Neuralink's robot inserts brain threads too fine for human hands

Your hand is shaking right now. You can't see it, but it's wobbling back and forth about ten times a second, and that little wobble is the reason no surgeon on Earth can do the surgery Neuralink does. Doctors have actually measured this in eye surgeons, the people with the steadiest hands in medicine. Even with their hand braced against the patient's face, the tip of the tool drifts around 40 microns. Neuralink's needle is 24 microns wide at the tip. So the shake in the best hands in the world is bigger than the needle itself. And the brain doesn't hold still for you either. It swells a little with every heartbeat and every breath. Noland Arbaugh, Neuralink's first patient, said the team expected his brain to move about a millimeter and it turned out to be closer to three. Do the math on…

Neuralink built a surgical robot (R1) that uses a needle thinner than human hair to implant chip with 1,024 electrodes (64 threads x 16 electrodes each) onto the brain. Takes 1.5 seconds a thread to insert. Camera maps the brain and sensors ensure the threads don’t hit tiny blood vessels. Incredible.