Flexible brain-computer interface has achieved a milestone, and China has also caught up this time

Cutting-edge innovation is like wading through a river of unknown depth while feeling the stones. The process is often accompanied by the hardships of exploration and the bitterness of failure. No one should understand this better than the "Iron Man of Silicon Valley" who owns many technology companies. Deeper.

After being investigated for suspected animal cruelty and the human experiment schedule was repeatedly delayed, the brain-computer interface company Neuralink finally received approval from the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) to conduct human clinical experiments in its seventh year of establishment.

As a research direction that spans multiple disciplines, the future of brain-computer interface is a sea of ​​stars: in addition to helping patients with no ability to move independently improve their lives, brain-computer interface is also expected to be used in business, industry, entertainment and other fields, and even Finally realize the digital twin in the metaverse world.

According to data from Data Bridge Market Research, the brain-computer interface market size will be US$1.74 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach US$5.692 billion by 2030. In 2023-2024, many leading companies will enter the clinical stage. , this will also be a critical year for brain-computer interfaces to enter the commercial market.

Burned 356 million US dollars in seven years, and finally reached the "human brain"

While large artificial intelligence models are popular all over the world, the concerns they cause are increasing day by day. In March this year, more than 1,000 industry executives and experts, including Musk, signed an open letter calling for a moratorium on the development of advanced AI within six months. In the letter, Musk and others expressed concerns that advanced AI may pose far-reaching risks to society and humanity.

Long before the AI ​​craze set off by ChatGPT, Musk had always maintained a cautious attitude towards artificial intelligence. In 2017, Musk predicted that competition and confrontation between countries in the field of artificial intelligence would most likely be the cause of World War III. In a speech to Neuralink employees, Musk even said that the possibility of preventing artificial intelligence from destroying mankind is only 5%-10%. In fact, Musk’s original intention in founding Neuralink was also to enhance human control over AI and help the human brain integrate with AI to prevent humans from being eliminated by AI.

In the summer of 2016, Musk established Neuralink, a brain computing company in California, aiming to develop electrode devices that can be implanted in the human brain and wirelessly connected to computers. At the beginning of its establishment, Neuralink's first batch of employees were all composed of engineers from Musk's many companies (Tesla, SpaceX, etc.).

Developing and producing advanced solutions for machine nervous systems requires huge investments. By January 2023, Neuralink's expected valuation had reached $5.5 billion. Before becoming a unicorn, Neuralink was still a real “gold-eating beast”.

In August 2017, Neuralink announced that it had received US$26.96 million in financing, but the actual amount of capital injection, mainly from Musk himself, exceeded US$100 million. Less than two years later, the company received another $51 million in Series B financing. In July 2021, Neuralink announced the completion of Series C financing, raising US$205 million. As of now, Neuralink still holds the record for the largest single financing in this field.

After the Series B financing, Neuralink’s research and development began to make substantial progress: In July 2019, Neuralink realized a high-throughput flexible electrode integrating 1024 channels in a single device, and developed a surgical robot for flexible electrode implantation. Its development The system can send 1,500 electronic probes into the mouse brain and collect 10 times more data from the USB-C port on the mouse's head than the best sensor at the time; in September, Neuralink developed a "brain-machine neural mesh" device N1, which attaches more than 3,000 electrodes to flexible filaments, may enable human brain nerves to control smart devices. It was also from this year that Musk began to propose experiments on related technologies in the human brain.

In April 2021, Neuralink released a video of a 9-year-old macaque named "Pager" playing the table tennis video game

In the next three years, Neuralink implanted brain-computer interfaces in pig brains and monkey brains, realizing brain-computer data transmission, monkey thoughts pinball games, and monkey thoughts moving the computer cursor to light up characters. In November 2022, Musk announced that Neuralink had submitted most of the documents to the FDA, and the first Neuralink would be implanted in humans within about six months after passing the review.

Now, this day has finally arrived.

Neuralink implant: includes biocompatible shell, battery, chip and electronics, wires

Neuralink surgical robot

It is understood that Neuralink’s latest implantable device N1, which has been approved for human clinical trials this time, is only the size of a coin, is powered by a battery, and can be charged wirelessly. The implantation process will be completed by the surgical robot R1, which will assist neurosurgeons. The specific operation process includes positioning the implantation location, removing the skull and implanting the N1 device, and suturing the wound. The whole process takes about 15 minutes and requires the insertion of 64 wires.

Invasive Brain-Computer Interface Three-Army Join Forces

It is worth mentioning that brain-computer interface is not a technology that has only been produced in recent years, and Neuralink is not the first company to implant a brain-computer interface in the human body.

According to surgical procedures, brain-computer interface devices can be classified into three categories: invasive, non-invasive and semi-invasive. Among them, invasive brain-computer interface is the international mainstream brain-computer interface technology route. It needs to be implanted into the cerebral cortex. The advantage is that it is closer to the brain tissue and the EEG signals are clearer and more accurate. The disadvantage is that it can easily cause immune reactions such as cerebral hemorrhage and scar tissue. . This wearable device is non-invasive and does not require surgery to implant EEG sensors into the brain, but its signal spatial resolution is not very high. The semi-invasive method implants the brain-computer interface between the scalp and cerebral cortex, and the effects and risks are between non-invasive and invasive methods.

In contrast, the R&D risks of invasive brain-computer interfaces are greater, and the technical requirements and financial thresholds are higher. Invasive brain-computer interfaces mainly include Utah array electrodes, vascular stent electrodes and flexible brain-computer interfaces. The Utah array electrode has 96 channels and is characterized by being hard and easy to cut brain tissue; the vascular stent electrode has 16 channels and is implanted from the neck vein and can only record field potential; the flexible brain-computer interface has 1024 channels and can be automatically implanted by a robot. enter.

Neuralink is a representative company of flexible brain-computer interfaces. Before it was approved for human experiments, Cyberkinetics' Utah Array electrode was approved by the FDA in 2004 and conducted the first clinical trial on motor cortex brain-computer interface. The control of the robotic arm is completed through movement intentions; in 2021, Synchron's vascular stent electrode was approved by the FDA to begin human trials in the United States, and in July 2022, it announced the first implantation of a brain-computer interface in the United States.

So far, flexible brain-computer interfaces have finally joined the army, and invasive brain-computer interfaces of three technical routes have been involved in human clinical trials.

Domestic track division

Currently, major companies are competing to develop brain-computer equipment. The application scenarios of this science-fiction technology are fascinating. Abroad, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have entered the game one after another. As the world's largest consumer market, the domestic brain-computer interface industry has huge development space and potential. In addition to giants such as Tencent and Alibaba, high-quality start-ups are also emerging.

According to incomplete statistics from Dynamic Technology, from 2020 to now, there are Naolu Technology, Flexible Core Cloud, Yunrui Intelligence, Ningju Technology, Naohu Technology, Qiannao Technology, Boricon, Yuan Companies such as Lai Technology, Rouling Technology, Weiling Medical, and Changxiang Medical received financing. Major institutions investing in the field of brain-computer interconnection include Sequoia Capital and BlueRun Ventures, with most financing scales in the tens of millions of yuan.

Among the many brain-computer interface startups that have received financing above, the non-invasive route occupies the majority. Among them, Qiannao Technology is the only brain-computer interface company in the world besides Neuralink that has raised more than US$200 million; invasive Among brain-computer interface companies, Brain Tiger Technology won the 2021 WAIC Outstanding Artificial Intelligence Leader Award for its "Minimally Invasive Implantable High-Throughput Flexible Brain-Computer Interface" project.

The report "Future Development Trends of Brain-Computer Interfaces" points out that hardware for brain-computer technology research is developing towards flexibility, wirelessness, miniaturization, higher throughput and low power consumption.

The "minimally invasive implantable high-throughput flexible brain-computer interface technology" of Shanghai Enterprises has surpassed the level of other domestic and foreign counterparts in the field of flexible brain-computer interfaces. The new generation of implantable brain-computer interface "Adaptive Flexible Optoelectronic Neuroprobe Based on Silk Protein" invented by Tao Hu, chief scientist of Neuralink Technology, avoids the problem of intracerebral hemorrhage that may be caused by Neuralink requiring microneedle implantation, it was announced. China's first semi-invasive brain-computer interface device is about to be put into clinical operation.

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