A macaque managed to play the video game Pong without any controller other than the power of its brain, thanks to a connected chip that was implanted in its skull by Neuralink, the start-up of Elon Musk.
Screenshot of Neuralink video
In a video released by the company on Friday, the Pager macaque can be seen controlling the movements of a racquet with its eyes to prevent the ball from falling into the void, as one might with a joystick, touchscreen, or them. arrows on a keyboard. “A monkey plays a video game telepathically thanks to a chip in its brain,” tweeted the futuristic entrepreneur, also founder of Tesla and SpaceX.
Neuralink welcomes this breakthrough, one more step towards its first objective: “to enable paralyzed people to directly use their neural activity to control computers and mobile devices easily and in real time”.
Last August, the start-up presented pigs in which it had implanted the prototype of a wireless chip, 23 mm in diameter and 8 mm thick (like a small coin).
Help for the paralyzed
The company’s engineers collect neurological signals from the implanted chips on computers – while Pager plays video games via a joystick, for example. The analysis of its signals makes it possible to train machines and to progress in the control of computers by the thought.
Elon Musk hopes that Neuralink’s chips will be used primarily to help people who are paralyzed or suffering from neurological diseases. But the long-term goal is to make implants so safe, reliable and simple that they would qualify for elective (comfort) surgery. People could then spend a few thousand dollars to equip their brains with computing power.
Other brain-machine interfaces are under development. Facebook is funding a project to translate brain activity into words, via algorithms, in order to allow people silenced by neurodegenerative diseases to speak again.
Posted today at 02h54
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