The wireless neural transmitter safely delivers brain signals like a microchip. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Today's neural implants are smaller than ever, but often remain cumbersome and prone to complications . According to researchers at Cornell University, a new iteration detailed this week in the journal may offer a novel path forward for brain implants. Small enough to fit on a grain of rice, the microscale optoelectronic tetherless electrode (or MOTE) is vastly smaller than similar implants and its design could be adapted to work in other delicate areas of the body.

Elon Musk's neuroscience startup Neuralink Corp. is expected to give a progress report on its brain-implant technology in a highly anticipated streamed event Wednesday night. In a tweet last week, the company teased a demo for the event, which begins at 9 p.m. New York time, with a short video that slowly spelled out the message "please join us for a show and tell." Some outside researchers said the video may indicate that a Neuralink device has been used to decode brain signals to type words on a screen, although they speculated that it would most likely be through a monkey or a wearable device. Neuralink has been testing its implant technology on nonhuman primates for several years, including in April 2021, when the company released a video showing that a monkey implanted with two Neuralink devices could play a videogame called Pong as the device translated its brain activity into commands with the help of machine-learning software. Other researchers have managed to use a brain-computer interface to enable monkeys to produce words on a computer screen.

Universities, and a growing number of companies, are producing brain-computer interfaces.

IMAGE: Stanford neuroscientists and engineers used neural implants to track decision making in the brain, in real time. In the course of deciding whether to keep reading this article, you may change your mind several times. While your final choice will be obvious to an observer - you'll continue to scroll and read, or you'll click on another article - any internal deliberations you had along the way will most likely be inscrutable to anyone but you. That clandestine hesitation is the focus of research, published Jan. 20 in Nature, by Stanford University researchers who study how cognitive deliberations are reflected in neural activity. These scientists and engineers developed a system that read and decoded the activity of monkeys' brain cells while the animals were asked to identify whether an animation of moving dots was shifting slightly left or right.

Elon Musk's Neuralink has been making waves on the technology side of neural implants, but it hasn't yet shown how we might actually use implants. For now, demonstrating the promise of implants remains in the hands of the academic community. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. This week, that community provided a rather impressive example of the promise of neural implants.

Elon Musk's Neuralink has been making waves on the technology side of neural implants, but it hasn't yet shown how we might actually use implants. For now, demonstrating the promise of implants remains in the hands of the academic community. This week, the academic community provided a rather impressive example of the promise of neural implants. Using an implant, a paralyzed individual managed to type out roughly 90 characters per minute simply by imagining that he was writing those characters out by hand. Previous attempts at providing typing capabilities to paralyzed people via implants have involved giving subjects a virtual keyboard and letting them maneuver a cursor with their mind.

The month of August 2020 holds a special importance for it came with a news that relieved many. It was during this time that Elon Musk made a revelation that his company "Neuralink" had built a self-contained neural implant. With this implant, it could be possible to wirelessly transmit detailed brain activity and that too without the help of any external hardware. Musk's intention while building the same has been clear since the very beginning. His aim, in his words, is to build a neural implant that can sync the human brain with Artificial Intelligence.

In late August, more than 150,000 people tuned into a webcast to watch a live demonstration of the latest tech from brain-computer interface company Neuralink. The secretive startup, founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, plans to use a tiny brain implant to merge humans with A.I. Viewers were treated to one of the most fascinating and bizarre tech demos in recent memory, complete with neurosurgery robots, a live feed of spiking neurons in a living brain, and the delightful spectacle of a billionaire in a bespoke sport coat speaking furtively to a Tamworth pig while attempting to coax her onstage ("Come on, Gertrude, we have snacks!"). Musk is a gifted showman, known for stunts like launching his personal Tesla into space and selling functioning flamethrowers to promote a tunnel-building enterprise. His theatrics, though, can make it hard to tell when he's discussing a real technology that's here today or an aspirational vision that's still decades off. Neuralink is also an extremely complex company. That makes understanding its tech even more of a challenge. I have a degree in cognitive science (neuroscience and linguistics) from Johns Hopkins University and a decade of experience in A.I. My friend and co-author Chris Chiang has a degree in biomedical engineering (also from Hopkins) and has spent the last eight years in the medical device field. Before Musk had even finished speaking, we connected and started delving into what Neuralink's demo actually shows.

Even for high-tech California, the man strolling around UCLA was a curious sight. His motion capture suit, sensor-embedded gloves, and virtual reality eyewear were already enough to turn heads. But what stopped people in their tracks and made them stare was a bizarre headgear, tightly strapped to his head through a swimming cap-like device embedded with circular electrode connectors. Several springy wires sprouted from the headgear--picture a portable hard drive hooked up to a police siren enclosure--and disappeared into a backpack. Meet Mo-DBRS, a setup that could fundamentally change how we decode the human brain.

Scientists are creating 3D-printed brain chips which could be used to treat nervous system conditions, including paralysis, by detecting and firing electrical signals. The chip has been developed and successfully tested on animals, and researchers are now hopeful it can be adapted for use in humans. It will also be able to connect to a computer and offer a host of next-generation medical benefits, scientists say. Linking the human brain to a computer is usually the work of science fiction writers and filmmakers, but moves are underway to make the technology a reality. Last month, Elon Musk hosted a high-profile event where he spoke about the developments with his own version of brain chip technology, Neuralink.