Brain-Computer Interfaces Face a Critical Test

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Neuralink, Synchron, and Neuracle are expanding clinical trials and trying to zero in on an actual product.

Tech companies are always trying out new ways for people to interact with computers-consider efforts like Google Glass, the Apple Watch, and Amazon's Alexa. You've probably used at least one.

But the most radical option has been tried by fewer than 100 people on Earth-those who have lived for months or years with implanted brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs.

Implanted BCIs are electrodes put in paralyzed people's brains so they can use imagined movements to send commands from their neurons through a wire, or via radio, to a computer. In this way, they can control a computer cursor or, in few cases, produce speech.

[...] The impression of progress comes thanks to a small group of companies that are actively recruiting volunteers to try BCIs in clinical trials. They are Neuralink, backed by the world's richest person, Elon Musk; New York-based Synchron; and China's Neuracle Neuroscience.

Each is trialing interfaces with the eventual goal of getting the field's first implanted BCI approved for sale.

I call it the translation era," says Michelle Patrick-Krueger, a research scientist who carried out a detailed survey of BCI trials with neuroengineer Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal at the University of Houston. In the past couple of years there has been considerable private investment. That creates excitement and allows companies to accelerate."

That's a big change, since for years BCIs have been more like a neuroscience parlor trick, generating lots of headlines but little actual help to patients.

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