Overriding the Brain

One of the core innovations for the future of mankind is integrating technology into the human brain through means of implants. This idea is everywhere: from sci-fi novels like Quarantine by Greg Egan to Hollywood blockbusters like Elysium, our obsession with interlacing brain and technology only grows wilder. However, this still seems far-fetched, as progress from companies like Neuralink have been stagnant. What does this mean for the future? Will we be able to untangle the brain? How realistic is Musk’s idea of interlacing brain and technology, and what does the public think about this? In this article I will try to summarize recent developments in the area, and leave you to give the final judgment on the issue: what would this achieve? 

The main focus of interlacing the brain and technology is inventing brain implants that are able to send artificial signals to the brain causing natural movement. A prime example would be brain implants for Parkinson’s disease. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) implants are now a common course of treatment, used to combat tremors, which is a frequent complaint for Parkinson’s patients. This involves electrically stimulating certain areas of the brain with electrodes implanted in the brain. A study in 2019 showed that from a sample of Parkinson’s patients that were treated with DBS, 72.5% of them improved, and 75% of patients say that it provided symptom control (Hitti et al., 2019). This shows that our knowledge on brain implants is quite proficient. This isn’t the entire story, however. While we know that using DBS in the subthalamic nucleus relieves muscle tremors, we don’t know how. Current studies not only prove that the structure of subthalamic nucleus is highly complex due to its heterogeneous nature, they also describe DBS as being ‘‘more complex than previously anticipated’’(Hamani et al., 2017). With this being the case, it is difficult to conclude that we ‘‘know’’ the brain simply from successful results following DBS.

However, there is some positive news. Currently, there are studies that focus on brain computer interfaces (BCI), which provide a channel of communication between the brain and a given computer interface (Saha et al., 2021), which can be used to treat speech impediments. A case study was conducted on patients with paralysis, with the hopes of restoring communication that was lost due to muscular degeneration. They were prompted with questions, and after having some time to think about their answers, they begun typing using the BCI, which the typing time was measured. Among the three paralysis patients with intracortical BCI’s (iBCI), average characters typed per minute has quadrupled compared to a previous study in 2015 (Pandarinath et al., 2017). Another astonishing study was done in Caltech, where they mapped brain responses of how the individual would move their left arm onto a computer interface. By imputing the signals from the brain as a whole, they were able to determine that the posterior parietal cortex was the most reliable source for encoding movement.his is denoted as being the area for the spatial representation of objects for planning and controlling action  (Kobayashi, 2009). Thus, after training a test patient to control a robotic arm by thinking about movement, they were able to match the recordings such that not only the arm was successfully moved, but they were also able to coordinate it so finely that it could reach out, grab, and pick up a cup from a table!

However, the question still remains: What do these technological advances mean for healthy people? Currently, one of the main drawbacks of BCIs is that they have to be extremely individualized. What we know from previous studies is that not only basic characteristics such as age, gender, and lifestyle change brain signals. Subtle changes caused by attention, memory load or fatigue may also end up influencing brain signals, potentially disrupting how the interface would code or act on certain signals. This would mean that the interface has to be defining enough to understand actions from electrical signals, but also flexible enough to understand that they could change based on neurophysiological changes. For this, quite frankly, we are not there yet. It would take a lot of money and time to calibrate the interface for each individual with the technology we have today, for actions as simple as picking up a cup. For now, it is safe to say that BCIs are limited to medical care and increasing patients’ quality of life. 

Furthermore, it is important to ask ourselves, what it is that we want to achieve from adding implants to a healthy brain. Contrary to what people may think, 41% of Americans are ‘worried’ about brain chip implants, while only 9% are ‘very enthusiastic’ (Funk et al., 2016). This is corroborated with beliefs that ‘it would mess with nature’ or that ‘it doesn’t match religion’, which constitutes around 40% of the surveyed participants rejecting brain chips based on moral grounds. So a widespread use of brain chips would probably be limited due to not only financial grounds, but moral grounds as well. In light of current advancements, we won’t see brain implants being integrated to a computer interface in such a futuristic way that it would promote, say augmented reality, unless we discover new methods that would decrease the overall cost of mapping the brain, and this onto a computer interface. Seeing how the general public views brain implants, and how difficult it seems to be to make them functional enough to have a substantial benefit as a healthy person, I don’t think it is wise to invest in this just yet. Perhaps later into the future we will be able to do many wondrous things with them, but for now, we are only left to imagine what it would look like.