- [Narrator] That experiment you're seeing now

is something only a handful of people have experienced.

Having a microchip read your mind from inside your head.

It's part of a growing industry that includes,

Elon Musk's, Neuralink, which says it just implanted

its first chip into a human brain,

but other devices have already proven to telepathically

control computers and wirelessly operate prosthetics.

- It's a fundamentally different class

of medical device than anything we've ever seen before.

- [Narrator] Here's an inside look at how two

of the implants challenging Neuralink work

and what it will take to get them to consumers.

- Elon musk is the kind of person

who has very, very expansive visions of the future.

His idea is we're actually gonna augment

perfectly healthy humans with this chip

so that we can go along for the ride with AI as it advances.

- It's gonna be important for us to figure out

how we coexist with advanced artificial intelligence.

- [Narrator] While Elon Musk's end goal for Neuralink

is wider reaching, it's starting with addressing

a specific medical condition,

which other leading implantable BCIS

or brain computer interfaces are also aiming to treat.

- The technology is for people

who can no longer use their smartphones.

It's people whose hands don't work.

So it's things like stroke. ALS, muscular dystrophy,

multiple sclerosis, severe arthritis, cerebral palsy.

- [Narrator] These implants right now don't cure

these issues, but they could allow someone

who has lost use of their hands to say,

move a computer mouse.

Just by thinking.

- Our patients describe feeling a little bit

like they're locked in their own body,

their brain still working and they want to do things,

but you depend on other people to engage.

So it sort of gets to like a restoration of agency autonomy.

- Tom Oxley is a CEO of Synchron,

one of the five leading BCIs that are competing

in the industry.

While they vary in several ways,

there's one major difference that sets them apart.

Invasiveness, or how deeply implanted they are in the brain.

- Where neurotechnology has been developing

is to try to make devices that are less invasive,

but also devices that work better,

devices that can get more information in and out.

Devices that can target specific regions of the brain

- Neuralink device and others like it have to be implanted

directly into or onto the brain in order

to gather more data.

Synchron, on the other hand, is a stent that is implanted

into a blood vessel in the surface of the brain.

It's less risky than brain surgery,

but the placement can affect what information

the implant gets from the brain.

- There's a whole bunch of different ideas

for what's gonna give you the best brain signal readings

and from that data, can we do more?

But then there's a trade off with invasiveness,

and so you have all these companies doing

slightly different things, hoping to come up

with sort of the the best recipe.

- [Narrator] Here's how Synchrons device works.

- So I have a stent road here,

which is the electrode array that goes into the brain,

so I'll just bring it out of the catheter.

So you can see it opened up outside of the catheter here,

so we should see it coming up in a minute.

If you look down here,

you'll see something coming up inside the brain now.

- That stent road, as Synchro calls,

their device is a number of electrodes that pick up

electrical signals that correspond with specific thoughts.

Those signals run down into this chip,

which is implanted in the chest.

It wirelessly sends the signals to a computer

that transforms them into a digital command,

like a mouse click.

- So where your brain previously made your hand move,

like mine is doing right now,

it now is pushing a cursor to do navigate

and click on a screen.

- [Narrator] Synchro has successfully put permanent implants

in 10 patients so far as part of its clinical trials.

- You can, sometimes you can feel it.

Same as a pacemaker.

- [Narrator] Precision, whose implant you saw

in the surgery earlier is testing a temporary version

of its device.

The company is using volunteers who are already scheduled

for other brain operations to implant

its electrode array to collect data

and then remove it at the end of the surgery.

Right now, the device is recording brain activity

as the patient goes through the motions

of rock paper, scissors.

- Patients in this study are wearing a glove

on each hand that allows us to track the movement

of the hand in real time with a very, very high sensitivity

so that we know exactly what each finger is doing

and where the fingers in the hand and the arm are in space,

and we can correlate that with the electrical activity

that is happening on the motor cortex just before and during

and after the execution of a movement.

- [Narrator] That data is projected onto this grid,

which is like a map of the brain.

These red areas are where more activity

is happening with each action.

This helps researchers understand

how the brain activates different movements,

and they can later use that data to help paralyzed patients

control a computer with their minds, for example.

- We can predict what's about to happen

even before the patient speaks or moves.

- In terms of invasiveness,

Precision's, electrode array is meant to slide in through

a slit in the skull to sit just on top of the brain.

In order to make it to market.

These devices will have to prove to the FDA

that they're both safe and worth the risk,

and then they'll still need to get buy-in

from other players throughout the industry.

- We have to think about the insurance providers.

We have to think about the hospitals.

We have to think about the physicians

who are prescribing the devices.

All of these people have to get together and agree

that this is the best path forward.

It's something that they want and they recognize

the benefit of it.

- [Narrator] That process could take years,

but some experts think that they could start

hitting the market sometime in the next decade.

While Musk's vision of putting chips into healthy brains

is likely much further away than that,

the uses for BCIS have the potential

to expand in that time too.

Motif Neurotech, for instance,

is working on minimally invasive BCI technology

that could help treat mental health

disorders like depression.

- Where I see the future is a company

maybe Neuralink or Parapalegic that focus on high bandwidth.

There's gonna be companies like Synchron

and Motif that focus on minimal invasiveness.

Naturally, those customers

are gonna start to look different.

At that point, I think there's gonna be more competition

between these companies as they start to establish

who is the number one person in Neurotech.

But right now, I think there's room for all of us

to try to find a space. (soft music)