Evolution and History of Brain Computer Interfaces
The world is full of constantly emerging and evolving technology. The development of technological tools over the past century or two has been incredibly fast paced, with new inventions and products replacing old ones rapidly. People don’t think anymore about the fact that they’re being assisted by technology when they put food in the refrigerator to keep it cold, or run a few miles on a treadmill. What once were revolutionary inventions to generations’ past are objects we don’t give a second thought to.
However, there are new types of technology which people are not only in awe of, but even apprehensive towards. Tools that look as though they’ve come straight out of a sci-fi movie, with mind reading capabilities and other features initially thought to be impossible. One of the biggest new fields of technological innovation is Brain Computer Interfaces, or BCIs. The field is very controversial as many people are hesitant to accept this new development, but it’s only holding them back from the next generation of innovative life changing technologies.
What are Brain Computer Interfaces?
Brain Computer Interfaces are computer based systems which collect and analyze electrical signals from the brain in order to translate them into commands performed by an external device. In simpler terms, they’re machines that use information from your brain to complete tasks.
There are two types of BCIs: invasive and non invasive. Non invasive Brain Computer Interfaces are placed on the outside of the skull (on the scalp), and are easily removable. Electroencephalography, or EEG is a popular type of non invasive BCI. Alternatively, invasive BCIs are devices placed on the inside of the skull, either on the surface of the brain or within a cortex. A common type of invasive BCI is electrocorticography (eCoG), which records signals from the surface of the brain.
While invasive BCIs are widely accepted as a common imaging method to take metrics from the body, there’s a lot more controversy surrounding non-invasive BCIs. This is largely based on their position within the brain, and the fact that they can’t be easily removed at any point when they aren’t being used. Particularly with people from older generations, there are concerns about a dystopian style brain takeover to perform unwarranted functions or unsupervised mind reading. While this may seem like a new and scary futuristic possibility, BCIs have actually been around for almost a hundred years. Let’s take a look.
Origin of BCIs
Since a BCI’s functions are based on monitoring electrical activity in the brain, the first event on this timeline actually occurred about two centuries before BCIs existed at all. At the start of the 18th century and in centuries prior, people didn’t believe there was electrical activity in the body at all. They instead believed in the concept of “animal spirits”, which said that the hollow nerves of the body were filled with invisible intangible spirits that people got from a multistep spirit conversion process after eating food.
While this theory was widely believed in the scientific community at the time, based on the nature of the “spirits” it was challenging to prove, which led to some scientists developing other alternative theories. Some began to suggest ideas about electrical activity, but were struggling to create proof.
The scientist who ultimately found success in proving this theory was a man named Luigi Galvani: a doctor, physicist, biologist, and philosopher. The popular legend suggests that he actually made this discovery by accident, that in 1791 him and his wife were conducting static based experiments using frog skin as a material. Galvani’s assistant accidentally touched a frog’s exposed sciatic nerve with a charged metal scalpel he was holding, and the leg began to twitch for a few seconds. This accident led Galvani to theorize that animals’ bodies and specifically nervous systems produced electrical activity, a theory he called animal electricity.
This led to many revolutionary inventions such as the battery, and many battery powered machines such as BCIs. Galvani’s theory was ultimately proven to be correct, and it was proven even more specifically that the human brain itself runs on electrical activity by German psychiatrist Hans Berger. With this discovery, he went on to invent electroencephalography (EEG) and use it to record data from the human brain almost a century ago in 1924.
In the 1970s, there was a surge in studies and research being done using EEG. The use of this technology was largely focused on neuroprosthetic applications to aid damaged sight, hearing, or movement. In 1973, Professor Jacques Vidal published a scientific paper on his research in this field which marked the first appearance of the term brain-computer interface.
All of the work being done up to this point had been only with the use of EEG technology or other non invasive BCI devices. 1998 marks the first time that an invasive BCI implant was used and produced high quality brain signals. This marked the beginning of a very important decade for BCI technology.
The following year in 1999, a BCI was able to help a quadriplegic (someone who is paralyzed from the neck down) by giving them limited hand movement. In this same year, the first ever International BCI meeting was held with 50 scientists from 22 different laboratories around the world. To date there have been eight of these meetings, with the more recent ones having significantly more attendees and labs represented.
The next big advancement in BCIs was when devices were designed with the ability to read minds (to a certain degree). The machines couldn’t do this precisely enough to determine a person’s exact thoughts, but simply well enough to analyze brain signals in order to determine what a person has decided when prompted by a binary question. In 2002, the first development of this capability came to be when a monkey with an invasive BCI implant was trained to move a cursor across a computer screen using only its mind.
In the earliest years of the 2000s, John Donoghue and his team at Brown University created a public company called Cyberkinetics with the goal of commercially designing a BCI. The project was called “BrainGate”. In 2003, they demonstrated something new to the public for the first time in history. With the use of their BCI technology, paralyzed people were able to play full fledged games online using only their minds.
The final historic event that assisted in creating the world of BCIs as we know it today was in 2007 when a computer manufacturer called Neurosky introduced the consumer BCI space. In the past, BCIs had only been used in research labs or medical facilities but this change made them more accessible to everybody. This was a huge step forward for the BCI industry. It enabled products such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink and Neurable’s Enten Headphones to be created and sold to assist everyday consumers in a market now worth over a billion dollars.
Present Day Applications
Nowadays BCIs have much more widespread applications, and products that were only once theories or ideas have become realities. Products such as these include a mental handwriting BCI for patients with ALS, BCIs combined with VR headsets to enable greater engagement in virtual worlds with the use of thoughts, BCIs with greater mind reading capabilities than simply for binary questions, BCIs which can turns intentions into actions, and many more.
In addition to the two companies and products mentioned prior which are among the most well known, there are many other innovative companies and products gaining traction in the BCI field. Among many others, here are a few which are particularly interesting:
Synchron is a company developing an invasive implant that will enable paralyzed patients to have direct brain control over mobility assistive devices. Their device will be small and flexible, and is able to pass through cerebral neurons to interpret data. Their main product is called the Stentrode, and is the first of its kind to be made.
Kernel is an optical full coverage headset created by Bryan Johnson (founder of Braintree online payment. Its initial goal was focused on storing memory externally and uploading it back to the brain for people with memory loss, but they switched gears and now are looking to achieve the same ultimate goal but through a different technique involving simultaneous electric multi-neuron stimulation. This technology will be used for conditions such as Alzheimer’s.
Thync is a company that sells bcis which utilize neuromodulation: a technique used to manipulate groups of nearby neurons at the same time. Their products are wearable pods that attach to the back of the neck (near the brainstem), and they are designed to help relieve stress and improve sleep. Their top product is called Thync Relax Pro, and it uses small amount of electrical stimulation to activate neural pathways in the head and neck.
Neuros Medical is another company using technology to control neuromodulation. Their goal, however, is focused on helping patients who experience chronic pain. They make Electrical Nerve Blocks which interfere with high frequency signals in the brain being sent to the nervous system to eliminate pain from patients with a variety of pain based medical conditions.
These technologies can change the lives of people suffering from a variety of incurable conditions, and enhance the lives of regular consumers. However, the most effective way to achieve big results with such ambitious technologies is by using invasive BCI methods, as their location inside the skull makes the readings much clearer and more precise. Even with this knowledge, many people continue to feel reluctant towards the invasive devices.
Ethical Concerns
There are a variety of ethical concerns surrounding BCIs, specifically invasive ones, but by far the most popular concern is that the BCI will extract personal information (such as someone’s current mental state or honesty) and even potentially export that information to someone or to another BCI through what’s called a Brain to Brain Interface (BBI) without the person’s knowledge or consent.
That said, there are misconceptions within this belief. The assumption that a BCI would be able to collect this information and then export it to other people without the person knowing humanizes it in a way that would require it to have some degree of consciousness. The field focused on technology with consciousness is called Artificial General Intelligence, and it’s far from reaching its goal. Even in 9 years (2030), there’s an estimated 75% chance we won’t have achieved this. Therefore, the only way this stunt could be executed would be based on a massive multi step malfunction. The machine would have to accidentally collect enough of these specific readings to reach a conclusion on something as significant as a person’s overall mental wellbeing, accidentally form a conclusion, and accidentally send it off to an external device, which many BCIs aren’t even capable of. It seems pretty unlikely when stated like that, doesn’t it? I believe this is just another way people are convincing themselves and others not to use BCI technology, which in reality is only intended to help assist in or enhance people’s lives.
Even so, there are many reasons people are hesitant towards this new technology. While the introduction of tools with new and powerful applications can be intimidating, at a certain point this fear is only a blocker from enabling people to get the best help they can. Despite the negative connotation associated with the word invasive, having machines on the inside of the skull and therefore closer to the brain areas they’re studying enables the work it does to be more precise and accurate.
Looking Forward + Conclusion
As previously shown, we’ve come a long way from the earliest days of BCIs. However, we still have much to achieve in this exponentially growing field and scientists continue to work towards expanding the horizons of what we know Brain Computer Interfaces can be. The next big advancement I anticipate in this field is the development of Bidirectional BCIs (BBCIs) and neural co-processors.
Currently, the majority of widely available BCIs are unidirectional open loop BCIs. This means they are only able to execute one direction of brain-computer functioning, typically extracting information from the brain to the computer and then exporting that outside of the brain. There are also devices which send stimulation from a machine to the brain with methods such as Deep Brain Stimulation, but that cannot record an export data from the brain. The goal of a closed loop, bidirectional BCI would be to create devices which can execute both: collecting data from the brain (often to export) as well as sending stimulation from the device to the brain.
The next step forward from this technology is neural co-processors. These devices rely on deep learning and artificial neural networks to optimize cost functions of the nervous system. This technology wouldn’t even need to receive specific instruction as the machine itself would be capable of best optimizing the system (in this case, the nervous system). These would each be a big step forward for people and BCIs which would enable new achievements and possibilities.
In order for our society to move forward and for people with brain based conditions to get the best help they need, they need to get past their apprehension towards invasive BCIs. At least for medical applications, because these devices are what’s needed to give patients the best possible help. They’re really no different than trying a new type of medicine, which people put in their bodies all of the time. Invasive BCIs are a type of product that’s existed and been experimented with for almost 25 years, and so far nothing super life-changingly dystopian and tragic has occurred. Brain Computer Interfaces have come a long way, and dubious consumers are the only thing left between invasive BCIs and their next phase of revolutionary applications.
