Elon Musk Launches Neuralink to Connect Brains With Computers

Building a mass-market electric vehicle and colonizing Mars aren’t ambitious enough for Elon Musk. The billionaire entrepreneur now wants to merge computers with human brains to help people keep up with machines.

 Hunched Over a Microscope, He Sketched the Secrets of How the Brain Works

Some microscopes today are so powerful that they can create a picture of the gap between brain cells, which is thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair. They can even reveal the tiny sacs carrying even tinier nuggets of information to cross over that gap to form memories. And in colorful snapshots made possible by a giant magnet, we can see the activity of close to 100 billion brain cells talking. Decades before these technologies existed, a man hunched over a microscope in Spain at the turn of the 20th century was making prescient hypotheses about how the brain works.

 The Science That Could Make You Crave Broccoli More Than Chocolate

Neurogastronomy wants to rewire how people perceive flavors—and may be able to help those who have lost their sense of taste.

 What We Know So Far about How COVID Affects the Nervous System

Neurological symptoms might arise from multiple causes. But does the virus even get into neurons?

Neurological Diseases Cost The U.S. $800 Billion Each Year

Neurological disorders disproportionately affect older adults. The costs are expected to increase exponentially in the coming years, as the elderly population will double by 2050.

The Coming Boom In Brain Medicines

It will still take years for neuroscience to metamorphose from a backwater into a hotbed of innovation, but it's happening. Mark Fishman, the head of research at Novartis, puts it bluntly: "We're revolutionizing the field."

The Golden Age of Neuroscience Has Arrived

We are now entering the golden age of neuroscience. We have learned more about the thinking brain in the last 10-15 years than in all of previous human history. A blizzard of the new technologies using advanced physics—resulting in scans and tests we know as fMRI, EEG, PET, DBS, CAT, TCM and TES—have allowed scientists to observe thoughts as they ricochet like a pong ball inside the living brain, and then begin the process of deciphering these thoughts using powerful computers.