Elon Musk’s live streaming brain implant campaign has made promises that are difficult to fulfill. Fearless rock climbing, playing symphonies in the mind, superhuman visual radar, discovering the essence of consciousness, treating paralysis and other illnesses – these are just some of the applications that Elon Musk and his four year old neuroscience company Neuralink believe electronic brain machine interfaces will one day bring. Obviously, these advances are not within reach, and some are even unlikely to be achieved. But in a “product update” live streamed on YouTube on Friday, Musk, also the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, discussed the company’s work on an affordable and reliable brain implant with staff wearing black masks. Musk believes that billions of consumers will speak out loudly in the future. In many ways, “Musk said,” this is a bit like a device with tiny wires in your skull. “
Although the online event is described as a product demonstration, currently no one can purchase or use anything from Neuralink. (This is the best, as most of the company’s medical promises are still highly speculative.) The company is designing an ultra-high density electrode technology and testing it on animals. Neuralink is not the first person to believe that brain implants can expand or restore human abilities. As early as the late 1990s, researchers placed probes in the brains of paralyzed individuals to demonstrate that signals could allow them to move robotic arms or computer cursor: mice with visual implants can truly perceive infrared radiation!
Neurosurgeons are typically portrayed in one of two ways in popular culture. One is as a brilliant, if arrogant, boffin. These doctors are intellectuals (it is brain surgery, after all) who have very little social life. Think of Dr Jack Shephard, the protagonist of “Lost”, a television series, or Doctor Strange, a Marvel character. The other common depiction is as a mad scientist. At best, these latest characters perform unethical surgeries and, at worst, become cannibalistic serial killers, such as Hannibal Lecter.
But these portrayals miss much of what modern neurosurgery really is, argues Theodore Schwartz, a neurosurgeon and professor at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. “Gray Matters”, an engrossing new book, goes on a tour through different types of brain surgery, from seemingly crude emergency treatments for traumatic injuries to high-precision surgeries to implant electrodes that provide relief from obsessive compulsive disorder. For each, Dr Schwartz skilfully weaves explanations of procedures together with personal and historical anecdotes and real-life case studies. These include his own patients, as well as notable people, such as John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden, who found themselves on neurosurgeons’ operating tables.
The result is a satisfying and varied insight into an intriguing profession. There are points when the book reads like a page-turner—in discussing Kennedy’s assassination, for example—with occasional detours through a medical textbook (“To better understand…whether this supports a second-shooter hypothesis, we’ll first need to review some basic anatomy of the brain and the skull.”)
To the uninitiated, the details of surgeries are gory. Prepare to imagine the sound of drilling through skulls and picture the sight of macerated brain tissue. But in Dr Schwartz’s telling, the impact of these grislyprocedures on patients and their families is also dramatic and touching.
Most of the book documents the history and practicalities of brain surgery, starting with the work of Harvey Cushing, an American pioneer, in the early 20th century. At that time every procedure was a journey into the unknown. Now, a century later, surgeons have precise maps of patients’ brains thanks to MRI and CAT scans, and are equipped with high-tech kit to make their work ever more accurate and less invasive.
Dr Schwartz is most interesting when he muses on issues where his field intersects with society. What does a neurosurgeon think should be done about head injury in sports? Not that much, it turns out. As long as athletes are aware of the risks and are appropriatelycompensated, then they should be allowed to smack their heads together if they wish. Are certain brain injuries a sure sign that a baby has been abused? In Dr Schwartz’s opinion, yes, until proved otherwise.
He also ponders how a career spent rooting around in brains changes how you think about the mind. “Gray Matters” argues against the notion of free will, using evidence from scientific studies and stories of patients whose surgery has changed how they consciouslyperceive their surroundings. Instead of people having a unified self that controls their actions and thoughts, Dr Schwartz believes that most of these feelings arisespontaneously or in response to triggers from the outside world. The brain then generates a plausiblerationale post hoc for why a movement was made or a thought conjured.
The brain is increasingly lodged in the centre of the tech world. One of Elon Musk’s companies, Neuralink, is trying to develop a sophisticated brain implant that can record and transmitneural signals, allowing paralysed patients to control a computer cursor. Meanwhile, a desire to improve the artificial “brains” that power artificial-intelligence software is driving many techies to look for inspiration in real ones. Even society’s brainiest are still intent on better understanding the mysteries of the human brain.
