Now Elon Musk is joining the race. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has acquired Neuralink, a company aiming to establish a direct link between the mind and the computer. Musk has already shown how expensive space technology can be run as a private enterprise. But just how feasible is his latest endeavour? Neurotechnology was born in the 1970s when Jaques Vidal proposed that electroencephalography (EEG), which tracks and records brain-wave patterns via sensors placed on the scalp (electrodes), could be used to create systems that allow people to control external devices directly with their mind. The idea was to use computer algorithms to transform the recorded EEG signals into commands. Since then, interest in the idea has been growing rapidly. Indeed, these 'brain-computer interfaces' have driven a revolution in the area of assistive technologies – letting people with quadriplegia feed themselves and even walk again. In the past few years, major investments in brain research from the US (the BRAIN initiative) and the EU (the Human Brain project) have further advanced research on them. This has pushed applications of this technology into the area of 'human augmentation' – using the technology to improve our cognition and other abilities.
Submitted April 04, 2017 at 06:01AM by MartEden http://ift.tt/2nXsKfT
