Brain implant devices could have a transformative impact on human health. Now Elon Musk's company Neuralink has tested its implants in a human trial. Neuralink has implanted its first "brain-computer interface" (BCI) chip inside a human brain, according to the company's co-founder Elon Musk. On January 29, Musk wrote on his social media platform, X, that results were "promising." It's been eight years in the making: Since it was founded in 2016, the company has been developing a computer chip designed to be implanted into the brain, where it monitors the activity of thousands of neurons.    The chip — called Telepathy — consists of a tiny probe, containing 1,024 electrodes, attached to flexible threads thinner than a human hair. Each electrode records the electrical activity of neurons in the brain, but does not "control" neurons.   Neuralink has said it aims to help patients overcome neurological conditions such as blindness and paralysis. However, Musk has described other ambitions for the brain chip that are reminiscent of science fiction. "The future is going to be weird,ʺ said Musk in 2020. As well as treating health issues, Musk has said he wants to link the brain with computers to allow information and memories from deep inside the mind to be downloaded, like in the 1999 science fiction film "The Matrix."     Musk has also said he wants to provide people with "super vision" and achieve human telepathy, which he said would help humanity prevail in a war against artificial intelligence.   Sci-fi or reality? But are any of Musk's sci-fi ideas feasible? Short answer: no. ʺWe cannot read people's minds. The amount of information that we can decode from the brain is very limited,ʺ said Giacomo Valle, a neural engineer at the University of Chicago in the United States. Juan Alvaro Gallego, a brain-computer interface researcher at Imperial College London, agreed, arguing it's hard to imagine BCIs reading our minds in this lifetime. ʺThe fundamental problem is that we don't really know where or how thoughts are stored in the brain. We can't read thoughts if we don't understand the neuroscience behind them,ʺ Gallego told DW. Clinical uses of BCIs grounded in reality Musk first showcased the Neuralink technology in 2019, introducing a pig with a Neuralink chip implanted in its brain and a video of a monkey controlling a pong paddle with its mind. But the potential for BCIs goes far beyond animals playing games.  Gallego said the technology was first developed to help people paralyzed with spinal injuries or conditions like Locked-in syndrome — when a patient is fully conscious but can't move any part of the body except the eyes — to communicate.    ʺIf you [could] translate their internal communication into words on a computer, it would be life-changing,ʺ said Gallego. In these sorts of cases, BCIs are designed to record electrical signals from neurons in the motor cortex, then send the signals to a computer where they are displayed as text. The motor cortex isn't typically thought to be involved in thinking. Instead, it's where instructions to move are sent out to the body, like the tongue and jaw muscle movements for speech.   What the electrodes are really recording is a motor plan — more precisely, the end result of all the processing in different parts of the brain (sensory, linguistic, cognitive) required to move or speak. So BCIs aren't really recording your thoughts, but rather the brain's plan to move a finger here, a leg there, or to open your mouth to make an "aah" sound. ʺScientists also showed they can read the motor cortex's intent to draw a letter,ʺ said Gallero. ʺUsing complex modelling [with the connected computer], this allowed paralyzed participants to type 90 characters per minute, which was a breakthrough.ʺ   BCIs help people feel and walk again Another breakthrough occurred in 2016 when Barack Obama, the US president at the time, shook Nathan Copeland's robotic hand. Copeland, who was paralyzed after a car accident, felt Obama's handshake as if they were touching skin to skin.   ʺThis demonstrated a different capability of BCIs. Rather than using electrodes to record from the brain and interpret intended movements, they instead stimulated the brain with tiny currents to produce sensation,ʺ said Gallego. In Copeland's case, a BCI called the Utah array was implanted into his brain to improve the functioning of a disabled part of his nervous system. The device, produced by a Neuralink rival, was implanted into his sensory cortex and connected with sensors on the end of his robotic hand.   When Copeland shook hands with Obama, those sensors sent signals causing electrodes in the sensory cortex to stimulate the "hand" region of the brain, allowing Copeland to "feel" the president's hand.  More recently, a patient with a spinal cord injury caused by a bike accident was fitted with a brain-spine interface which enabled him to walk naturally again.  The device enabled signals from the brain to connect with motor regions of the spinal cord below the level of the damage, thereby bridging the injury.   These new capabilities of BCIs represent the next generation of deep brain stimulation, a treatment that involves implanting electrodes into areas of the brain to help people with movement disorders. ʺThese technologies have been around for a while. Deep brain stimulation has been used to help many thousands of people with Parkinson's disease since the 1990s,ʺ said Gallego. Brain surgery for everyone? Really? For now, BCIs like Neuralink and the Utah array are only being used in special one-off cases. ʺAll the clinical applications of BCIs are still at the research stage and not implemented in clinical practice yet,ʺ said Valle. Neuralink tried to receive approval from US federal drug regulators to test its technology in human trials last year, but suffered a blow when authorities rejected the application, citing major safety concerns. FDA approval was finally granted in May 2023.  The device consists of 96 tiny, flexible probes that must be individually inserted into the brain.   Brain surgery is no joke. Even if the invasive procedure required to wire a BCI up to the brain goes well, the potential for infection or immune ʺrejectionʺ of the device remains long after implantation.   The birth of neuroethics In the long term, Valle said, BCIs raise "a variety of ethical concerns" that will need to be considered carefully by researchers, companies, funding agencies, regulators and users themselves.   The technology is giving birth to a new field of moral inquiry: neuroethics. It's here where discussions turn more sci-fi.   ʺFor example, what are the consequences of privacy breaches when the data in question relate to people's thoughts? How can we ensure that a lack of access does not exacerbate societal inequity? What happens when this information can be directly input into the brain?" said Valle. After all, it's the role of science fiction to prepare us for what might come in the future. Warnings about surveillance and technological control were all there in early 20th-century novels, such as Brave New World and 1984. Have we listened to them?                                   

Mariam, who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym to protect her identity, arrived in Germany six months ago as a student. Back in her native Iran, the 39-year-old engineer had a fully independent life. "Emigrating wasn't an option for me for a long time," she told DW. "My whole life I worked hard and achieved a lot: a degree from a prestigious university, later a well-paid position at a construction company in Tehran," she said. "But in the end I felt it didn't matter how good I was and how hard I tried. I will never manage to get out of this swamp and feel free and happy." Many of her female friends and acquaintances have either left the country or are looking for a way to do so, she said. Mariam herself started by looking for opportunities to study in Germany, where she has many friends. She quickly secured a spot in a master's course at a technical university in southern Germany, which opened the door to a visa. Mariam doesn't want to talk much about politics. What she will say is that "every aspect of our lives in Iran is politicized. Even what I as a woman put on in the morning to leave to the house is a political statement. Every day we are under enormous pressure and stress. We cannot get away from it." "The best experience in the past six months in Germany for me was the feeling of being free and undisturbed to wear what I want, and the conviction that I can build a better future if I make the effort," Mariam said. ‘Emigrating to Germany' Mariam is part of a group called ‘Emigrating to Germany' with almost 40,000 members on the encrypted messaging app Telegram. People post job vacancies for foreign workers in Germany, possibilities to have Iranian degrees recognized and interesting further study programs. A lot of the posts relate to opportunities for medical personnel to emigrate. In the medical sector alone, more than 10,000 workers have left Iran in the past two years, according to official figures. Many have gone to Arab countries, Iranian daily newspaper Shargh reported in May. The country is hemorrhaging general medicine workers, the head of the parliamentary health commission, Hossein Ali Shahriari, has said. Those leaving include professors, doctors and nurses. Overall, the Iran Migration Observatory at the Sharif University of Technology has recorded the departure of around 65,000 well-qualified and highly talented people from Iran each year over the past decade alone. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, millions of well-educated people have left, mostly due to the difficult economic situation but also due to political repression by the government. The government has not talked publicly about plans on how to stop the wave of emigration. An ever more female brain drain This exodus, particularly of women academics, has intensified in recent years, Bahram Salavti warned already back in early 2022. The director of the Iran Migration Observatory in Tehran pointed to the high level of unemployment among women as the main driver. Official figures show 60% of students in Iran are women, but that share drops to just 15% on the job market. Massive repression of nationwide protests late last year after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, and a crackdown on women's rights have further fueled female brain drain. "When protests don't lead to a solution and protesters don't see a way to change anything, when they have no prospects for the future, they resort to the strategy of emigration," sociologist Mehrdad Darvishpour underlined. The professor at Mälardalen University in Sweden has been researching migration, including emigration from Iran, for years. "We're seeing a phenomenon of female migration from Iran, even though a progressive feminist movement with worldwide resonance has sprung up there," Darvishpour said. "Iran's rulers have no interest in societal reconciliation. They rely on fear and oppression." "The emigration of female academics will weaken society's capacity for democratic and secular demands. Therefore, those in power will do nothing about it. Their behavior resembles that of an occupying power that ignores the interests of citizens and national resources in favor of maintaining power," he said. Leaving not a choice, but an obligation The Iranian parliament recently ramped up the pressure on women who defy national orders to cover their heads as instructed. After months of discussion, the legislature waved through a law allowing harsher penalties on women who break clothing regulations: up to ten years in prison. The "Bill to Support the Family by Promoting the Culture of Chastity and Hijab" foresees prison sentences of between five and ten years for women who fail to wear a headscarf or dress "inappropriately" in collaboration with "foreign or hostile governments, media, groups or organizations." The law also paves the way for fines for individuals who "promote nudity" or target the mandatory Islamic headscarf (hijab) in the media or on online networks. Business owners whose female employees violate the dress code may be banned from leaving the country in the future. No wonder many Iranian women now sees things the same way as Mariam. "Emigrating was no longer a choice for me," she said. "I was forced to do it."

Scientists this week published information on an unprecedented case in Australia, where they found and extracted a live parasitic worm from the brain of a woman in Canberra.  The worm was some 8 centimeters (just over 3 inches) long and is a roundworm most commonly seen in python species, known as Ophidascaris robertsi.  It was found in the brain of a 64-year-old woman after she had complained of a variety of changing symptoms and afflictions over a prolonged period. 'Just get it out of my forceps!' Neurosurgeon Hari Priya Bandi found and removed the parasite with forceps during a biopsy.  "I used tumor-holding forceps and lifted out something that I definitely was not expecting: a linear, squiggling line," Bandi told DW on Tuesday. "And my junior doctor said, 'is that an artery?', because that's what it looked like. And I said, 'it's not an artery, we're nowhere near any artery!' And I noticed it was moving and I went, 'just get it out of my forceps!' So we rapidly put it in a pathology pot, and it was a vigorously wriggling worm." Asked whether it was fair to assume the worm had been moving around inside, Bandi said it was and that their scans demonstrated as much.  The woman's symptoms had started as lung, liver and adominal problems, Bandi said, but evolved towards problems like depression, presumably as the animal's activities kept affecting different parts of the brain.  Her psychiatrist had conducted CT scans in which what was later identified as the worm was first visible, and later MRI scans to prepare for the procedure had then shown how the abnormality was moving.    A known possibility, but an unprecedented find "When you operate on someone's brain and you take a biopsy or something, you never expect to encounter something living," Doctor Sanjaya Senanayake, who co-authored the study with Bandi, told Reuters. "[It] was certainly something we'll never forget."  The paper on the case was published in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal on Monday.  Bandi and Senanayake speculated that the woman might have been exposed to the parasite when foraging for wild grasses to make a dish similar to spinach, when she might have been exposed to python feces.  The worm was successfully removed last year. The woman, whom Senanayake praised as being "very courageous and patient," returned to normal life after the operation to remove the parasite, but medical professionals have continued to monitor her.  "Obviously, because this was an unusual case at so many levels, we're keeping a close eye on her and keeping in touch," Senanayake said.  Senanayake said the discovery came as a surprise, but that they were aware of the possibility, particularly as human and animal habitats continue to overlap more and more.  "Other snakes around the world carry this parasite, so it is quite likely that other new cases will be documented," he said. "So hopefully, raising awareness of that will help other healthcare workers around the world."

The company said clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration for its first in-human clinical study is "an important first step" for its technology. Elon Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink on Thursday said it had received the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval to launch its first in-human clinical study. The company announced the decision on Twitter, saying the approval "represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people." The goal of the company is to develop chips that can be implanted in peoples' brains to treat neural disorders. The implants may one day be powerful enough to put humanity on a more even footing with possible future superintelligent computers. Neuralink isn't the only company in the field of what is known as the brain-computer interface or BCI industry. Race to decipher brain waves for external technologies  Scientists across different companies are working to develop an artificial intelligence for the brain so people with severe spinal injuries, for example, can talk or type using brain waves. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought CTRL-labs, a startup developing non-invasive neural interfaces, in 2019. The startup was folded into Facebook’s Reality Labs, whose goal is to "fundamentally transform the way we interact with devices." FDA approval significance While there are brain-computer interfaces in gaming, Neuralink hopes to be the first to improve cognitive functioning. On at least four occasions since 2019, Musk has predicted that his medical device company would soon start human trials of brain implants to treat intractable conditions like paralysis and blindness. But the company, which was founded in 2016, did not seek approval until early 2022. Recruitment for medical trials has not yet opened, though.

A Brazilian study released Thursday says Covid-19 can infect brain tissue and affect the structure of the cortex, a region of the brain responsible for functions such as memory, consciousness, and language. It says coronavirus can affect astrocytes, the most abundant cells in the central nervous system, which perform functions such as providing support and nutrients for neurons and regulating the concentration of neurotransmitters and other substances, such as potassium. "We demonstrated for the first time that the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects and replicates in astrocytes and this can decrease the viability of neurons," said Daniel Martins de Souza, a professor at the Institute of Biology at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), reports Xinhua. "The infection of this cell type was confirmed through experiments done with brain tissue from 26 patients who died from Covid-19," the study said. Martins de Souza said scientists used a technique known as immunohistochemistry, which involves using antibodies to detect certain antigens in a tissue sample. The presence of the virus was confirmed in 26 of the samples studied, and in five of them, certain alterations were found that suggested possible damage to the central nervous system. Eighty-one other patients with mild Covid-19 symptoms were also studied. The results showed a third of them exhibiting neurological or neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as memory impairment, fatigue, headache, anxiety, and others, 60 days after acquiring the disease. The study was conducted by scientists from Unicamp and the University of Sao Paulo (USP), with collaboration from scientists at the National Laboratory of Biosciences, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and the D'Or Institute. Coronavirus cases were first reported in China’s Wuhan in December last year and spread fast across the globe within weeks. In March, the WHO declared it a pandemic. Source: UNB AH

Researchers from the Bar-Ilan University of Israel learned that sleep deprivation has a negative impact on aging and leads to the development of brain disorders. In reference to animal behavior observation, sleep also significantly affects brain performance among humans. In a study published in the Nature Communications journal, the researchers used 3D time-lapse imaging techniques to measure the effects of sleep deprivation. The results of the study showed that neurons require sleep for them to function properly and coherently. The results also showed that sleep deprivation results in DNA damage, such as oxidative stress, and adversely affects the brain’s ability to function.  The lead researchers concluded that the loopholes of brain activity are remedied when we sleep at night, such as in the case of the zebrafish they observed, according to Science Daily. Using a high-resolution microscope and applying controlled body tests, they also found that one of the main functions of sleep is to maintain the nuclear makeup of brain cells that’s responsible for constant neuron activity. In analyzing the fish, they found that animals sleep in order to preserve their DNA composition. Hence, the researchers said that sleep deprivation could really affect aging and lead to brain disorders. Furthermore, the study found that constant sleep deprivation could lead to the production of cancer cells, making the body unable to detoxify itself from DNA damage. The researchers noted that brain chromosomes are surprisingly more active during the night especially when the body is at rest. Thus, they concluded that the damage repair is also directly associated with physiological relevance to the entire body. On the other hand, Daily Mail pointed out the causes of sleep deprivation which could hinder the DNA repair process. When a person is stressed, they feel anxious and this prevents the body from acquiring enough sleep required to improve cognitive abilities. The outlet also stressed that establishing a frequent sleep routine could help improve the ability of a person to spend more time sleeping than just lying around. Listening to calming music and visualizing happy pleasant thoughts also promote a healthy sleep, thereby preventing aging and brain disorders from developing. Source: Medical Daily/MSN AH