# BCI // Reading and Writing to the Brain

Canonical URL: https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-future-bci
Raw viewer URL: https://content.shipslides.com/d/catalog-future-bci/raw
Category: Future
Slides: 13
Updated: 2026-05-17T20:55:59.467Z
Tags: catalog, future, bci

## Summary

Bypass eyes and ears. Read intent from cortex, write signals back. Once medical-only — now an arms race. Key sections include: BCI / Reading and writing to the brain.; ~ 86 billion neurons. We want to listen.; Listening from outside the skull.; Inside the skull . Closer to the spike.; From thought to cursor . From cortex to words.; Stimulate. The brain interprets.; Neuralink : more channels, robot surgeon.; Synchron . No craniotomy.; Precision Neuroscience . A film, not a needle.; Medical BCI already changes lives..

## Slide Outline

1. BCI / Reading and writing to the brain.
2. ~ 86 billion neurons. We want to listen.
3. Listening from outside the skull.
4. Inside the skull . Closer to the spike.
5. From thought to cursor . From cortex to words.
6. Stimulate. The brain interprets.
7. Neuralink : more channels, robot surgeon.
8. Synchron . No craniotomy.
9. Precision Neuroscience . A film, not a needle.
10. Medical BCI already changes lives.
11. The consumer dreams. Mostly unproven.
12. The honest assessment.

## Slide Transcript

### Slide 1: BCI /
Reading and writing
to the brain.

- BCI / 01
- Bypass eyes and ears. Read intent from cortex, write signals back. Once medical-only — now an arms race.
- 13 SLIDES // NEURAL INTERFACES // 2026

### Slide 2: ~86 billion neurons. We want to listen.

- 02 / THE SIGNAL
- Each neuron fires action potentials at variable rates — millivolt spikes lasting roughly a millisecond. Cognition emerges from the patterns across populations.
- Neurons
- 86,000,000,000
- cortical + subcortical
- Synapses
- ~1014
- connections per brain
- Spike width
- ~1 ms
- action potential

### Slide 3: Listening from outside the skull.

- 03 / NON-INVASIVE
- No surgery, no risk — but the bone and scalp blur the signal. You measure populations of millions, not individual neurons.
- EEG
- Electrodes on scalp
- Cheap. ~100 ms temporal, cm spatial. Used in BCI gaming and meditation headsets.
- fMRI
- Blood-oxygen MRI
- ~1 mm spatial — but slow (~seconds). Tracks blood flow, not spikes.
- MEG
- Magnetic fields
- Excellent timing. Requires giant shielded room and superconducting sensors.
- fNIRS
- Near-infrared light
- Portable, measures oxygenation through skull. Limited depth.
- All four trade fidelity for safety. None will give you a smooth cursor.

### Slide 4: Inside the skull. Closer to the spike.

- 04 / INVASIVE
- ECoG Grid of electrodes laid on the cortical surface. Used in epilepsy mapping; rich signal without penetrating tissue.
- Utah arrays ~100 silicon microelectrodes pushed into cortex. Workhorse of academic BCI since the late 1990s.
- Neuralink threads ~64 flexible polymer threads, 16 electrodes each — placed by a sewing-machine-like robot.

### Slide 5: From thought to cursor. From cortex to words.

- 05 / READING THE BRAIN
- 2006 // BrainGate
- Cursor control
- Matt Nagle, paralyzed from the neck down, moves a computer cursor by imagining hand motion. Utah array in motor cortex. The first proof.
- 2021+ // Stanford / UCSF
- Speech decoding
- Patients with ALS or stroke "speak" via implants reading premotor cortex. Up to ~78 words / minute by 2023; trending toward conversational pace.
- Reading isn't telepathy. It's measuring intent — the motor signals that would have moved a hand or shaped a sound — and translating them into text or motion.

### Slide 6: Stimulate. The brain interprets.

- 06 / WRITING TO THE BRAIN
- Send pulses into nerve or cortex, the brain learns to read them as sound, sight, or sensation. Write-mostly BCIs are the oldest commercial neurotech — and the most successful.
- Cochlear
- ~700,000
- implant users worldwide. Stimulates auditory nerve directly.
- Retinal
- Early stage
- Argus II, Prima — phosphene-level vision restored. Argus retired 2020; newer systems advancing.

### Slide 7: Neuralink: more channels, robot surgeon.

- 07 / NEURALINK
- Founded
- 2016
- Musk + neuroscience team
- Channels
- 1,024+
- across 64 polymer threads
- First human
- Jan 2024
- Noland Arbaugh, paralyzed; plays chess by thinking
- Robot inserts threads thinner than a human hair to avoid blood vessels
- Wireless, rechargeable, fully under the skull — no protruding hardware
- Several threads retracted in patient one; software compensated. Real-world feedback in progress.

### Slide 8: Synchron. No craniotomy.

- 08 / SYNCHRON
- The Stentrode is a mesh of electrodes placed via blood vessels — threaded up the jugular into the superior sagittal sinus, sitting against motor cortex from inside a vein.
- No drilling, no skull surgery — placed in a few hours like a stent
- Lower channel count than Neuralink, but lower risk
- FDA breakthrough device; multi-patient trials in US + Australia

### Slide 9: Precision Neuroscience. A film, not a needle.

- 09 / PRECISION
- Founded by Neuralink co-founder Ben Rapoport. Lays a thin polyimide film with 1,024 microelectrodes onto the cortical surface — through a slit-like incision, no penetration of brain tissue.
- Approach
- Surface film
- Sits on cortex, like a sticker
- Channels
- ~1,024
- per film, stackable
- Reversible
- Removable
- Non-penetrating; can be replaced
- Trade-off: ECoG-class signal — not single neurons, but huge spatial coverage. The "safe upgrade" pitch.

### Slide 10: Medical BCI already changes lives.

- 10 / WHAT WORKS
- Paralysis
- Movement + cursor
- Tetraplegic patients control robotic arms, computers, and exoskeletons. Some achieve functional independence with daily-use systems.
- Speech
- Restoring voice
- ALS / locked-in patients regain conversational speech via cortex-to-text decoders. Trending past 70 wpm.
- Parkinson's DBS
- ~250,000
- people with deep brain stimulators. Tremor and rigidity reduced for decades. Approved 1997.
- Also: epilepsy responsive stimulation, treatment-resistant depression trials, tinnitus suppression. The medical track record is real and growing.

### Slide 11: The consumer dreams. Mostly unproven.

- 11 / SPECULATIVE
- Memory
- Hippocampal boost
- Wake Forest experiments show modest recall improvement via stimulation in epilepsy patients. Generalization unclear.
- Telepathy
- Brain-to-brain
- Lab demos route bits between people via TMS. Bandwidth is laughable. Don't expect mind-DMs soon.
- AI-cognition
- Co-processor
- A chip that "thinks with you." No hardware, no signal-shape, no neuroscience yet supports it. Pure pitch.
- The gap between "works in a lab on five patients" and "costs $300 at Best Buy" is wider than the marketing suggests.

### Slide 12: The honest assessment.

- 12 / HONEST
- Two completely different timelines collapsed into one word.
- Real // Now
- Medical BCI works. Paralysis, speech, deafness, Parkinson's — measurable wins, multi-decade track record. The science is competitive, well-funded, and shipping.
- Decades // Off
- Consumer BCI — meaningful enhancement of a healthy brain — is decades away. Surgery risk, signal density, biocompatibility, and FDA pathways all bind. Don't believe the demo reels.
- The right framing: BCI is a medical revolution that will eventually spill into consumer use. We are early, and the early stories are the medical ones.

### Slide 13: Slide 13

- 13 / END / REFS
- The brain is no longer a sealed box. We are listening in — and beginning to talk back.
- YOUTUBE
- SEARCH
- → youtube.com/results?search_query=neuralink+brain+chip
- → youtube.com/results?search_query=brain+computer+interface+research
- Companies cited: Neuralink, Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, BrainGate consortium, Medtronic (DBS), Cochlear Ltd. Decoding speech: UCSF / Stanford labs (Chang, Henderson, Shenoy).


## Related Decks

- [AGI // The Most Consequential Question](https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-future-agi)
- [CLIMATE / 2026 - 2100](https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-future-climate)
- [Energy Transition / Fossils to Electrons](https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-future-energy-transition)
- [FUSION / a star, in a bottle](https://shipslides.com/d/catalog-future-fusion)