Brain-computer interface company Precision Neuroscience says that it has set a new world record for the number of neuron-tapping electrodes placed on a living human's brain—4,096, surpassing the previous record of 2,048 set last year, according to an announcement from the company on Tuesday.
The high density of electrodes allows neuroscientists to map the activity of neurons at unprecedented resolution, which will ultimately help them to better decode thoughts into intended actions.
Precision, like many of its rivals, has the preliminary goal of using its brain-computer interface (BCI) to restore speech and movement in patients, particularly those who have suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury. But Precision stands out from its competitors due to a notable split from one of the most high-profile BCI companies, Neuralink, owned by controversial billionaire Elon Musk.
Precision was co-founded by neurosurgeon and engineer Ben Rapoport, who was also a co-founder of Neuralink back in 2016. Rapoport later left the company and, in 2021, started rival Precision with three colleagues, two of whom had also been involved with Neuralink.
In a May 3 episode of The Wall Street Journal podcast "The Future of Everything," Rapoport suggested he left Neuralink over safety concerns for the company's more invasive BCI implants.
To move neural interfaces from the world of science to the world of medicine, "safety is paramount," Rapoport said. "For a medical device, safety often implies minimal invasiveness," he added. Rapoport noted that in the early days of BCI development—including the use of the Utah Array—"there was this notion that in order to extract information-rich data from the brain, one needed to penetrate the brain with tiny little needlelike electrodes," he said. "And those have the drawback of doing some amount of brain damage when they're inserted into the brain. I felt that it was possible to extract information-rich data from the brain without damaging the brain." Precision was formed with that philosophy in mind—minimal invasiveness, scalability, and safety, he said.
Neuralink's current BCI device contains 1,024 electrodes across 64 thinner-than-hair wires that are implanted into the brain by a surgical robot. In the first patient to receive an implant, the wires were inserted 3 millimeters to 5 mm into the brain tissue. But, 85 percent of those wires retracted from the patient's brain in the weeks after the surgery, and some of the electrodes were shut off due to the displacement. Neuralink is reportedly planning to implant the wires deeper—8 mm—in its second patient. The Food and Drug Administration has reportedly given the green light for that surgery. The Utah Array, meanwhile, can penetrate up to 1.5 mm into the brain.