be showcasing neurons firing in real-time on August 28, regarding it as 'The matrix in the matrix'.

With the latest scheduled event, it will be only Neuralink's second public event, however, anticipation for it has been sky high ever since it was revealed that Musk is backing a company which aims at merging the human brain with artificial intelligence. 

Also read: A look at how Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla & SpaceX spends his $90 billion net worth; check out

Neuralink update on August 28

Also read:  Elon Musk's SpaceX recovers Falcon 9 rocket fairing from space with a giant net; watch

What is Neuralink?

Neuralink was founded as a medical research company back in 2016. It is focussed in the creation of devices which can be implanted in the human brain to improve memory and provide direct interfacing with computing devices. As of now, there is no concrete features of the Nuralink chip which have been officially released, however, a research paper was published publically by the company explains how the technology actually works. Check out excerpts of the research below -

Also read: Elon Musk Goes Past Mukesh Ambani, Becomes World's Fourth-richest Person

We have built arrays of small and flexible electrode “threads”, with as many as 3,072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 threads. We have also built a neurosurgical robot capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute.

Each thread can be individually inserted into the brain with micron precision for avoidance of surface vasculature and targeting specific brain regions. The electrode array is packaged into a small implantable device that contains custom chips for low-power on-board amplification and digitization: the package for 3,072 channels occupies less than (23 × 18.5 × 2) mm3.

A single USB-C cable provides full-bandwidth data streaming from the device, recording from all channels simultaneously.

The Next Web has reported that Musk's company may be moving to human trials after August 28's progress update event. Elon had previously confirmed that with the Neuralink chip, users will be directly able to stream music directly from the chip. Whereas, Musk has also confirmed that the chip will have capabilities to control the hormone levels in a human being, giving them a potential to help relieve anxiety. The details about the Neuralink chip will be disclosed in detail at the upcoming August 28 event. 

Also read: Elon Musk shares video of SpaceX team recovering rocket fairing from sea, netizens amazed