• Facebook buys Ctrl-Labs, a startup that studies neural control of computers
  • A chip in the brain connected to a computer: Elon Musk's latest challenge is called Neuralink

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by Celia Guimaraes September 25, 2019 Facebook purchased and intends to use Ctrl-Labs' neural interface technology to develop a bracelet that "gives people control of their devices," said Andrew Bosworth, head of Menlo Park's Reality Labs team .

Thus, Mark Zuckerberg's company would follow the mega acquisitions of startups and companies that proved to be particularly promising as Whatsapp, Instagram and Oculus.

In the case of Ctrl + Labs, born in New York in 2015, it is one of the first to devote itself to research on the brain-machine interface, the so-called BCI (brain-computer interface), which, in the current definition, serves to "replace or restore useful functions for people with neuromuscular disabilities such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cerebral palsy, stroke or spinal cord injury "

Brain-computer interfaces are already used, for example, for post-stroke rehabilitation and for the control of robotic arts.

Elon Musk and Neuralink
Mark Zuckerberg is not the only one to launch into this field. A chip in the brain connected to a computer is the last challenge of Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and Space X, among many other companies, fruit of his visionary imagination. The new company is called Neuralink , a device that can control the human brain via the smartphone.

Elon Musk presents it as a true revolution and, after the first (disputed) tests on monkeys, he would be ready to start those on humans, with the aim of treating very serious diseases, from cancer to epilepsy. An ambitious project, but still in its earliest stages of development. In fact, Musk's goal, with his presentation last July, was precisely to try to involve the greatest number of scholars and researchers able to develop the idea in the project. just like he did with Hyperloop , the train of the future that travels at the speed of sound.

The cyborg with the antenna in the brain
Among the most famous concrete cases of application of BCI is that of the English artist Neil Harbisson . He could not distinguish the colors and so, he had an antenna implanted in the brain that receives and transmits the pulses of the sound frequencies corresponding to the color spectrum.

Harbisson is also the first legally recognized cyborg and Massimo Cerofolini, who interviewed him for the Code transmission - La vita è digitale said: "Men have so far changed the planet doing damage. Now is the time for men to leaving the Earth alone and modifying their bodies, implanting a night vision device would consume less energy, ditto with a cybernetic organ capable of regulating our internal temperature.I think that in the future it will become normal and ethical to be us that must change, not the planet ".