Facebook and Neuralink’s plans to merge people with their devices will likely take several years to materialize. Wearables like what CTRL-Labs is developing rely on weaker neural signals and thus have shown less precise control. Brain implants promise more accuracy, but require highly specialized brain surgery, and pose a risk to patients.
Neurotechnology startup Synchron, based in Silicon Valley and Melbourne, Australia, may have found a way around these problems. The brain-computer interface company is testing whether a matchstick-sized neural implant that doesn’t require open brain surgery could allow paralyzed people the ability to control computers using only their thoughts.
In a clinical trial sponsored by Synchron, doctors in Australia have implanted the stent-like device for the first time in a person, a patient who is severely paralyzed from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and can’t move or speak. Dubbed the Stentrode, the device is delivered to the brain using a catheter that is snaked through the jugular vein in the neck. The device is meant to travel all the way to the motor cortex, the “control center” of the brain that is responsible for controlling movement, but stays inside the blood vessel.
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