When I Google search, all explanations I see either come up with descriptions that are too technical, or aren’t specific in how implants actually do the things. One of them actually used the phrase “in some way”.
A neuron sends an electrical pulse. An implant reads it. But how??
The implant sits on the top of the brain. How is it picking up all these millions of signals throughout the brain and interpreting it?
Thanks!
In: 6
It sounds like you have one thing wrong. Implants is as the name implies implanted into the brain, it does not just sit on top. It requires surgery to put the implant into the body and connect its wires to the nerves. Nerve cells sort of uses electricity through salt water to get signals from one side of the cell to the other. It is not exactly the same as an electrical wire but close enough that the nerves and the wires will exchange signals.
You would expect it to be difficult to connect the wires to the correct neurons but this actually seams like a simple problem. Just connect it to any nerves, hopefully in the right part of the brain, and the brain will quickly learn which neuron does what. We are still figuring out how to do more advanced communication but for simple things it appears to be very easy.
There are other ways of interfacing with the neurons rather then using implants. You can put electrodes on the skin and measure the electric field. As the neurons are firing they do generate electric fields in the body and these can be measured on the outside. It is very hard to receive the signals from a single neuron but works on larger signals to for example muscle groups. Signals the other way is similarly very low resolution and can basically just operate muscles.
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