Surgically implanted microchips in the brain can help the deaf hear and the blind see, the crippled walk and the Alzheimer’s patient remember things. But what else are we capable of with this kind of technology?
We might see night vision, control of robots, enhancing your mood, focus, energy and simulated automatic learning all within the next 20 years. The military is on the front line of this technology studying with mainly PTSD patients and memory improvement (which comes to no surprise as most of our technology was developed by the military).
“Brain implants today are where laser eye surgery was several decades ago,” writes Gary Marcus, an NYU professor of psychology, and Christof Koch, chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, in a recent essay for The Wall Street Journal.
But how many people are really on board with getting a brain implant? It’s not a wildly popular idea as you can imagine.
Studies show that less than 30% of Americans would get a brain implant to improve memory and focus. While it seems farfetched that we would opt for an elective brain implant, you never know what tomorrow’s technology may tempt us to do. If you could erase the effects of a debilitating disease or become an even better version of yourself with a single implant, wouldn’t you be curious?
