Neuralink: We Need More Awareness to Get Focus of Elon Musk's New Start-Up

Couple of weeks ago Neuralink, the new brain to machine start-up Elon Musk has created, was on the news.

In the meantime a new website has been launched for the company: https://www.neuralink.com/. Eventually they are searching for talented people to start their activities (If you are a brightminded Biomedical or IT specialist living in the San Francisco area this could be an outstanding opportunity to work on humanities future breakthroughs

A very nice explanation of the vision Elon Musk has with this company is published on: http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html
(Especially part 3 of this long read is interesting.)

Now... the most important reason for creating this thread is the fact that with the right focus the activities of this company could also become a hope for a cure. The main aim of Neuralink is integrating computers with the human brain but in achieving this they need to build up R&D for understanding how the human brain works. One of the first steps for this company is therefore to work on solutions/cures for brain conditions like epilepsy, Parkinson's etc.

Unfortunately tinnitus is not on their list right now. So to change this I would like to call for the help of all of you, the thousands of people who are visiting Tinnitus Talk daily.

It is time to stop complaining about how less doctors/researchers care about our suffering and start working on awareness to speed up cure discovery.

The thing to do is simple: Just ask the people with power/money/knowledge (in this case Elon Musk) to create focus for our condition. A message over Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or a plain e-mail doesn't cost you a lot of time but could generate a lot of awareness for a real and solid cure.

With this said... can we count on our power to bring change... or with other words: have you already picked up your phone to send a message to Elon

 

In particular, I liked these two quotes from Elon Musk from the WaitButWhy article:

"We are aiming to bring something to market that helps with certain severe brain injuries (stroke, cancer lesion, congenital) in about four years."

"I think we are about 8 to 10 years away from this being usable by people with no disability … It is important to note that this depends heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well our devices work on people with disabilities."

As a long-time SpaceX enthusiast, I know that his timelines tend to be somewhat optimistic. But a lot of Neuralink's early success will depend on being able to interface input/output with the brain, which is almost certainly a step in the right direction for addressing chronic tinnitus too. Hopefully he'll push for open research, similar to what he did for Tesla and OpenAI.

 

I don't have social media, just plain old e-mail, and Tinnitus Talk of course. How do I contact?

 

The man has built a reusable rocket with limited budget in a decade while NASA hasn't done anything innovative since the 70's with a budget that's comparable with the budget of a small country. Therefore we could expect Neuralink's progress to be faster then conventional science.

Elonmuskoffice@spacex.com
Elonmuskoffice@TeslaMotors.com
And probably also Elonmuskoffice@Neuralink.com

...but the man is the center of attention for millions and burnt through a lot of mail addresses. Contacting him via Twitter should be more effective (creating an account is free, simple and shouldn't take more than 10 minutes).

 

@Mic I signed up for a Twitter account and did my part. Won't stop there but that's my start. As an aside, utilizing a hashtag helps add a sense of organization and cohesion to any campaign to raise awareness. I'm just using the basic #tinnitus.

Hopefully with enough #tinnitus hashtags coupled with @elonmusk he gets the message

 

@JurgenG and @Sam Bridge also contacted him via Twitter couple weeks ago, hopefully he will get the message.

 

Yeah, unsurprisingly he didn't reply. :^
Do try to get in touch with him or with Neuralink though, this might be the holy grail.

 

Great idea @Mic and also excellent article - which I have saved to read soon when I get some time.

If we were to try and get Elon Musk to hear us (which is hard given his profile) we need to think on a coordinated way. So that all of our efforts would matter.

I'm just weighing in, no ideas yet on the coordination part. You have to wonder, if we can communicate with the brain, can we use Deep Brain Stimulation techniques via his device, so we have access without the consequence of physically getting into the brain?

 

Exactly my point of view Steve. As popular as Elon Musk is, he probably receives hundreds or thousands of messages every day. The chance of getting his attention for our condition with 3 or 4 tweets isn't probable... but with hundreds of tweets in a short period and with the right #hashtag we could create a tweet peek to attract his attention.

Nothing is impossible. Hundred years ago people would declare you mad if you said mankind would reach for the stars... and look where we are now.

The limits of our own imagination is the only thing that stands in the way... the sky is not the limit... it is the beginning

 

I am all for awareness and more money going to tinnitus research.

On a side note. It does kinda annoy me that people thinking throwing money at this is going to cure it. My father has MS and that is funded greatly.

I can tell you that even with all that funding they don't have cures. This is NOT to say that more money is not better, it is, but it's does not mean you can buy a cure.

 

Can we push this again?

I honestly do believe that we need to draw their attention to this!

 

Elon Musk's lady friend is/was Grimes so he knows about tinnitus because Grimes has severe tinnitus.

 

They know about us It's a slide from their presentation held a couple of hours ago.

 

Does she have severe tinnitus? How do we know that?

 

Let’s hope they stay together... Talking of which:

Elon Musk's singer girlfriend Grimes says she has REPLACED the top layer of her eyeball with orange polymer she made in a lab to 'treat depression' and spends 4 hours a day in a 'deprivation tank to astro-glide to other dimensions'