
The “sewing machine” for minimally invasive neural recording - ArtWomb
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/578542v1.full
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3JPLW
Wait, what? A minimally invasive _craniotomy_? Cutting open the skull
generally isn't thought to be minimally invasive. Cool technique but a rather
crazy title given that the paper barely touches on invasiveness. Much better
would be "biocompatible" or "mechanically stable" or "long-lasting."

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mattkrause
You still need a craniotomy, but the dura remains mostly intact. Rodent dura
is a lot thinner than in primates though, so it'll be interesting to see
whether it works in larger animals. I'd also like to see some actual data
showing that these electrodes last longer. People can keep Utah arrays going
for a few years, even though the implantation surgery is more invasive.
(craniotomy + duratomy + pneumatic insertion).

Still, it's nice to see some innovation that might eventually work in large
animals and humans, instead of yet another thing that only works in transgenic
mice.

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frisco
Utah arrays overwhelmingly fail within the first year:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868924/figure/...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868924/figure/F5/)

~~~
mattkrause
If the array works at all, we've been reliably able to get /something/ for at
least a year and sometimes much more, which I guess isn't too inconsistent
with that.

Still, a lot of our problems haven't been brain-related; instead, there's an
infection or mechanical damage to the connector pedestal/wire bundle. I'm not
sure that the sewing machine by itself will be able to sidestep those sorts of
problems.

I would be _very_ happy to see better alternatives. I'm just not ready to
switch based on this.

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3JPLW
Agreed, I've seen the same. Take that graph with a grain of salt and take a
look at the failure modes table below it. Lots of monkey issues (about a
quarter) and some totally unrelated things (like experiment termination).

Some labs/surgeons/methods have better success than others.

The big thing the sewing machine will do is (likely) reduce mechanical strain
at the tissue-electrode interface and hopefully improve upon those handful of
failures due to scar tissue encapsulation.

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kensai
Anything that requires craniotomy will not scale to persons apart from
patients with no alternatives and some biohacking freaks with no sense of
danger.

Looks cool on paper, but they will have to find an alternative route to make
it stick (no pun intended).

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wrinkl3
The abstract only mentions clinical and research use cases, it doesn't sound
like they're expecting it to "stick" as a consumer electronics device in its
current form.

~~~
kensai
My comment was not specific for the article.

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iandanforth
Before reading this article I didn't think we'd ever see something viable out
of Neuralink ([https://www.neuralink.com/](https://www.neuralink.com/)) but
now I'm not so sure.

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swordsmith
The first and last author both work(ed) at Neuralink.

~~~
iandanforth
Sorry realized that quickly after adding the edit, so I removed it.

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anonytrary
Can we change the title to use the word "less" instead of "minimally"?

Their paper's title is kind of clickbait. This isn't minimally invasive -- it
might be a bit less invasive than other methods, but it's still considered an
invasive interface.

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gwern
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/team-
link...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/team-linked-to-
elon-musk-neuralink-outline-brain-monitor-system)

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keepmesmall
I was hoping for a Hellraiser-looking network of pins sticking into the skull,
but they actually sew right into the brain-skull membrane!

Why exactly is this necessary? Does this fulfill an existing need or does it
require a few decades of dystopia before reaching maturity?

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mattkrause
This is mostly meant for neuroscience research in animals.

The brain contains about 86B neurons, which use chemical and electrical
signals to process information. Neuroscientists want to know what these cells
are doing in healthy brains, and how that processing and signalling goes wrong
in diseases. One way--arguably the best way--to do this is to implant animals
with electrodes that record activity of nearby neurons, and see how it varies
during different conditions (different behaviors, sensory inputs, drug
treatments, etc). For obvious reasons, this should be as humane and non-
invasive as possible, thus...this.

Humans also occasionally get electrodes implanted, either for deep brain
stimulation (the most effective treatment for Parkinson's Disease) or to find
the source (focus) of epileptic activity in the brain. This could potentially
help with that too, though the deep brain targets are much, much further into
the brain than the results reported here.

~~~
timlarshanson
> This is mostly meant for neuroscience research in animals.

Exactly! And thank you, nice summary.

It should be noted, with respect to other comments here as well, that in
animals the cranial vault re-closes 4-8 weeks after a craniotomy/craniectomy
(rats). Dead neurons basically never grow back. Hence 'minimally invasive'
refers to the attempt to minimize the brain insult and injury.

~~~
mattkrause
A nice paper deserves a nice summary! I’m looking forward to seeing where this
goes, as Utah arrays have been around for ~25 years and haven’t changed much.

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plutonorm
That is absolutely terrifying.

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damnpassings
Just OT and jet still X-files-themed, but wasn't there a media-promotion a few
days ago, pointing to 'future-tec', where people can breath in vaccinations
through the nose or nanobots, doing '1st aid' at the mall...? (-;

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apocalyptica
Add optogenetics for partypeople... ^^

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jmichaelhudson
I find this article obviously hypes this technology, downplays that it is not
surprisingly the military, DARPA, who are no doubt bringing us shooting
autonomous robots that eventually will have accidents not unlike the already
multiple times a year random violence events. That robot went haywire! No one
has any responsibility besides this bad, bad, glitchy technology that we
unfortunately depend on completely.

I would bet at least some coinage that some or another branch of intelligence
networks is already testing this stufff on people who have essentially been
disappeared. If they are outright stealing the kidneys of falun gong people,
what human sacrifice would china not make to be able to stick a fork in
someone's mind and read it?

And if CHINA is doing it, well then everybody else has to keep up!

Good times.

It's bizarre to me that anyone could write an article about this subject and
not talk about the mother of all interrogation tools.

We need to defend the right to have an independent mind. If there are black
sites and disappeared people, and the spy agencies can pretty much all go hog
wild at the moment, where is the governing body that is going to potentially
threaten spooks from abusing people horrifically with this stuff?

As I understand it, 5g will have enough bandwidth to have a decent throughput
to fingernail sized devices. With a few electrodes could they outright puppet
someone?

Why do so few tech articles ever talk about human rights and hype things
without even basic analysis? Or it's the same, 'some critics say, it might be
bad. oh well.'

And every time, 5 years later, 'oh it turns out google maps actually made a
database of everyone's location who used it and then lied about doing that
until it was no longer possible. Our motto is don't be evil. Well, not
anymore. We don't have to do this interview. GUARDS!'

