The war to lead the brain-machine implant market has begun. A Chinese company has just received a multi-million-dollar investment that threatens Musk’s supremacy.
The Chinese company NeuraMatrix has just announced a multi-million-dollar capital expansion that will allow them to bring their brain-machine interface to market. With this, China joins the global race led by Elon Musk to be the first to take this technology out of laboratories and into everyday life.
According to the Chinese technology website CnTechPost, NeuraMatrix’s technology is similar to what Musk is developing with Neuralink. It is also a chip implanted in the skull that allows wireless communication with machines.
CnTechPost states that NeuraMatrix’s implant has the same precision in signal acquisition as the American company’s device but with lower energy consumption, allowing it to be smaller by using a smaller battery. NeuraMatrix claims that its wireless transmission operates on the medical frequency band, a radio band reserved exclusively for medical use, instead of Bluetooth. This would enable a higher transmission of brain activity data.
The Chinese company also states that it has already secured agreements with several hospitals in Beijing, including Tsinghua Changgeng, Sanbo Neurosurgical Hospital, and Tiantan Hospital, which specializes in neurological diseases.
NeuraMatrix is composed of scientists trained at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. According to the Chinese media, the company has just received its first major capital injection from the investment firm Matrix Partners China. With this funding, NeuraMatrix plans to start mass production of its products—expected to launch before the end of this year—and invest in new talent to develop additional technologies.
The Battle to Connect Mind and Machine:
Brain-machine interfaces promise to change the way we interact with technology. Instead of using keyboards, screens, or voice-activated microphones, we would communicate through a chip that receives our brain’s bioelectric signals and transmits them directly to machines.
This chip can be surgically implanted, integrated into external objects like bracelets or rings, or a combination of both.
Brain-machine interfaces have a clear medical application, as they allow real-time monitoring of brain activity, facilitating the study and treatment of neurological diseases. Musk has even described Neuralink as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.”
This technology is already being tested: both Neuralink and NeuraMatrix are collaborating with various hospitals. The biggest hurdle will be regulatory approval, although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been working with Musk since July of last year.
However, telepathic communication with our devices is still a long way off. Neuralink’s goal is to interpret the electromagnetic signals of our brain—not just to control machines but also to cure paralysis, enhance sensory perception, or turn our brain into a high-fidelity system capable of streaming music directly.
For Musk, this technology will be the only way to enhance human mental capabilities and compete with artificial intelligence.
Neuralink’s chip was successfully tested on a pig, and Musk’s company is pushing hard to bring it to mass production. NeuraMatrix is doing the same, but they are not the only competitors in this race.
In China, Alibaba’s subsidiary Neurabuy has introduced a similar device aimed at e-commerce applications.
Meanwhile, Facebook recently announced a non-invasive brain-interface project in collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco. Unlike Neuralink or NeuraMatrix, this device would not require surgery. Instead, it would detect brain signals generated when a person tries to speak, enabling control of technologies like virtual and augmented reality or helping people who have lost their ability to communicate.
These are just a few examples of ongoing research in this field. Numerous companies and laboratories worldwide are currently developing this technology. The global brain-machine interface market, valued at €1.2 billion in 2020, is expected to exceed €3 billion by 2030.
There is little information coming from China regarding their advancements in this area, but it is clear that the country is investing heavily in these technologies. The race to be the first to dominate this market is intensifying.
Many challenges remain, particularly ethical and regulatory issues that must be addressed before neural implants become widespread. As highlighted in a Nature journal article last year, we still don’t know if the future will involve drilling holes in our skulls or if a bracelet connected to our spinal cord will suffice.
What seems clear is that this technology will eventually prevail, and the way we interact with machines will be completely transformed within just a few years.
Chinese scientists have created a method that improves interaction between miniature brains grown in the lab and the chips used by robots and computers to perform their tasks
Chinese scientists have developed a robot with an artificial brain created in the lab that, combined with artificial intelligence, can learn to perform various tasks. The researchers have integrated living brain cells into a chip using an open-source system called MetaBOC, which they claim could lead to the development of a new form of brain-like computing that is more energy-efficient than current computers. The ultimate goal of the project, they say, is to rehouse human brain cells in artificial bodies.
Bioinformatics is one of the most unsettling branches of computing technologies. What makes it possible is that, just like computers, our neurons perceive the world and act upon it using the same language: electrical signals. Brain-on-a-chip technologies cultivate large quantities of human brain cells on silicon chips so they can receive electrical signals from a computer, understand their meaning, and respond accordingly.
The brain-on-chip developed by researchers from Tianjin University and the Southern University of Science and Technology in China combines a miniaturized and simplified version of an organ (organoid) created with human stem cells with a neural interface chip to power the robot and teach it to avoid obstacles and grasp objects.
“This is a technology that uses an ‘in vitro cultivated brain’—such as brain organoids—connected to an electrode chip to form a brain-on-chip, which encodes and decodes feedback from stimulation,” explained Ming Dong, vice president of Tianjin University, on Tuesday, in statements to the state-run Science and Technology Daily, as reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
A Human-Robot Intelligence
The new technology offers a different approach from what Elon Musk is pursuing with Neuralink, a brain-machine interface that aims to combine the brain’s electrical signals with the computing power of a computer. This cutting-edge form of computing raises many ethical concerns and, according to SCMP, is currently a priority for Beijing.
The Chinese researchers claim that their study, published in Brain, a journal by Oxford University Press, and peer-reviewed, could lead to the development of a hybrid human-robot intelligence. To build it, they used brain organoids made from human pluripotent stem cells, which are found in the early stages of embryos and can develop into different types of tissues. When these cells are grafted into the brain, they can form functional connections with the host brain, the researchers say.
The team claims to have developed a technique that uses low-intensity ultrasound, which helps organoids integrate and grow better inside the brain. Tests conducted on mice revealed that when grafts are treated with low-intensity ultrasound, the differentiation of organoid cells into neurons improves, and the networks they form with the host brain are enhanced.
“The transplantation of human brain organoids into living brains is a novel method to advance organoid development and function. The organoid grafts have a functional vascular system derived from the host and show advanced maturation,” the team wrote. “Brain organoid transplants are considered a promising strategy for restoring brain function by replacing lost neurons and reconstructing neural circuits.”
The video was recorded during a brain surgery on a patient who was awake and reciting a series of numbers
Researchers from the company Precision Neuroscience have managed to capture images of how thoughts form in the brain in real time. The team was able to visualize the electrical signals produced by neurons when a person thinks or speaks, thanks to their brain implant, which uses flexible electrode arrays placed on the brain’s surface. This technology could help people with paralysis control computers and “have an office job,” they claim.
The video was captured during one of their experiments, where the team implanted these electrodes in a man’s brain while he was undergoing surgery to treat an illness. The patient remained awake during the procedure, allowing researchers to record his brain activity as he recited various numbers.
The resulting video (a slowed-down GIF version can be seen below) has been decelerated 20 times to make the process visible. It displays a map of electrical activity in the brain, where red and orange points indicate higher voltage and blue and purple indicate lower voltage.
Ben Rapoport, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Precision Neuroscience, describes this video as “the physical manifestation of thought,” as it shows how electrical signals are organized in the brain during speech production. The ability to visualize these patterns opens new possibilities for understanding how thoughts are formed and how we might decode a person’s intentions before they express them verbally.
Researchers believe this breakthrough has great potential in developing technologies that allow people with paralysis or communication difficulties to interact with the world through thought. Although Precision’s electrodes are still in the testing phase, mainly in patients already requiring brain surgery, the results so far are promising.
