Neuralink’s disclosure last week that tiny wires inside the brain of its first patient had pulled out of position is an issue the Elon Musk company has known about for years, according to five people familiar with the matter.
The company knew from animal testing it had conducted ahead of its U.S. approval last year that the wires might retract, removing with them the sensitive electrodes that decode brain signals, three of the sources said. Neuralink deemed the risk low enough for a redesign not to be merited, the sources added.
The company said last week that the implant’s tiny wires, which are thinner than a human hair, retracted from a patient’s brain in its first human trial, resulting in fewer electrodes that could measure brain signals.
It depends on how many of the electrodes are affected.
For instance, your phone screen is probably expected to develop dead pixels over time, but there is a big difference between expecting a handful of pixels to stop working and expecting half of them to stop working. The former has virtually no effect, whereas the latter makes the phone unusable.
Likewise, the most important question for a brain interface is not “Are all the sensors working?”, it’s “Is the patient experiencing reduced performance?”
Also the timeline that’s expected to happen on. I’d be pretty fucking mad if my phone had dead pixels less than 6 months after buying it. 10 years, not so much.
Likewise, I’d be pretty mad that if a reportable amount of my brain electrodes detached within the first 6 months of having them, but I’d be less mad if it was a few years down the line (not that I’d ever be fully okay with it. This is my brain, after all).
That’s because screens are a mature technology. Twenty years ago, you expected a few dead pixels in every brand new screen.
It’s a lot easier to warranty a phone screen than it is brain surgery. That’s why that expectation was acceptable for screens.
By the same token, medical devices have more built-in redundancies in case of partial failure. That’s why the overall impact on the patient is more important than how many electrodes are operational.
I will admit, I think I’m coming from a place of zero trust that anything musk has his hands in has any amount of safety or redundancy built in, because that might hurt the bottom line
Pretty much every medical device is made by people who are equally interested in the bottom line, they just aren’t constantly in the media spotlight like Musk.
Fortunately there are government agencies that closely watch these companies to make sure patient safety comes first.