The Australian company trying to beat Elon Musk's Neuralink to the punch
Founded in Melbourne, Synchron has inserted its brain implants into 10 human patients. Further along than Neuralink in clinical trials, it has attracted funding from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Gil Rind barely slept in the week leading up to 19 September, 2019. That was the day Synchron, the Australian company where he’s director of technology, would be performing its first implant procedure.
The operation would see a matchstick-sized mesh tube, called a stent, inserted into 75-year-old Graham Felstead’s jugular vein. From there it would be pushed up intravenously to the brain, where it would unfurl atop the motor cortex. In theory, electrodes at the stent’s tips could then read brain activity and translate it into commands for a nearby computer.
The theory worked. The procedure was a success, and Synchron's "stentrode" brain-computer interface (BCI) performed well enough for Felstead, who had motor neurone disease, to write portions of a book before he died in 2021.
“He was aware that he, as the first person to ever do this, might not get any benefit out of it,” Rind said. “We were extremely relieved that it all worked out … we saw that as a momentous day for the field and for our technology as a whole.”
