Elon Musk Neuralink Monkey Brain Plays Pong Game explained - Science Loop

Science Loop on Youtube has interesting explanations. Neuralink just implanted a chip in a monkey's brain and demonstrated it playing video games with its mind. The science behind that could be a game-changer. Pager, a nine year old Macaque, plays MindPong with his Neuralink.

The Neuralink Website is at https://neuralink.com

Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk and others, developing implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). The company's headquarters is in San Francisco. The company was started in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017.

Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities. By July 2019, it had received $158 million in funding (of which $100 million was from Musk) and was employing a staff of 90 employees. At that time, Neuralink announced that it was working on a "sewing machine-like" device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width) threads into the brain, and demonstrated a system that read information from a lab rat via 1,500 electrodes, they had anticipated starting experiments with humans in 2020; but have since moved that projection to 2021.

This innovative technology has certainly been criticized by several neuroscientists and publications, including the MIT Technology Review.

Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) - an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California.

The monkey "Pager" has learned to control a computer with his brain activity. At first, the monkey uses a joystick to interact with the computer for a "tasty banana smoothie, delivered through a straw." It seems that Pager has 2 Neuralink devices implanted in his brain. The devices, which Musk calls a "Fitbit for your skull," were certainly revealed at a press briefing in August 2020.

The Neuralink devices in the monkey's brain are reading his brain activity. When the team disconnect the joystick, Pager keeps playing the game - and the amazing brain-implant allows him to play the game "MindPong."

So-called "MindPong is an initial demonstration of the potential capabilities of the N1 Link. In the future, the device could be able to achieve even greater things.