“The field was un-investable until Elon entered. More than $300 million has been raised by such companies in the last 12 months, even though Facebook this year dropped its quest (it determined a brain-reading helmet won’t be a feasible way to send texts for years). What’s followed has been a huge influx of investment in brain interfaces of all kinds, including EEG readers, magnetic headbands, and new types of high-density implanted probes capable of measuring signals from tens of thousands of neurons at a time.

The same month Neuralink went public with its plans, Facebook announced it would develop a “noninvasive” brain-reading helmet to translate thoughts into social media posts. PBS NEWSHOUR ORIGINAL STILL COURTESY OF NEWSHOUR PRODUCTIONS LLC But “if you can click, then you can use Gmail, surf the Web, and play music.” “We had to persevere in the early days, when people said Ah, it’s cooler to do a robotic arm-it makes a better movie,” says Shenoy. While other brain-interface researchers grabbed the limelight with more spectacular demonstrations, Shenoy’s group has stayed focused on creating a practical interface that paralyzed patients can use for everyday computer interactions. One of the people responsible for the studies with DeGray is Krishna Shenoy, a Stanford University neuroscientist and electrical engineer who is among the leaders of the BrainGate project. With that approach, he managed 18 words per minute. Then, right before the covid-19 pandemic began, he demolished his own record, using a new technique where he imagined he was hand-writing letters on lined paper. Selecting letters on a screen, he reached a rate of eight correct words in a minute. He first established the mark four years ago, using his brain signals to roam over a virtual keyboard with a point-and-click cursor. And by sending these signals to a computer, the scientists have enabled those with the implants to grasp objects with robot arms and steer planes around in flight simulators.ĭeGray is the world’s fastest brain typist. Using these brain-computer interfaces, researchers can measure the firing of dozens of neurons as people think of moving their arms and hands. For the last five years, he has been a participant in BrainGate, a series of clinical trials in which surgeons have inserted silicon probes the size of a baby aspirin into the brains of more than 20 paralyzed people. He was hurt in a freak fall in his yard while taking out the trash and is, he says, “as laid up as a person can be.” He steers his wheelchair by puffing into a tube.īut DeGray is a virtuoso at using his brain to control a computer mouse. In a 12-by-20-foot room at a skilled-nursing facility in Menlo Park, California, researchers are testing the next evolution of the computer interface inside the soft matter of Dennis DeGray’s motor cortex.

Computer thinks tablet is a mouse