Innovations

Brain-computer interfaces bring hope for the paralyzed

Research has geared up lately in the area of brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Brain implants today are where laser eye surgery was decades ago, but the field will advance significantly in the upcoming years. Imagine a retinal chip giving you perfect eyesight or the ability to see in the dark, a cochlear implant granting you perfect hearing or a memory chip bestowing you with almost limitless memory. What if you could type into a computer with only your thoughts or control your entire smart house by sending out the necessary brainwaves?

Although that’s really galactic leaps away, the first neuroprosthetics is already on the market: you can purchase cochlear implants, and retinal implants – the latter was approved by the FDA in 2013. Moreover, implants for people with Parkinson’s disease send electrical pulses deep into the brain, activating some of the pathways involved in motor control. Rarer, but also in use, are brain implant therapies for people paralyzed by spinal cord injury or other neurological damage. A chip inserted into the brain reads off electrical signals that are translated by a computer to restore some movement and communication. Couple it with an exoskeleton, and magic will truly happen: lately, it made headlines that a 30-year-old paralyzed man, Thibault, was able to move all four of his limbs with the help of a ‘mind-reading’ exoskeleton. We expect more similar stories to come.

Artificial food as the hope against food shortages

Synthetic tea? Lab-grown meat? Artificial milk? Nutrients and vitamins in a protein shake? Sci-fi movies like the Matrix, Star Trek or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy showed us a glimpse of the future of eating disconnected from Mother Earth. Some innovative solutions are already here, promising an option for alleviating the overstraining of natural resources and still providing food for millions of humans.

For example, researchers of the Cultured Beef Project remove muscle cells from the shoulder of a cow and feed the cells with a nutrient mix in a Petri dish, and then they grow into muscle tissue. From a few starter cells, one can derive tons of meat. The Netherlands-based company, Mosa Meat introduced their first hamburger in London in 2013, and they promise to bring artificial beef to the masses in the next 3-4 years. Two Israeli start-ups, SuperMeat in Tel Aviv and the Modern Agriculture Foundation (MAF) in Ramat Gan joined the quest to mass-produce cultured meat, working on cultivating chicken meat in their laboratories, while Silicon Valley-based Finless Foods is promising to produce real fish meat out of stem cells to create more sustainable seafood.

Another San Francisco-based company, JUST Inc., formerly known as the controversial food enterprise, Hampton Creek, is developing cultured foie gras, synthetic chorizo, and artificial nugget. Its researchers are also working on cultured meat, and they promised to introduce their version at the end of this year. A Japanese company, Integriculture Inc., could mean a competitor for JUST in the field of cultured foie gras. CEO Yuki Hanyu says their lab-grown product could hit the shelves within the next four years.