A macaque named Pager

Neuralink showed a macaque controlling a joystick with the power of thought

© RIA Novosti

The American company Neuralink, which was created by a billionaire Elon Musk showed how she taught a chiped macaque to play mental ping-pong.

"This is a Pager, he's a nine–year–old macaque who had Neuralink implanted in both parts of the brain about six weeks ago. <...> He learned how to interact with a computer for a delicious banana smoothie coming through a tube," the voiceover explains.

Interacting with Neuralink is "very simple", for this you need to connect it to the iPhone.

"As if you were connecting an iPhone to a Bluetooth speaker," the video says.

Neuralink includes more than two thousand electrodes implanted in the macaque motor cortex.

"Neurons in this area of the brain regulate their activity based on planned movements of the paws. For example, some may be active when he moves his paw up, others – when he moves it to the right. Recording (indicators. – Ed.) of many neurons and by transmitting their activity to the decrypting algorithm, we can predict the actions that the Pager intends to carry out in real time," they explain behind the scenes.

While Page moves the joystick, thousands of neurons are transferred to the computer and researchers mathematically recreate the relationship between "neural activity patterns" and what kind of joystick movement they cause.

After just a few minutes of such calibration, researchers can use the decryptor's data to teach the Pager to move the cursor, but not with the help of a joystick. The macaque continues to move the joystick disconnected from the computer out of habit, but at the same time controls the cursor "exclusively with the help of decoded neural activity."

"One of the things that Neuralink allows a Pager to do is play his favorite video game Pong (tennis arcade video game. – Ed.). To control the "racket" in the right corner of the screen, the Pager just thinks about moving its paw up or down. We have completely removed the joystick. <...> As you can see, the Pager is incredibly good at playing mental Pong," the developers boast.

The developers explain that the purpose of the experiment is to allow paralyzed people to use a computer or phone exclusively with the help of neuronal activity.

Earlier, billionaire inventor Musk demonstrated a pig with a brain implant, which, as Neuralink hopes, will allow treating neurological diseases.

Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 and provided two-thirds of the $150 million in funding for the company.

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