Ashlee Vance of Bloomberg reports that Science Corp. is selling devices and software that make it easier for researchers to probe the mind, resulting in therapies for some of the most crippling conditions facing humans. Vance writes:
The brain implant industry has boomed over the past decade as companies such as Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience and Synchron have each aimed tens of millions of dollars toward developing tiny devices that send information directly from people’s brains to computers. While these startups have made remarkable progress, other companies and researchers still rely on less sophisticated technology rooted in academic and clinical settings.
Max Hodak, one of Neuralink Corp.’s founders, is trying to narrow that gap. His company, Alameda, California-based Science Corp., has several new products designed to bring down the cost and development time for research labs and startups looking to probe the mind. Hodak’s hope is that the tools will increase the pace of brain research, resulting in therapies for some of the most crippling conditions facing humans. “Our goal is to get the brain computer interface industry to be a hundred times bigger than it is now,” he says. […]
Both Norman and Mathis caution that Science has much work ahead of it, such as persuading researchers to coalesce around the products and navigating the regulatory landscape. Norman expects that the products would appeal first to researchers who want to gather as much data as possible as quickly as possible, as opposed to a startup that would want to create its own proprietary hardware and software. He says Science’s products are unlikely to foster a Neuralink competitor in the near future. “If a startup wanted to develop this into a product for clinical use, there’s still a mountain of work to do,” he says.
Hodak admits that he’s questioned the business case around building these products. It was unclear that there was going to be a big enough industry to justify the burden and expense of trying to mass-produce the hardware. But over time, he says, he became convinced that brain research and technology is on the cusp of a new era, where Science can enable devices that help not only with conditions like paralysis and ALS but also mental health disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. “To be clear, I’m not saying that we have cures right now,” he says. “But I think this is going to be bigger than a lot of people think.”
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