The Future Is Here: There’s Now A Brain Implant That Will Turn Your Thoughts Into Texts

Modern science is pioneering the movement to make that prospect a reality. Between Synchon’s Stentrode device, Paradromics’ Connexus™, and Elon Musk’s Neuralink, brain-computer interface technologies (also known as BCIs) are revolutionizing neural science in an effort to fundamentally change how we communicate in the future. Many of these technologies emerged as a way to improve quality-of-life for people suffering from neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease that affect mobility, memory, and cognition. 

However, industry innovators like Musk see an upsurge in brain modems as a revolutionary development for more than just therapeutic reasons.

“In principle, you would be able to communicate very quickly, and with far more precision, ideas,” said Musk in an interview with Joe Rogan. “And language would – I’m not sure what would happen to language…really, in the first few versions, all we’re going to be trying to do is solve brain injuries.”

Well, that’s a lot to digest. To fully understand and rationalize the pros and cons of BCIs for humanity, let’s first take a look at how this technology functions and what they have accomplished for the medical industry.

How Does a Device Like Stentrode Work?

Okay, so imagine this: The matchstick-sized Stentrode device is implanted through a little keyhole incision in your neck. Then, surgeons guide it through a single blood vessel with X-ray as their eyes inside your body until eventually it rests over your motor cortex. They place it there because that region of your brain carries out voluntary movements and takes care of planning. In that location, the Stentrode monitors electrical signals which come from your brain and stimulates specific regions of your brain in order to move corresponding muscles.

Originally tested on sheep in Australia back in 2016, scientists wanted to develop a way to record and stimulate brain activity without having to open up your cranium and insert electrodes and wires into your skull. After animal testing, Stentrode was implanted in two Australian men who both suffered from motor neuron disease (MND) back in 2019 and 2020.

BCIs would allow those with neurodegenerative diseases to retain mobility and communication.

There were major, positive changes to these men’s daily lives. One recipient, Phillip O’Keefe, was struggling with his arm’s strength and flexibility thanks to MND’s progression. If he were to wait long enough, MND would slowly but surely kill the neurons in his brain and leave him paralyzed. As a result, O’Keefe was unable to do simple tasks like type on a computer. 

According to O’Keefe, the Stentrode retrained his brain to be able to do certain computer functions with over 90% accuracy and even type as many as 20 characters per minute. While that seems like a low number to those of us who aren’t slowly becoming paralyzed, every character O’Keefe could type is a miracle. As a result, O’Keefe now has what many of us take for granted: a part-time data entry job, the ability to write emails, browse the internet, and do online banking.

So why is this relevant to the broader public? Well, ultimately, this implant could allow for people to be able to control computers with their minds.

Imagine Tweeting without Typing or Speaking a Word

Since the initial introduction of Stentrode, patient Thomas Oxley with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare, progressive neurological disease that destroys a person’s nerves which control their voluntary muscle movement, took to Twitter to showcase how he could tweet just using his thoughts. Thanks to the Stentrode’s brain-computer interface, Oxley’s brain blood vessels allowed him to type “hello, world! Short tweet. Monumental progress.”

Similarly, O’Keefe, one of the early adopters of Stentrode, made a guest appearance on Oxley’s Twitter account for a “world first” where he used his brain-computer interface technology to respond to the curious public’s tweets just by using his mind.

Synchron released the results of a year-long trial where four volunteers helped uncover if their Stentrode implants caused any negative effects. Not only were there “no serious adverse events that led to disability or death,” but Synchron also boasted how many basic tasks could be accomplished using their device such as online shopping or banking.

This Breakthrough Could Be Monumental for Healthcare

Throughout various clinical trials, neuroscientists have found massive success in improving the living conditions of patients through BCIs. For example, a team of neuroscientists at the University of California, San Francisco was treating a stroke patient using a “subdural electrode array” which they placed on the surface of his brain. During an 81-week period, they sent his brain waves to an artificial intelligence system that would use an auto-complete feature to create sentences on a screen.

Though he himself is silent, the patient was able to write things like “Here is my computer,” “They have faith,” “Faith is Good,” and “My family is very comfortable” just using thought to text.

One Reddit user shared an anecdote about how this technology could be “absolutely life changing” for her nonverbal, wheelchair-bound niece who is unable to communicate what she wants or needs.

“My niece is 18 and has never been able to talk to anyone…Attach that tech to her wheelchair so she can move herself where she wants to go when she wants to go there? Her life would be incalculably improved,” she wrote. Again, these devices pose all of these benefits without the need for open brain surgery or other invasive procedures.

It’s also worth noting that, at the moment, these implants only make connections from the brain to the computer and not the other way around. Understandably, people grow fearful when they hear about connections between man and machine, but the technology is limited to your brain functioning as a remote control, rather than the computer being able to upload commands to your brain. This unidirectionality is a caveat of how advanced the technology is at the moment, so there is no current need to be fearful of BCIs controlling a user’s brain activity. But will that always be the case?

Brain Implants Could Become Too Advanced for Our Own Good

The question many of us are asking is: When do we go from simply healing to enhancing? Without a doubt, brain implants could positively impact people suffering from traumatic brain injuries, paralysis, neurological damage, and stroke damage. But in current times where definitions apparently change based on political motivations, you have to wonder if the definition of what can be treated by brain implants will be expanded in the future to include more than just neurodegenerative disorders. Perhaps in the next few waves of patients, you’ll have people with post traumatic stress disorder or depression looking to brain implants for therapy. This poses benefits, but also the moment that they can be used in reverse, it then poses the risk of a bad actor inflicting trauma or mental anguish on the implant user. 

The technology is limited to your brain functioning as a remote control; the computer can’t upload commands to your brain.

Some may downplay concerns over mind control, but those concerns aren’t totally unfounded. Take other leading cognitive enhancement companies like Kernel, for example, whose technology goes beyond medical or therapeutic treatment. Kernel Flow is their non-invasive skullcap that measures blood flow through near-infrared spectroscopy, and Kernel Flux is their cap for tracking the electromagnetic fluctuations in the brain using magnetometers. Kernel intends to market them for better cognitive performance and focus, heightened athletic abilities, and even brain-to-brain messaging. Their founder, Bryan Johnson, is so passionate about these skullcaps that he wants one in every American’s household by 2030. 

Again, cognitive enhancement could be a wonderful innovation for those struggling with disability, but where do we draw the line? Is the idea of a “Captain America” style soldier mythical or was the comic book character really just an omen for our future? The slippery slope could go on for miles when you consider how far we’ve come from a meager telegram made of symbolic code to an iMessage that can be encrypted, decorated with customizable “Memojis,” and embellished with effects triggered by a simple birthday greeting. 

For this reason and many more, we should remain skeptical of technologies that remove our own autonomy from personal decision making. No matter the amount of internet privacy laws passed, we know that more than a few bad apples still opt to buy and sell our data without our explicit consent. Many of the neurological technologies developed for therapeutic reasons don’t allow for the brain to necessarily be controlled by a computer, but what happens when they do? Are we okay with giving a computer a blank check to access our private thoughts?

Closing Thoughts

As of right now, brain implant technology is limited but could potentially reduce or outright eliminate the need for invasive brain surgeries. While science pushes forward to borderline transhuman levels, we shouldn’t be blind to the benefits of certain developments. That said, people also need the freedom to feel comfortable voicing their concerns about the ethical implications of man slowly merging with machine. We likely won’t see a problem in our lifetime, but in the future, if people want to stay fully human, they should be allowed enough bodily autonomy to refuse enhancements. 

Many cultures around the world consider the human soul to be sacred. Mess with God’s design, and in the minds of many, you have committed an act of blasphemy. As we know, technology is already progressing, so the question expands beyond if we can push back and instead how we survive as our authentic selves if we truly want to.

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