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An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels

Elon Musk, Neuralink
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/703801
Elon Musk
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Abstract

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) hold promise for the restoration of sensory and motor function and the treatment of neurological disorders, but clinical BMIs have not yet been widely adopted, in part because modest channel counts have limited their potential. In this white paper, we describe Neuralink’s first steps toward a scalable high-bandwidth BMI system. We have built arrays of small and flexible electrode “threads”, with as many as 3,072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 threads. We have also built a neurosurgical robot capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute. Each thread can be individually inserted into the brain with micron precision for avoidance of surface vasculature and targeting specific brain regions. The electrode array is packaged into a small implantable device that contains custom chips for low-power on-board amplification and digitization: the package for 3,072 channels occupies less than (23 × 18.5 × 2) mm3. A single USB-C cable provides full-bandwidth data streaming from the device, recording from all channels simultaneously. This system has achieved a spiking yield of up to 85.5 % in chronically implanted electrodes. Neuralink’s approach to BMI has unprecedented packaging density and scalability in a clinically relevant package.

Footnotes

  • v2: Added reference to Siegle:2017; corrected scale-bar in Figure 1; added implant weights to Table 2. v3: Added vertical scale-bar to Figure 7 (Left).

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted July 18, 2019.
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An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels
Elon Musk, Neuralink
bioRxiv 703801; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/703801
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An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels
Elon Musk, Neuralink
bioRxiv 703801; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/703801

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