Synchron company became the first developer of brain-computer interfaces, which introduced its Stentrode implant into the head of an American. Now a person who has long lost the ability to move and speak will be able to control a web browser and communicate via email using the power of thought. He became the fifth person in the world with an implanted neurochip.
The new Synchron project was implemented under the guidance of specialists from Mount Sinai West Medical Center. Neurointerventional surgeon Shahram Majidi made an incision in the patient’s neck and inserted a miniature sensor into the brain. Stentrode — a 1.5—inch-long device consisting of wires and electrodes – opened and began to fuse with the outer edges of the blood vessel. According to Majidi, this procedure was very similar to implantation of a coronary stent, so it took only a few minutes.
When the operation was completed, the sensor was connected via a physical cable to a computing device previously implanted in the patient’s chest. To do this, surgeons have created a “tunnel” for wires and a pocket for the device under the skin — on the same principle as modern pacemakers are installed. After that, the neural interface was activated and connected to the computer. After 48 hours, the patient has already gone home.
ALS, also known as motor neuron disease is a rare but terrible disease: the atrophy of neurons gradually disconnects the periphery of the brain in the form of muscles. What it does to a person can be represented by the example of the most famous patient of this scourge in our time: Stephen Hawking.
The principle of operation of Stentrode is relatively simple. The sensor reads the signals activated by the patient’s brain and transmits it to the device under the skin. The latter interprets the activity and sends a ready-made command via Bluetooth to a computer or smartphone. But how does the cursor move? Here lies some weakness of the current Stentrode model: the choice of a place to press and move the cursor is not carried out by nerve impulses of the brain directly, but by means of a fair “crutch”: an eye tracker, an eye tracking system like the one that was built into the famous Stephen Hawking chair and allowed him, in fact, to work on a computer and communicate online. Only without the neurointerface yet. In this way, the user can switch the tab in the browser, open the email application, type a text and send it to the selected recipient.
And still Synchron managed to get ahead of its main competitor: the ambitious Neuralink of Elon Musk, who promised to start experiments on human volunteers back in 2020, but to this day has not received permission from the FDA. And the procedure itself from Elon Musk’s project looks much bolder, due to a much more extensive system of sensors and electrodes, it is going to allow the patient much more than Stentrode, but at the same time — more brutal. Instead of a neat passage through the incision on the neck, the patient should cut out a part of the skull by means of a robot surgeon, and after a complex automated operation with direct connection of electrodes to the brain, replace it with an electronic unit.
However, this approach has been used for two decades by the Utah Array (BrainGate) technology from Cyberkinetics, which Musk himself calls “something like an instrument of torture.” This technology has already been developed so much that it is used in more than five hundred laboratories around the world. It allows patients to make rather complex movements with electronic limbs by means of electrodes embedded in the motor areas of the brain. It also provides the ability to move the cursor across the screen with an effort of thought, but requires a very complex neurosurgical operation and cumbersome equipment. Plus, it has quite negative consequences for the health of patients (the body rejects too large and roughly embedded electrodes and sensors. Channels overgrow and block contacts).
The company hopes that the devices of the Stantrade series will be able to become the first suitable for use at home, and not only in the walls of a specially equipped laboratory or ward, like BrainGate. And many surgeons will be able to perform it in almost ordinary hospitals, and not specially designed robots, like Elon Musk’s, or a whole team of specialists with the most complex equipment, as in the case of BrainGate.
Resources: https://habr.com/ru/company/ruvds/blog/679652/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/01/elon-musks-neuralink-makes-big-claims-but-experts-are-skeptical-.html