A middle-aged man who works in emergency services in the US had been battling depression and suicidal thoughts for 17 years, unable to sleep most nights, and leaving his wife and teen daughter walking on eggshells because of his irritability, before he opted for a shot in the dark. Researchers at the University of Washington asked if he would participate in a study on a brain implant that could, maybe, treat the condition. Eric, who requested a pseudonym to protect his identity in talking with me, jumped at the chance. He only got nervous two days before his surgery.
“It occurred to me I’m getting something implanted very close to my brain,” he said.
This month marks a year since Eric became one of the first humans to trial the chip, developed by Inner Cosmos, a start-up in Scotts Valley, California, near Santa Cruz. The results are promising. Over the past six months his Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale scores, which measure the severity of depression, have dropped, suggesting he is now in remission. Even his family has noticed the change, Eric told me in his first interview since having the chip implanted.
Illustration: Mountain People
About one-third of patients with depression do not respond to antidepressants, and Eric is one of them. For years, their next best option has been a 40-year-old procedure called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in which the patient sits in a chair while a magnetic paddle is held against their head, delivering pulses to specific areas of the brain for about 30 minutes. That is different from electroshock therapy which triggers seizures throughout the brain. Although TMS is effective, working for about 60 percent of patients, most struggle with the logistics of traveling to a hospital every day for a month or more to have it done.
Eric’s chip, a round, flat disc implanted just above his skull, means he can administer the procedure himself any time he likes by activating the chip with a separate handheld device. At first, the sensation was a bit like the pressure you would feel in your palm if you pressed your thumb into it, he said.
Now he barely feels it and can activate the Inner Cosmos implant while mowing his lawn or having coffee, though he does not use it while driving.
Brain-computer interfaces, also referred to as neurotechnology or just brain chips, have been slowly making waves. The market was catalyzed by the launch of Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which helped its first quadriplegic patient, Noland Arbaugh, navigate the Internet and play computer games. Venture capital firms poured US$953 million into neurotechnology start-ups last year.
The field was born in the 19th century, when French physician Paul Broca discovered that a specific region of the brain controlled speech, laying the foundation for the study of machines that could target other brain areas to treat disorders.
Though brain implants have been around for more than two decades, focusing primarily on paralyzed patients, the last two years have marked a leap toward more sophisticated devices that promise to treat a wider range of conditions with simpler procedures. Synchron, a start-up backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, allows people with almost no mobility to operate a computer mouse, and its device is inserted through blood vessels rather than requiring open brain surgery. Another firm called Paradromics places an array of tiny electrodes on the brain’s surface.
Inner Cosmos has found a way to address mental health without going into the brain at all.
“It’s less invasive than a cochlear implant,” said Meron Gribetz, cofounder and chief executive officer of Inner Cosmos, adding that the procedure Eric took part in involves shaving the outside layer of the skull but not going through it, meaning the procedure is not limited to neurosurgeons. The chip’s creators wrote a 2021 peer-reviewed paper classifying the tech as “embedded” instead of “invasive.”
Having nearly finished a feasibility study with three patients, which included Eric, Gribetz is now talking to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about a larger efficacy study which could involve dozens or even hundreds of patients with depression.
He said the company’s human trials are the first in nearly 20 years to be granted by the FDA for a device that treats depression.
It is heartening to not only see progress across the board with neurotechnology, but the possibility that it could address treatment resistance for mental health, given how prevalent depression and anxiety are today. When a device can be implanted with relative ease to lift the fog of melancholy, it is worth embracing those advances even if the notion of becoming part-cyborg fills some of us with dread.
Where things could get hairier is with the encroachment of more powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems that allow brain implants to not only sync with the Internet but process some of the most deeply personal data possible, not to mention influence a person’s thoughts. It is not science fiction. Musk has told his scientists at Neuralink to work with a “maniacal sense of urgency” to augment future patients with the capabilities of AI.
Gribetz, an entrepreneur who previously founded an augmented-reality glasses company, also sees his implants as one day helping humans work with AI “in a more symbiotic way.”
I am skeptical over whether such a symbiosis would ever be possible, given how much of a mystery the brain continues to be even to neuroscientists. However, the stopgap of using these interfaces to solve chronic disorders is promising enough. Eric’s story is another example of how the brain tech’s first steps into mainstream medicine are for now bringing hope, not dystopia.
Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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