Competition to deploy commercial brain-computer interfaces is heating up. A microelectronic chip placed under the retina can produce vision. Science Corporation--a competitor to Neuralink founded by the former president of Elon Musk's brain-interface venture--has leapfrogged its rival after acquiring, at a fire-sale price, a vision implant that's in advanced testing,. The implant produces a form of "artificial vision" that lets some patients read text and do crosswords, according to a report published in the today . The implant is a microelectronic chip placed under the retina. Using signals from a camera mounted on a pair of glasses, the chip emits bursts of electricity in order to bypass photoreceptor cells damaged by macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in elderly people.