Neurolink - The Brain of a Monkey

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Nerolink has recently released a video of a monkey playing pe video game with its brain. But actually this is something that people in the field have been able to do for a while. decoding from the brain is very much like, say, an election where we count up the votes that brain cells are making for movements to the left or movement to the right. Andn once we tally up the vote, we can then decide whether the cursor on the computer screen should move to theleft or theright.

A few weeks ago, Elon Musk’s company Neuralink posted a job advert recruiting for a ‘clinical trial director’ to run tests of their brain-computer interface technology in humans. Neuralink’s initial aim is to implant chips in the brain that would allow people with severe spinal cord injuries to walk again. But, Musk himself has said that he believes this technology could one day be used to digitally store and replay memories. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Prof Andrew Jackson about how brain-computer interfaces actually work, where the technology is at the moment, and if in the future we could all end up communicating telepathically. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod