Neuralink’s first brain implant in humans encounters problems – IT Pro – News

There are always risks with a brain implant. And more importantly, it is not an intervention that you can simply undo. Every implant causes brain damage, there is simply no room in your brain to simply place a bunch of electrodes, and no matter how small you make it, you will always cause damage when inserting and removing them.

Patients in a hopeless situation are extremely vulnerable, precisely because of that reasoning: “it’s already bad, it can only get better.” Yes, that man was paralyzed, but if this implant is rejected, or worse, if he gets an infection during installation or removal, it will damage a good part of his motor cortex. And that means that if a different technique is used later, he may not be a candidate for a better implant.

There are countless other options that use proven techniques. Dutchman Gert-Jan Oskam, among others, can walk again thanks to a brain implant. If you read the article about it, it turns out that they use an electrode array that lies on top of the brain, which causes much less damage than the Neuralink implant.

And there are other options: Synchron, for example, has made an implant that sits in the blood vessels of your brain. The signals are therefore not exactly as clear as with the Neuralink implant, but are much safer and without causing brain damage.

What Neuralink does is not new, unique, or as it turns out, even particularly effective.