article from: deep ring, author: Zhao Yu, Lu Yue
“Realistic Iron Man” Elon Musk’s dream of using technology to save mankind has made a new breakthrough in recent days.
On August 29th, Beijing time, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, Tesla and other companies, held a conference for his brain-computer interface company Neuralink, and announced the latest generation of brain-computer interface products at the meeting : A coin-sized chip that can be implanted into the brain, and a surgical device that can automatically implant the chip.
According to the introduction, this chip can sense temperature and air pressure, read brain waves, pulse and other physiological signals, and support remote data wireless transmission; the latest generation of surgical equipment is capable of implanting chip operations within one hour in the future Complete, the whole process is even as simple and safe as surgery.
Neuralink, founded in 2017, is a start-up company that develops a brain-computer interface for UltraBrain bandwidth and realizes coexistence and symbiosis with artificial intelligence. Neuralink’s breakthrough this time has brought the mysterious brain science that has only appeared in science fiction movies in the past to attract attention again.
The concept of brain science itself is not new. In April 2004, when the American “Science” magazine celebrated its 125th anniversary, it invited hundreds of scientists from around the world to list what they considered the most important frontier scientific issues in the world today. They were finally summed up into 125, of which 18 were of genus.In brain science.
Nature magazine, which is well-known in the global scientific community
The top brain science issues include the biological basis of consciousness, memory storage and recovery, human cooperative behavior, the biological basis of addiction, the causes of schizophrenia and autism, etc. Major issues that people generally care about and have not been resolved.
Although the questionnaire was done 16 years ago, until now, the recognized scientific problem of focusing on the brain has not changed.
The brain is the most important organ of the human body, and it may also be the most complex object in the universe-there are about 100 billion neurons, and each neuron is connected to 100,000 similar neurons, and each neuron’s The discharge mode is different, the encoding mode is different, and the information processing method is also different.
In order to observe the structure of the brain and gain insight into the laws, scientists have taken great pains for two hundred years. Some scientists said that at present, human beings have only ascertained 5% of the brain structure, which is far from meeting the needs of solving practical problems.
Therefore, in the mesoscopic (at the state between the macro and the micro) and the micro level, further exploration of the brain should be done to clarify the brain The connection map and structure map of the world, and on this basis to create a machine that is as intelligent as a human, has become the most important development direction of brain science research. With the investment of governments, enterprises and academia in various countries, brain science has become A hot new industry.
What are the areas of brain science?
To understand what industrial opportunities brain science can bring in the future, we must first understand the current subject areas and research progress of brain science.
Brain science is also called cognitive science. It is a science that explores how the brain works-how to think, how to remember, how to learn, etc. Brain science does not only refer to the “behind-the-brain intubation” that Elon Musk is fascinated by. Today’s brain science research can be roughly divided into the following three areas: brain disease prevention and treatment, brain-computer interface research, and brain-like intelligence research.
Among them:
The prevention and treatment of brain diseases refers to the diagnosis and intervention of people’s possible major brain diseases by summarizing the general laws of brain activity for scientists;
Brain-computer interface uses electrodes or other means to obtain information about brain neural activity, and convert it into instructions through machine learning processing and pattern recognition to control other devices;
Brain-like intelligence refers to the research and development of brain-like computing robots and big data processing.
In these different directions, what value can the study of brain science produce?
The application value of brain science research
Prevention and treatment of serious brain diseases
By establishing scientific understanding of the working mechanism of the brain, the first thing that can bring us value is that in the future, we may be able to find treatments to prevent and treat various serious brain diseases. How to maintain healthy brain development and intellectual development are very important social issues.
In all brain diseases, autism or autism and intellectual disability in childhood, depression and addiction in middle age, degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease in old age, etc. , Are all serious brain diseases. The diagnosis and intervention of serious brain diseases will become a very important research content in the field of brain science in the coming decades.
According to the statistics of the World Health Organization, brain-related diseases, including various neurological and psychiatric diseases, are the largest social burden of all diseases, accounting for 28%, exceeding cardiovascular diseases and cancer.”Research layout.
The “one body and two wings” structure research layout of the China Brain Project
The main structure of “One Body and Two Wings” is to clarify the neural basis of brain cognitive function, including the brain connection map and structure map, and build various platforms on this basis to help analyze the functions of the above maps.
One wing of the plan is to diagnose and treat brain diseases and form various new medical industries. The other wing is new technologies related to artificial intelligence, such as brain-like artificial intelligence, brain-like computing, and brain-computer interfaces. These technologies can have a significant impact on the future artificial intelligence industry. Compared with the international community, the Chinese Brain Project has been finalized after many years of deliberation, but it is currently recognized as the best direction.
Industry implementation progress
The battle for brain-like chips
Compared with brain diseases, human-computer interaction and other fields, driven by the popularity of artificial intelligence, the brain-like intelligence industry has landed more quickly.
Seeing the huge advantages of brain-like intelligence, in the past decade, in addition to the government and academia, the world’s major Internet companies, business machine companies, and emerging startup companies have begun to take actions to develop brain-like chips.
In 2014, the IBM Research Institute took the lead in developing the second-generation neurosynaptic chip “IBM TrueNorth“. A TrueNorth processor is composed of 5.4 billion connected transistors, forming an array of 1 million digital neurons, which can communicate with each other through 256 million electrical synapses.