Overview

Whenever we talk about the vital organs of our body, then the name of the brain comes up. Neurotechnology helps to understand this vital organ. The brain is one of our most important vital organs. Imagine you are relaxing in bed and you want to eat something. You get a notification on your phone asking you to eat something healthy from Zomato, Swiggy or Imagine you are on your diet and your phone is telling you why you have to eat something healthy Because you are dieting. So this technology is beneficial.  This blog will tell you about what neurotechnology technology helps improve your brain by analysing it and what are the applications of this neurotechnology.

Index

1  What is Neurotechnology?

2 What is Cognitive Technology?

3 What are the applications of Neurotechnology?

4 The goals, prospects and limitations of Neurotechnologies

5 What areas might further developments in Neurotechnology lead to?

6 The limitations of Neurotechnologies nowadays

7 The Latest Developments in Neurotechnology

8 Conclusion

What is Neurotechnology?

  • Neurotechnology includes all technologies that have been developed to understand the brain, visualize brain processes, and also control, repair, and improve brain functioning. With the help of these techniques, the researchers know which part of your brain is activated or deactivated when you are doing any work.
  • Now he is also targeting those areas in which the attention of the people is not getting such as it helps in making medicine which depression, insomnia, and attention deficit disorder(A.A.D) can be treated with the help of this technology.
  • In addition to this, Cochlear is making implants for those who have lost their hearing power in an accident which will help your people in hearing recovery still this is just the beginning of neurotechnology but with the team, this technology will also become advanced and In the future we will get the benefits of many things with its help.

What is Cognitive Technology?

  • Neurotechnology and Cognitive Technotechnology are related to each other.
  • These technologies are derived from Artificial intelligence(AI), with the help of which machine learning can do things that only human beings can do.
  • There are a few examples like artificial vision, machine learning, deep learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Robotic processes.
  • The data obtained from the functioning of the brain creates an Artificial neural network(ANN).
  • To understand from the aforementioned example, Machine Vision identifies and analyses people’s emotions from their facial expressions.

What are the applications of Neurotechnology?

1. Neuronal Biofeedback: 

  • Someone can be trained to control their central nervous system, including their heartbeat, using real-time EEG or fMRI.
  • Let’s first understand what biofeedback is. You might control parts of your body’s techniques, including your heart rate, breathing patterns, and muscular reactions, by using a mind-body technique called biofeedback. You are connected to electrical chips during biofeedback, which provides you with biological data.
  • Your body changes when you suffer pain or stress, even if you are unaware of it. Your breathing may increase your skeletal system may nervous and your pulse rate may rise. You can make little adjustments to your body with the use of biofeedback, such as letting your muscles relax, to assist ease discomfort or release tension. You can breathe more deeply and lower your heart rate, which improves your mood. You can learn how to manage your body in new ways by exercising with biofeedback. This can improve a health problem or help make daily activities easier.
  • When brain activity is measured and a digital feedback signal is provided to adjust emotional, cognitive, and behavioural functions, neurofeedback (NF), a biofeedback technique, teaches people how to control their brain functions. 

2. Next-generation neuropharmacology:

  • Genetic and behavioural neuropharmacology are profiting from a deeper comprehension of the neural system to create more potent medications.
  • The study of medications that impact the neurological system is known as neuropharmacology.
  • The main focus is on creating chemicals that could help people with mental or neurological illnesses.
  • Neuropharmacology studies medications that affect nervous system-regulated processes, correcting various dysregulations in the body’s functioning through neural control.

3. Neuroprostheses:

  • These electronic devices may repair motor, sensory, or cognitive functions compromised by an illness or accident.
  • A neuroprosthetic is any device that can improve a brain system’s input or output. While some neuroprosthetics—like cochlear implants and visual prosthetics—have been in existence since the 1950s, their viability as therapies for brain injury is still in stages of development.
  • A wide range of artificial tools or systems known as neuroprosthetics are designed to improve the motor, sensory, cognitive, visual, auditory, and communication deficiencies resulting from acquired brain injuries.
  • These include virtual reality games, robotics, myoelectric prostheses, functional electrical stimulation, assistive technology, and brain stimulation.
  • Neuromodulation encompasses implanted devices like deep brain stimulators and brain-computer interfaces and extracranial stimulation tools like transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation.
  • The goal of neuroprosthetics is to improve the quality of life and enable those with brain injuries to engage in daily activities.

4. Neural interfaces:

  • Real-time signal sending and receiving are made possible via brain-computer interfaces, which are essential to the creation of new sensors and prostheses.
  • The nervous system can communicate with devices known as neural interfaces.
  • These are electronic devices that are implanted either externally or internally to record, stimulate, or do both.
  • Internal, aggressive, or implanted technologies are interfaces that are placed inside the body or brain rather than outside, harmless, or wearable systems, which are frequently referred to as brain-computer interfaces.
  • Brain implants for the treatment of tremors and neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s, electrical foot stimulators to support recovery from a stroke, cochlear implants to let deaf individuals hear sounds, players’ use of brain-computer interfaces, usually in the form of EEG (electroencephalography) headsets, to manipulate virtual things, Utilising transcranial stimulation to improve concentration or memory all of these technologies and applications current use neural and brain-computer interfaces.

5. Optogenetic implants:

  • The main tissue part of the nervous system is known as nervous tissue or neural tissue.
  • Control and regulation of bodily processes and activities are provided by the neurological system.
  • Optogenetics, genetics, and neurotechnology work together to provide targeted light-based genetic switching in neural tissue.

The goals, prospects and limitations of neurotechnologies

The development of neurotechnologies can enhance human experience in several ways. Once researchers can get over the existing challenges of neurotechnology, these technologies could lead to many different kinds of opportunities for improved mental and physical abilities.

What areas might further developments in neurotechnology lead to?

Neurotechnologies can significantly affect almost every sector of society in the future. They could be applied to the following kinds of operations:

  • Education: Students or trainees may be able to study and think more intelligently thanks to neurotechnologies.
  • Workplace: Neurotechnologies could bring about a new way of thinking in the workplace by facilitating more efficient and better learning.
  • Military or national security: Neurotechnologies may be used in the military or for national security to improve human abilities such as motor coordination.
  • Sports: Neurotechnologies can monitor mental and physical health in addition to improving energetic talents.
  • Applications for customers: Neurotechnologies may eventually allow for the mind-control of commercial devices, such as phones. Neurotechnologies may also make it possible for features like thought-to-text authoring and brain-controlled virtual and augmented reality electronic devices to be used for entertainment.

The limitations of Neurotechnologies nowadays

  • At this point, the only thing that neuromodulation, neuroprostheses, and BMI technologies can do is collect data over time. Very little continual sensing is available, and there are few ways to adjust neural system stimulation in response to neurofeedback.
  • This suggests that neurotechnologies cannot yet function independently or in along with brain signals. To build a seamless closed-loop system that enables the technology to simultaneously read, write, and alter brain signals, more investigation and development are required.

The Latest Developments in Neurotechnology

  • Large IT corporations currently oversee several major neurotechnology projects. The entrepreneur Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX and Tesla, founded Neuralink in 2016 to create an implanted brain-machine interface. The goal is to implant extremely thin wires, roughly five microns in diameter, into the cerebral cortex through painless surgery to receive and transmit information.
  • Established in the same year, Kernel is a business that possesses a non-invasive brain interface prototype that uses near-infrared spectroscopy. Specifically, it’s a helmet that, at the moment, functions as a device that can recognise emotions, for example. Major corporations like Google and Facebook are also working on neurotechnology-related initiatives.

Conclusion

Neurotechnology’s capabilities focus on monitoring brain activity to eventually affect brain processes. Here is where the ethical boundaries emerge since, when carried to the nth degree and due to technological advancement, this can be equated to reading, or even manipulating an individual’s thoughts and feelings. Neurorights must evolve in parallel with advances in neurotechnology. Private companies may soon have access to the massive amounts of data that neurotechnological devices will provide. These rights would be centred around safeguarding this personal information and preventing potential risks like epigenetic modifications, neuropsychiatric complications, or biohacking. It is crucial to remember that if we utilise neurotechnology in the future and the technology is put on the market, the corporation will retain our data, which is readily misused.