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An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels

  



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An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels

August 2019

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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 Neu-ralink'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 digitiza-tion: the package for 3,072 channels occupies less than (23 × 18.5 × 2) mm 3. 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. Neu-ralink's approach to BMI has unprecedented packaging density and scalability in a clinically relevant package.





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Citations (89)

References (42)

... Neural electrophysiology (ePhys) has been a powerful tool that has enabled neuroscientists to study the brain over the past few decades. More recently, this has extended to the development of invasive Brain Machine Interfaces (BMIs) for medical and prosthetics applications [1]- [3]. Advances in integrated circuit and microsystems technologies [4]- [6] have enabled aggressive scaling in the number of recording sites that can be simultaneously observed [7]- [10]. ...
... Whether for analysis, or real-time decoding, the challenge however remains of how to assess performance in a realworld scenario without knowledge of the ground truth. There are generally 5 approaches here: (1) to use synthetic data where the ground truth is known [14]; (2) to simultaneously observe intracellular and extracellar activity thus knowing the single unit ground truth [13], [21]- [23]; (3) to establish the ground truth through manual labelling; (4) to estimate a hybrid ground truth using spatially oversampled extracellular recording [24], [25]; and (5) to use evaluation metrics that assess the algorithm without a ground truth [26]. Each of *This work was not supported by any organization 1 Zheng Zhang and Timothy G. Constandinou are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ. ...
... UK {zheng.zhang18, t.constandinou}@imperial.ac.uk these methods have their strengths and limitations, e.g. for (1) it is challenging to establish realistic parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio, variability across channels, etc since these are highly electrode and tissue specific; (2) although definitively establishes the ground truth, this cannot scale beyond a few cells and can only be used acutely; (3) requires significant effort and is thus not scalable to large channel counts; (4) such data has only recently become available through high density active probes; and (5) avoids need for ground truth but is not widely accepted. ...

Preprint
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Dec 2020


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... Beyin makine arayüzleri (BMA) kullanılarak beyinde bulunan sinir hücrelerinden gelen sinyaller anlamlandırılabilmektedir ve bir elektronik cihaza aktarılabilmektedir [1]- [4]. Bu sinyaller (hücre dışı sinirsel kayıtlar) uyuşturulmamış, canlı ve hareketli bir denekten beyine yerleştirilmiş mikroelektrotlar aracılıgı ile gerçek zamanlı olarak kaydedilebilmektedir [1], [5], [6]. ...
... Etkin ve gürbüz bir beyin makine arayüzü geliştirebilmek için hücre dışı sinirsel kayıtlardan dogru sinyallerin (aksiyon potansiyelleri) tespit edilmesi büyük önem taşımaktadır. Bu bilgiler ışıgında hem sinir sisteminin nasıl çalıştıgı hem de kaybedilen uzuvlar yerine robot uzuvlar veya beyin sinyalleri ile bir takım cihazların BMA'lar kullanılarak kontrol edilebilecegi deneysel olarak izah edilmiştir [1]- [4]. ...

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Oct 2020


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... This cultural memory, referring here to the generalized concept, so to the sum of the four types of memory mentioned above, can be translated into any field, not just in history, as the historian of art Ernst Hans Gombrich mentions 7 , when talking about Aby Warburg, theoretician and art historian, specialized in iconic history; Gombrich argues that this historical approach to cultural memory can be applied in any other area of symbolic forms. Within the design, more specifically in the user experience, a design product contains an interface of communication with the user. ...

Chapter
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Dec 2020

... Impairment in any of these modals of perception can lead to drastic consequences, such as challenges in learning and communication. Various approaches have been purposed to substitute lost senses, going all the way to recently popularized attempts to directly interface with neurons in the brain (e.g., NeuraLink [39]) . ...

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Dec 2020


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... Artificial agents are able to effectively distil latent scientific knowledge as they can parallelize examination of huge amounts of data, whereas information access by humans [1629][1630][1631] is limited by human cognition 1632 . High bandwidth bi-directional brainmachine interfaces are being developed to overcome limitations of human cognition 1633 ; however, they are in the early stages of development and we expect that they will depend on substantial advances in machine learning to enhance control of cognition. Eventually, we expect that ANNs will be used as scientific oracles, where researchers who do not rely on their services will no longer be able to compete. ...

Article

Dec 2020

... It has long been maintained that tine type electrodes are adequate for long-term prosthetic command signals. Even Elon Musk has developed an electrode that is claimed to record 3072 single units [1]. He further claims it can be used for long-term prosthetic devices. ...

Article
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Feb 2020

... m)Microscope image of the thread probes, with 32 electrode contacts spaced by 50 μm. n) Magnification of individual electrodes for the thread design (Musk 2019). (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.) ...

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