Integrating smart algorithms on neural devices presents significant opportunities for various brain disorders. In this paper, we review the latest advancements in the development of three categories of intelligent neural prostheses featuring embedded signal processing on the implantable or wearable device. These include: 1) Neural interfaces for closed-loop symptom tracking and responsive stimulation; 2) Neural interfaces for emerging network-related conditions, such as psychiatric disorders; and 3) Intelligent BMI SoCs for movement recovery following paralysis.

Scientists are one step closer to reading people's minds after developing new technology that can decode internal speech with nearly 80 per cent accuracy. Some people are unable to speak due to disease or injury, but devices called brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) can help patients communicate again. Also known as'speech decoders', BMIs can capture brain activity during inner speech – words thought within the mind without making any movement or sound – and translate it into language. Until now, it has been difficult to achieve highly accurate results. Researchers from the California Institute of Technology implanted tiny devices in specific areas of the brains of two participants.

Imagine if you could control a robot or play a video game using your mind alone. It sounds like sci-fi, but this is exactly what brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are already being used for. With applications from entertainment to medicine, BMIs are set to change the world of technology as we know it. But what exactly are they? And how do they work?

Elon Musk has said that his secretive neurotech firm Neuralink will demonstrate a working "device," presumably a brain-machine interface, at 6PM ET on Friday. Musk has spoken repeatedly about his belief that BMI devices are needed to help humans keep up with AI by supplementing our brainpower, but right now, his goal is much simpler: to create an implantable device that lets people control phones or computers with their mind. Musk initially announced the August 28th "progress update" back in July, and has now offered more details on what will be shown. He says the update will include the unveiling of a second-generation robot designed to attach the company's technology to the brain, and a demo of neurons "firing in real-time," though it's not clear exactly what is meant by this. Even compared to Musk's other ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, Neuralink is ambitious.

New technology that can read minds and turn thoughts into complete sentences with the help of AI is giving hope to people who can't speak. Researchers from the University of California say their technology is able to translate brain activity into English word by word with the help of machine learning. The technology could revolutionise the way people who can't speak or move are able to communicate, as it is more natural than existing tools, the team say. It has an accuracy rate of 97 per cent - more than twice as high as other brain-signal decoding devices and works by mapping activity of neurons to words. Translating neurons to words enables it to type word sequences on a computer interface in real time - which can then be read out by a synthetic voice.

When Elon Musk and DARPA both hop aboard the cyborg hypetrain, you know brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are about to achieve the impossible. BMIs, already the stuff of science fiction, facilitate crosstalk between biological wetware with external computers, turning human users into literal cyborgs. Yet mind-controlled robotic arms, microelectrode "nerve patches", or "memory Band-Aids" are still purely experimental medical treatments for those with nervous system impairments. With the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program, DARPA is looking to expand BMIs to the military. This month, the project tapped six academic teams to engineer radically different BMIs to hook up machines to the brains of able-bodied soldiers.

Ever since Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk announced his plans to develop the Neural Lace, a Brain Machine Interface (BMI) like device that forms a thin nano-sized "lace" over a users cereberal cortex, via his Neuralink subsidiary, and Mark Zuckerberg announced he was starting development of his own BMI telepathic device, the technology has, unsurprisingly, started to get significantly more attention. Musk, however, wasn't the first to propose the possibility of enhancing human capabilities using BMI devices, not by a long shot. In his case he's trying to use them to, literally, "connect" humans with AI's, and elsewhere the US Department of Defense's cutting edge research arm DARPA also recently funded a similar mission, but in their case it wasn't just to read thoughts it was to facilitate the ability to upload knowledge directly to the human brain, and elsewhere even healthcare companies are in on the act trying to use them to help "locked in" ALS patients communicate with loved ones – and much more besides. Now, according to a collaboration of 27 experts, neuroscientists, neurotechnologists, clinicians, ethicists and machine-intelligence engineers, calling themselves the Morningside Group, BMIs present a unique and rather disturbing conundrum in the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Essentially designed to hack the brain, BMIs themselves run the risk of being hacked by AI. "Such advances [in BMI] could revolutionise the treatment of many conditions, from brain injury and paralysis to epilepsy and schizophrenia, and transform human experience for the better," wrote the experts in a recent the experts wrote in a recent Nature journal, "but the technology could also exacerbate social inequalities and offer corporations, hackers, governments or anyone else new ways to exploit and manipulate people. And it could profoundly alter some core human characteristics such as the right to a private mental life, individual agency and an understanding of individuals as entities bound by their bodies."

By the way, you can listen to a neuron fire here (what you're actually hearing is the electro-chemical firing of a neuron, converted to audio). Some electrodes want to take the relationship to the next level and will go for a technique called the patch clamp, whereby it'll get rid of its electrode tip, leaving just a tiny little tube called a glass pipette,21 and it'll actually directly assault a neuron by sucking a "patch" of its membrane into the tube, allowing for even finer measurements:39 A patch clamp also has the benefit that, unlike all the other methods we've discussed, because it's physically touching the neuron, it can not only record but stimulate the neuron,22 injecting current or holding voltage at a set level to do specific tests (other methods can stimulate neurons, but only entire groups together). Finally, electrodes can fully defile the neuron and actually penetrate through the membrane, which is called sharp electrode recording. If the tip is sharp enough, this won't destroy the cell--the membrane will actually seal around the electrode, making it very easy to stimulate the neuron or record the voltage difference between the inside and outside of the neuron. But this is a short-term technique--a punctured neuron won't survive long.

What distinguishes Elon Musk's reputation as an entrepreneur is that any venture he takes on comes from a bold and inspiring vision for the future of our species. Not long ago, Musk announced a new company, Neuralink, with the goal of merging the human mind with AI. Given Musk's track record of accomplishing the seemingly impossible, the world is bound to pay extra attention when he says he wants to connect our brains to computers. Neuralink is registered as a medical company in California. With further details yet to be announced, it will attempt to create a "neural lace," which is a brain-machine interface that can be implanted directly into our brains to monitor and enhance them.