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Brain Vlog 31. The big news last week came from Elon Musk, and his company Neuralink, where they posted an update on their research and progress of implanting a sensor in the brain and doing all type of science fiction stuff. Who’s Elon Musk? He’s the guy behind Tesla, and the self-driving cars, Space X and space tourism, and now Neuralink, and electronic chips implanted in the brain. Now obviously, that last part, is of interest to me. In 2016 he co-founded Neuralink, so we knew he would be doing that. Well, now he’s doing it. In his tweet announcing the event, he was making sure he caught our attention. With words like ‘The matrix in the matrix’, the expectations were sky-high. Then came the event. During the event he presented us Gertrude. Gertrude is a pig, I kid you not, with an implanted chip in the brain. That chip made it possible to get a live feed from the brain and beeps every time the snout of Gertrude was touching something. Well, I hate to be the one curbing the enthusiasm here, but short term… besides Gertrude and her snout, there won’t be much ground-breaking sci-fi developments. Let’s be real here, if you want to have any chip implanted on a large scale on humans, as Elon Musk’s ambition is, outside of pure experiential lab work, we’re pretty much at square one. The first and biggest and most obvious hurdle to take, is to know how the brain will react to such an insertion, as it will attack and maybe reject the intruder and how will the implant react to such attacks, how would the materials deteriorate, what would be the consequences of that… Long story short: if we want to know how the brain will react to such an implant over the time of let’s say 10 years, well, we’ll just have to test that out and wait 10 years. And Neuralink hasn’t even announced the first clinical trial yet, or even given a possible future starting date. So don’t expect any groundbreaking results anytime soon.. WHO I AM Hi, my name is Gregory Caremans. I’m the founder of the Brain Academy. I’m the former director of the Institute of Neurocognitivism (Belgium), and as such I specialised in the Neurocognitive and Behavioral Approach (NBA). I’ve studied psychology and have a Master in Communication. With the Brain Academy, my aim is to make Brain Science accessible to everyone. We make brain related content, such as this video, but also online courses and I’m currently working on my first book. I also love to go live and speak at events (check out my TEDx below) If you would like to support our work, the best way is by becoming a member of the Brain Academy BECOME A MEMBER OF THE BRAIN ACADEMY OUR ONLINE COURSES Neuroplasticity: How To Rewire Your Brain Neuroscience For Parents The Power Of Focus The Ultimate Guide to Memory And Learning Skills Confessions Of An Ex Procrastinator Train Your Brain Master Your Brain Stress Management: 40 Easy Ways To Deal With Stress A Shopper’s Guide Through Marketing And Manipulation The Science Of Leadership Find Your Flow MY TEDx What nobody tells you about being a TEDx speaker and host MY FAVOURITE BOOKS ABOUT THE BRAIN Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow: David Brooks, The social animal: Robert Sapolski, Behave: Norman Doidge, The brain that changes itself: Gina Rippon, The gendered brain: Mattew Walker, Why we sleep: Yuval Harari, Sapiens: (these are affiliate links, so you know) GET IN TOUCH The best way is still simply by email: gcaremans@ Unfortunately, I get way more mails than I can answer, so don’t take it personally if I can’t reply. It’s not you, it’s me… :(
