With Neuralink Chip In Brain, Monkey Controls Video Game Using Just His Mind

Elon Musk's Neuralink has reached a new feat where its brain implant embedded in a monkey allowed it to control the game of Pong with just his mind. All this has been revealed to the world for the very first time in a video.

Neuralink

Pager, a nine-year-old macaque monkey, was implanted with the Neuralink brain chip roughly six weeks before the filming of the video. He was taught by scientists to play on-screen with a game joystick before. In the video too, Pager first controls the game using a game joystick.

Also Read: Elon Musk Demonstrates Neuralink Brain Chip In A Pig, Says It Is Like A "Fitbit In Your Skull"

Neuralink on the other hand used machine learning to understand and predict the monkey¡¯s hand movements, anticipating where he¡¯d move the square. After some time, the joystick was disconnected, but Pager continued to play the game. Even though his hand was moving the disconnected joystick, it was his mind that was moving the box to the orange squares.

In the next video, Pager is seen to play a rather fast-paced game of pong where he is just moving his left arm to raise or lower the bar. That input is being registered by the Neuralink sensor and translated as an input in the game.

Neuralink issued a statement, where it said, ¡°Today we are pleased to reveal the Link¡¯s capability to enable a macaque monkey, named Pager, to move a cursor on a computer screen with neural activity using a 1,024 electrode fully-implanted neural recording and data transmission device, termed the N1 Link.¡±

Also Read: Elon Musk's Neuralink Brain Implant Will Be Ready By December 2020, And Give You Superpowers

It added, ¡°We have implanted the Link in the hand and arm areas of the motor cortex, a part of the brain that is involved in planning and executing movements. We placed Links bilaterally: one in the left motor cortex (which controls movements of the right side of the body) and another in the right motor cortex (which controls the left side of the body).¡±

Elon Musk, in a series of tweets, shared his excitement for the success of this display, stating, ¡°Monkey plays Pong with his mind. A monkey is literally playing a video game telepathically using a brain chip!!¡±

Also Read: Elon Musk Wants To Eliminate Brain Diseases With His Neuralink Tech, But It's Going To Be Hard

Twitter

Musk also hinted that later, through his tweets, how the products could help someone with paralysis to use their phone with just their mind, faster than using thumbs. Moreover, later iterations could collect signals from Neuralinks in the brain to Neuralinks in the body motor, sensory neuron clusters allowing paraplegics, for instance, to walk.