How far would you go for your favourite music?

With Elon Musk already revolutionizing our world and bringing many out of the world technologies to us, it won’t be hard to believe that a small chip inside our brains will allow us to send music directly to our brains. So without the use of headphones or any music device, we will be able to enjoy our favourite song.

Earphones were too mainstream anyway, isn’t it good that we are getting more options here?

But would you really go through a surgery to listen to music? No?

So, would you do it if it could cure your depression? Yes maybe?

This chip size brain computer is not only intended with the purpose to send music to our brains.

As Elon musk claims that the microcomputer when put inside our brains will be able to control the hormone levels inside our neural system. Which in turn will be useful in reducing the stress hormones released in our brains. So depression, anxiety or addiction can be expected to be cured. The technology is also expected to be used in healing people suffering from brain and spinal cord injuries, congenital defects and paralysis.

With technological advancement running at such a fast pace now not only devices will be able to connect to other devices wirelessly, it’s human’s turn now to connect with their phones wirelessly. And in order to operate the wirelessly connected phone/device, humans will have to carry out a very complicated task, THINKING!

With Neuralink’s approach, a neurosurgical robot is also developed which is  capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute and will be used to automatically do the embedding in the brain through 2mm wide holes and insert the flexible threads connected to a tiny implantable computer chip. The threads will be thinner than a human hair strand that ranges from 4 to 6 μm in width, which will enable a human being to use a computer just by thinking so! As Elon Musk has said “A monkey has been able to control a computer with his brain”.

But if you’re wondering, this is not the first time a person will be able to control a computer with his/her thoughts. Similar brain implants have been done in the past on paralysed people, who were then able to move robotic arms, computer cursors etc. This brain implant system was developed at Brown university and is called BrainGate.

The Neuralink’s chip which will be embedded under your skin will connect wirelessly to an external wearable pod behind your ear which will contain the battery and which in turn connects wirelessly to your phone, so you can control the device with just your thoughts. To read the signals from our brains, suitable and a large bandwidth is also a requirement. Right now Neuralink has developed a chip that is able to read, clean up, and amplify signals from the brain, but it can only transmit data via a wired connection, but ultimately the goal is to create a system that can work wirelessly and give a high bandwidth connection with the brain. The product will be called the “N1 sensor”.

With this futuristic technology at hand, the company expects to develop the computer to not only read signals from the brain, but also to write signals into the brain in the long term. Writing signals can be effectively used to restore senses of touch or vision, as these signals can be used to write the signals that our system is not writing anymore due to disorders or diseases and which can in turn cure people with brain disorders or paralysis.

Ankisha Mathur

A Software Developer who loves putting her thoughts into words.

ankishamathur.com