Brain Implants
Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2025 8:33 am
I just added the Brain Implants section to the https://www.sparksbrain.org/futureTechnology.html page. Here it is:
60 to 90 years, gradual
Stentrode is a currently available stent that gets implanted in a large blood vessel in the brain. It has electrodes on it, making it a brain-computer interface. Unlike its competitor, Neuralink, it does not damage neurons and it remains functional indefinitely instead of degrading over the course of a few months. It's clear that this technology can be gradually improved. As we develop microrobotics, such implants could be designed to branch out into much smaller vessels. They could listen to the electrical activity of nearby neurons and also interact with them. This should result in decades of intensive development, where huge amounts of money would be poured into making gradual improvements because everyone would be using these implants. At some point, the resolution could approach that of individual neurons. It would also be obvious to everyone by then that an upload still has the same identity as the original brain.
The brain implant scenario is a way to approach mind uploading gradually. This makes it very exciting and very likely to be successful. There could come a point when the pros of uploading completely would outweigh the cons of losing some information. For example, the meat brain would continue to deteriorate with old age. Maybe some people would have no choice but to upload if they want to maintain continuity instead of sitting out a few years in stasis. By that time, the amount of available external computing power would be vastly greater than in the meat brain. And the speed would also be much higher. Remember that we only compute at about 10 bits per second and our memory retention is about 1 bit per second. So there could be many reasons why people would be willing to make that jump. In fact, it really wouldn't be much of a jump at all. People would already be doing nearly all of their thinking on external hardware anyway. The early adopters would simply make the decision to remove the fairly useless legacy meat brains that were holding them back more than helping them. It would be a decision involving low risk with high reward.
60 to 90 years, gradual
Stentrode is a currently available stent that gets implanted in a large blood vessel in the brain. It has electrodes on it, making it a brain-computer interface. Unlike its competitor, Neuralink, it does not damage neurons and it remains functional indefinitely instead of degrading over the course of a few months. It's clear that this technology can be gradually improved. As we develop microrobotics, such implants could be designed to branch out into much smaller vessels. They could listen to the electrical activity of nearby neurons and also interact with them. This should result in decades of intensive development, where huge amounts of money would be poured into making gradual improvements because everyone would be using these implants. At some point, the resolution could approach that of individual neurons. It would also be obvious to everyone by then that an upload still has the same identity as the original brain.
The brain implant scenario is a way to approach mind uploading gradually. This makes it very exciting and very likely to be successful. There could come a point when the pros of uploading completely would outweigh the cons of losing some information. For example, the meat brain would continue to deteriorate with old age. Maybe some people would have no choice but to upload if they want to maintain continuity instead of sitting out a few years in stasis. By that time, the amount of available external computing power would be vastly greater than in the meat brain. And the speed would also be much higher. Remember that we only compute at about 10 bits per second and our memory retention is about 1 bit per second. So there could be many reasons why people would be willing to make that jump. In fact, it really wouldn't be much of a jump at all. People would already be doing nearly all of their thinking on external hardware anyway. The early adopters would simply make the decision to remove the fairly useless legacy meat brains that were holding them back more than helping them. It would be a decision involving low risk with high reward.