Executive Summary

Despite the high rates of sexual assault and harassment and pervasive discrimination based on race, gender, age, and sexuality in many workplaces, reporting rates remain extremely low. This is in large part because employees fear that the company will respond to reports by further punishing or marginalizing the victim. If you want to increase reporting rates at your company and thereby make your workplace a more equitable, inclusive, and safe place to work the author suggests four practices to rethink your reporting system. Demonstrate commitment to accountability from the most senior leaders. Invest in external resources, such as a private therapist or employee assistance program, to support victims of harassment and discrimination. Establish an ombuds office, that can talk candidly to employees about their fears and concerns and walk them through the reporting options available to them. And create anonymous formal reporting channels that both protect reporters and inform organizational change.

The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements each took the working world by storm, bringing to the forefront issues of workplace sexual assault, sexual and racial harassment, and discrimination. But while heightened awareness is making workplace conversations about sexism, racism, and other injustices more common, these interpersonal conversations alone will not remove the systemic challenges keeping inequity in place. One of the alarming symptoms of these challenges is the low rate at which employees report incidents of assault, harassment, and discrimination. Too many people dont feel safe at work, and, fearing repercussions, arent willing or able to speak up about it. This vicious cycle keeps systemic inequity deeply entrenched within many workplaces.

Despite the high rates of sexual assault and harassment affecting up to 90% of women in some industries and pervasive discrimination based on race, gender, age, and sexuality experienced or witnessed by 61% of U.S. employees reporting rates remain extremely low. A report by the EEOC found that only 30% of employees experiencing harassment on the basis of gender, race, national origin, disability and other protected classes make internal complaints, and less than 15% file formal legal charges. A meta-analysis similarly found that fewer than one-third of workers even informally talked with a supervisor about the sexual harassment they experienced, and less than 25% filed formal reports with their employers.

These studies consistently found that the primary reason for low reporting rates is retaliation, where employers or individuals respond to reports of discrimination or mistreatment by further punishing or marginalizing the victim. Retaliation is astonishingly common: 68% of sexual harassment allegations and 42% of LGBTQ+ discrimination allegations made to the EEOC also include charges of employer retaliation. (Because the EEOC considers charges of retaliation a separate issue from charges of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, and other protected classes, reliable data showing both retaliation and these other forms of discrimination together is sparse.)

There are several additional factors that drive low reporting rates.

One is the likelihood that victims receive any benefit from reporting in the first place. While companies encourage victims to go through internal reporting channels, these are often legalistic grievance procedures meant to reduce the risk of a lawsuit against the company. Forced arbitration, a policy adopted by many companies, requires that employees go through mandatory arbitration to resolve disputes and waive their right to sue. And even if they do, reporting to the EEOC rarely results in benefit to victims, with only 1% of federal discrimination, harassment, or retaliation claims succeeding in U.S. courts.

Another is the inflexibility of options available to victims. When MIT made an informal, confidential process available to employees in the 1980s, they found that 90% of those filing sexual harassment complaints preferred that route to the more formal one. Even 40 years later, many employers still lack these types of processes, discount informal reports of harassment or discrimination, or offer few choices for victims looking for resolution.

The lack of anonymity offered by most reporting processes is also an issue. Research has consistently demonstrated that offering anonymous reporting channels increases reporting rates by making it easier for people to report and protecting victims against retaliation. While many companies have some form of anonymous reporting channel, resolution typically requires that employees come forward and expose their identities and themselves to potential retaliation as a result.

Toxic company cultures play a final role in low rates of reporting, with 53% of employees in one study citing hostile work environment as a reason for not reporting. If victims feel that not only is it unlikely that their report will result in a harasser being found responsible, but that their company would also then disregard the finding or shield the harasser from consequences, there is very little chance theyll choose to report in the first place.

Opaque, legalistic, and inaccessible reporting practices designed to prioritize lowering company risk rather than focusing on resolution and recourse for victims are a major part of the problem. In fact, companies that promote a fairer, flexible, and transparent process for victims may be better equipped to both address deep-seated problems in their workplaces and lower the likelihood that they will be the targets of highly visible discrimination or harassment lawsuits.

If you want to increase reporting rates at your company and thereby make your workplace a more equitable, inclusive, and safe place to work here are four practices that you can adopt to rebuild employee trust in reporting.

To build buy-in for any new reporting processes or tools, company leaders must build trust through their words and actions from the start. You can do this by not only making a public commitment to doing better, but by establishing and publicizing metrics to hold yourselves and the company accountable. If your efforts to develop a better process are driven even partially by a mishandling of a discrimination or harassment incident, you should focus on re-earning trust that has been lost. Strongly consider reaching out to any remaining employees who were affected, apologizing for harm done, and offering recourse to the extent possible.

One option is bringing in external resources through a private therapist or Employee Assistance Program (EAP). By giving employees explicit permission to access these services and making it clear that these providers are independent from the company reporting structure, you can provide employees with confidential support, counseling, and advice. While these resources can be expensive, workplace mental health interventions have been shown to have a high return on investment and similar approaches could provide much-needed support to employees facing harassment and discrimination.

An ombuds is an off-the-record resource currently used by at least 13% of US companies to provide information and guidance to employees considering reporting. Because they are not an official reporting channel, ombuds can talk candidly to employees about fears and concerns and walk them through the options available to them, including but not limited to making a formal report. Importantly, ombuds serve as an alternative to legalistic hearing processes and allow employees some degree of flexibility in communicating their complaint to the individual(s) accused.

A large range of anonymous reporting tools are available to companies, including hotlines, chatbots, website forms, and phone apps. One company in the food industry with a few thousand employees partnered with a third-party platform for their anonymous reporting and found that after 6 months reporting rates had increased by 30%. Faith in the new anonymous channel led employees to come forward earlier with issues that previously may not have been reported for months, if ever, allowing the organization to address problems before they developed into major incidents. While each tool has its own strengths and companies should design their solutions to best fit their own needs, effective solutions (whether fully internal, through an external platform, or a mix of the two) should be:

Leaders who want to take a critical step toward ending discrimination, harassment, microaggressions, and mistreatment in their workplaces need to rethink and redesign the way reporting is done. When employers can successfully prevent retaliation, give victims agency and transparency throughout dispute resolution, and give victims resolution and recourse, they will be able to restore their employees trust in reporting.

Link:
Do Your Employees Feel Safe Reporting Abuse and Discrimination? - Harvard Business Review

The animals have been found missing ears and genitals, with eyes torn out, or deep, clean cuts to their bodies. The recent spate of horse mutilations reported across France has provoked horror and outrage. Satanic cults have been mooted, or individual perpetrators engaged in copycat crimes. But what if the panic reveals more about our collective state of mind in 2020 than any new and twisted form of human behaviour?

The reports started trickling in in January, but they picked up dramatically over the summer, until they were providing a sinister drumbeat to an already strange holiday season in France. Around 150 investigations of animal cruelty are under way, in more than half the countrys 96 metropolitan departments. Internet sleuths put the number of incidents closer to 200.

The outpouring of emotion on social media has been accompanied by efforts to organise vigils and share photos of vehicles lurking suspiciously close to fields and stables. On 7 September, the minister of the interior, Grald Darmanin, visited horse breeders in the northern department of the Oise and warned them not to take justice into their own hands. Two days later, the minister for agriculture, Julien Denormandie, announced that a dedicated phone line had been set up, where breeders could report incidents. One man has been arrested, but he was released after his alibi checked out. By then, a photofit portrait of him had been shared nearly 500,000 times on Facebook.

Not that those on Facebook are listening, but a few quiet voices have raised the possibility that no one is responsible for the shocking injuries. On 3 September, Le Monde pointed out that they could be a natural phenomenon horses that have hurt themselves or died naturally and been set upon by scavengers such as foxes and crows. Previous scares, from the US to Germany, have eventually been explained this way. In the UK, in the decade from 1983, a rash of horse mutilations was widely blamed on a horse ripper, but despite prolonged investigations no conviction was ever made. Experts concluded that most of the injuries were sustained through accident or post mortem. A foxs teeth are razor sharp, apparently; they can inflict damage that closely resembles a knife wound.

If you were to approach the problem scientifically, you might start by asking how many horses are found mutilated in France in an average year, and measure excess mortality in 2020 just as epidemiologists have done throughout the pandemic. That would give you an indication of whether there is anything unusual about this year. If there is, you would then raise a number of hypotheses to try to explain the increase, and investigate them methodically. This is what vets did in Botswana, where they have been investigating a mysterious die-off of elephants. Having ruled out poachers and a virus spread by rodents, their investigations pointed them to toxic algal blooms. Rising temperatures have made these increasingly common in the waterholes elephants frequent.

In France, to date, investigators seem to have made the classic error the staple of many crime dramas but also of real-life miscarriages of justice of zeroing in too fast on a single hypothesis. Nobody even seems to know if the number of mutilations noted this year represents a departure from the norm. Instead, ministers have asked the public to be vigilant ensuring heightened attention to the phenomenon and spoken of barbarians and justice. Its hard not to see a vicious cycle at work: the number of reports increases; ministers respond with promises to catch the culprits, with the publics help; the reports increase again.

Perpetrators with mental health issues could certainly be one hypothesis in the current situation. Phil Kavanagh, a clinical psychologist at the University of Canberra in Australia who has written about animal cruelty, says the mutilations could point to someone suffering from psychosis like the boy who, according to a possibly apocryphal story, blinded six horses in Suffolk and inspired Peter Shaffer to write his play Equus (1973). But the French cases cover a huge geographical area. Kavanagh doubts one person could be responsible for them all and knows of no precedents of psychotic individuals organising themselves into groups. In fact, he says, there has been very little research on animal cruelty, though myths about it abound. One is the so-called Macdonald triad the idea that there is an association between bedwetting beyond a certain age, fire-setting and cruelty to animals, and that this predicts later violence against people. First proposed in the 1960s, based on a small-scale study, the Macdonald triad has failed to stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Why have French investigators focused their efforts on a single, tenuous theory to the exclusion of all others? Perhaps it isnt so surprising, given French peoples state of mind and not just theirs. For months, while the pandemic has raged, weve all absorbed a steady stream of chatter about deep state intrigue and foreign interference. A crazy theory that Donald Trump is doing battle with a ring of Satan-worshipping paedophiles, which had its origins in the US, is gaining ground in Europe, including in France and the UK.

Some conspiracies are real. A trial is ongoing in Paris of suspects in the terrorist attacks of 2015. But there is also a close association between belief in conspiracies and seeing patterns where they dont exist. The case of the mutilated horses may constitute a crime, or it may be one more illusory pattern jumping out at a world on edge, primed to see the wood and not the trees. If its the latter, the dangers are twofold: that innocent people will be punished, and that the real cause will go undiscovered. The only way forward is to keep an open mind, and to follow the data.

Laura Spinney is a science journalist and author. Her latest book is Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World

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What the strange case of horse mutilations in France reveals about our state of mind - The Guardian

By Jacob Pellegrino 9/22/20 8:16pm

Rating:

Top Tracks: Mother Please Don't Be Sad, God and the Policeman (featuring Kacey Musgraves), Assassins of Youth

One of the most influential experimental psychedelic rock groups since the 1980s, The Flaming Lips have never been a band to bow to convention. Their new album American Head continues the groups tradition of strong narrative songs sublimated by ethereal vocals and psychedelic musical experimentation. It follows their 2019 concept album Kings Mouth, an effort inspired by frontman Wayne Coynes art exhibit of the same name and narrated by Mick Jones of The Clash.

One of the highlights of the album is the haunting meditation of Mother Please Dont Be Sad. The song reflects on 17-year-old Coynes experience of working at a Long John Silvers that was robbed at gunpoint. Coyne described the track as what [he] was saying to [himself] while [he] laid on the floor, waiting to be shot in the head. He tries to console his mother in the song by reminding her that there's so much [she] still [has] and to remember all the others that are still alive. Sung from beyond the grave, as if Wayne had died that night, Mother Please Dont Be Sad paints a startling portrait of his state of mind in that traumatic moment embellished by lush instrumentation.

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The almost fully instrumental When We Die When Were High continues directly from Mother Please Dont Be Sad with no pause or break between the songs. The effortless but complex drum part is emphasized by sparse notes that slowly grow to create a sense of brutal minimalism that complements the other songs on the album and the albums effect as a whole.

Another standout track is the subtle storytelling of God and the Policemen. The song features transcendent vocal contributions from Kacey Musgraves that complement Waynes vocals. Wayne revealed in a segment for Apple Music that the song was based on a friend who got caught up in a bad drug deal and had to kill the dealer to avoid being killed. Calling to mind someone who is on the run from both the law and their conscience, the song conveys a complex emotional situation with entrancing vocals.

Coynes overtly personal lyricism is contrasted by songs written by multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, especially Brother Eye. While Drozd drew on personal experiences while writing for the album, his tend to be less directly obvious. In the song, Drozd begs his brother to live forever, an expression made all the more poignant by the loss of both of his own brothers. Brother Eye is a melancholy tribute to Drozds family and the effect his brothers had on his life.

In contrast to all of these deeply personal elements, the album is also influenced by the death of Tom Petty in 2017. In a documentary, Coyne learned that Petty and the band Mudcrutch (his pre-Heartbreakers group) spent some time in Oklahoma City, The Flaming Lips home. The group began to imagine a world where Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had fail[ed] because of [a] connection to drugs and the seedier side of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Rather than try to emulate Pettys style, the group focused on embodying the characters they had imagined and created an album with a sense of homesickness and nostalgia permeating the tracks. Even as the Lips put themselves in someone elses shoes, they used that idea to create an album that bares their own emotions and experiences.

Overall, American Head is a strong effort from The Flaming Lips that plays to their strengths as a group. Wayne Coynes and Steven Drozds vocals and storytelling help to create a composition that is both a unique change and continuation of their style. The bands instrumentation highlights the music and increases the effect of the album as a whole. Its pervading sadness creates one of the groups most personal and powerful compositions. Although a far cry from The Flaming Lips most experimental moments, American Head is something unique that delves deep into the American psyche while embracing the bands personal experiences.

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Review: The Flaming Lips dig deep with American Head - The Rice Thresher

The latest lifestyle, fashion and travel trends

If 2020 is responsible for anything positive at all, serving as a reminder to look after your health is one of them.

As we face the prospect of a second wave of the virus, there is no better time to start prioritising your emotional and physical wellbeing - and your gut is a good place to start.

Gut health has been the buzzword du jour among the wellness set for a while now, so you may already be familiar with the stat that 70 per cent of your immune system is found in your gut.

But did you also know that more than 90 per cent of the neurotransmitter serotonin - dubbed the happy "chemical" because it plays a vital role in your mood - is produced in your gut too?

"It's quite a startling statistic," says Eve Kalinik, nutritional therapist and author of Happy Gut, Happy Mind. "It's our gut microbiome (the trillions of good and bad bacteria that live in the gut) that has a direct and indirect influence on the levels of serotonin in our body. It helps to manage how much of the precursor tryptophan - that we take in through our diet - is available to be converted into serotonin in the brain." Tryptophan is an amino acid found in protein-rich foods like turkey, chicken, eggs, oily fish, peanuts and pumpkin seeds.

In her new book Kalinik explains how the state of our guts can affect how we feel emotionally (and vice versa). The gut produces and manages the same neurotransmitters, or chemical messengers - like serotonin, GABA and dopamine which govern physical processes and emotions - that the brain does.

"We've all felt butterflies in our stomachs when we're feeling nervous or anxious about something, but what surprises most people is that the relationship between the gut and brain is bidirectional," Kalinik explains, and there is often a mirroring of symptoms, "for example, people with a sluggish gut may suffer with a low mood, and equally when you're feeling more anxious you might feel more urgency to go."

Research suggests having a healthy gut may also help you to deal with stress and even sleep better, she adds.

So, how best to look after your gut? Here, Kalinik has shared some simple and practical tips (and most will cost you absolutely nothing) towards getting back on track.

When people consider improving their gut health, people often miss the basics, according to Kalinik: "They jump straight to fermenting scobies and think it's got to be that complicated."

But taking a simpler approach may benefit you more in the long run, and it'll be easier to be consistent with.

"One of the most common misperceptions is that you need to cut things out to improve your gut health when it's actually the complete opposite for most people," she continues. "Rather than restricting yourself, and focusing on potential intolerances, instead add in enriching and nourishing foods. Ironically, a lot of the anxiety that surrounds perceived intolerances also creates more stress mentally which then effects the gut."

The single most important thing you can do to promote good gut health is eating a diverse range of fibre sources every day.

"Fibre is found in all plant-based carbs, it provides fuel for all of our gut microbes and current research suggests that the more diverse and heterogeneous our microbiome is, the stronger and healthier it is," Kalinik says.

In return for being fed, these microbes "give back generously by producing substances and messengers that help us to manage inflammation, support the health of the gut barrier, synthesise vitamins, supply mood-influencing neurotransmitters like 'happy' serotonin and also train our immune system so that it knows how to react appropriately," she writes in her book.

"The easiest way to achieve this is by taking in different sources of fibre and rotating your intake of vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, nuts and seeds, because different types of fibre feed different microbes, which cultivates a more diverse gut microbiome. We naturally gravitate to the same things but I encourage my clients to have in mind eating the rainbow, and to try and get different colours into every meal."

There are easy ways to do this without having to constantly invest in piles of fresh produce, she adds. "If you like having porridge or overnight oats every morning, have a few different grains like spelt flakes or quinoa flakes stored in the cupboard so you're not always having oats. Have a good nut and seed mix to hand or several types of nut butters to add to dishes and buy frozen berries to store in the freezer."

Slow your mealtimes down. "One good thing to have come out of lockdown is it gave us more time to tune in and slow down. Take time to sit and really chew your food, this will help to alleviate symptoms like bloating, reflux gas and feeling really hungry soon after you've finished a meal. By not inhaling your food and eating rapidly, it allows your gut to function properly and also creates pockets of recovery in the day, where your body can switch into 'rest and digest' mode."

"Our guts are really thirsty and need regular watering. If you're working from home get a jug on your workstation and put some fresh herbs or fresh lemon or cucumber so it tastes better and looks more appealing."

Upping your water intake can help to relieve constipation and boost energy levels.

"Most of us breathe quite high up into the diaphragm, but taking time out at the end of the day to breathe properly - or practice any form of mindfulness - can help to relieve stress which is a massive trigger for people with gut issues." Kalinik recommends deep belly breathing, when you breathe deep into the belly for a count of five and hold for five more before breathing out for five again.

"Use that pre-bedtime hour to switch off from your devices and wind down, doing that consistently is going to help bubble wrap your mind, just like going to the gym, it's accumulative and will really help with managing stress."

Eve Kalinik's Harissa Chicken dish from her book Happy Gut, Happy Mind

Dishes dont come much more restorative and nourishing than this. The flavours are amazing and its so easy to make; you can sit back and relax while it cooks. Chicken is a good source of tryptophan, while the celeriac and leeks offer abundant fibre fuel for our microbes. With the bold flavours of harissa, jewel-like pomegranate seeds and vibrant herbs, its a delight for the senses, the mind and the microbiome.

Ingredients

Method

1. Mix together the harissa, butter, cumin, coriander, lemon juice and salt to create the marinade.

2. Put the chicken in a large bowl, add the celeriac and leeks and pour over the marinade.

3. Massage well and leave for at least 20 minutes to an hour.

4. Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Line a large baking tray with baking parchment.

5. Place the chicken, celeriac and leeks on the baking tray and bake for 40 minutes, tossing halfway through cooking time so that everything bakes evenly.

6. To make the dressing, combine the yoghurt, lemon juice, garlic oil and water in a small bowl with a pinch of sea salt.

7. Remove the baking tray from the oven and sprinkle over the chopped herbs, haphazardly dollop over the dressing and top with the pomegranate seeds.

8. You can serve at the table in the pan or divide between two plates.

Wine Pairing: Enjoy this dish with a white Assyrtiko or a Languedoc red such as Corbires, Minervois or St-Chinian.

Happy Gut, Happy Mind (Little, Brown Book Group, 25) is available to buy at couvertureandthegarbstore.com

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Happy Gut, Happy Mind: how the state of your gut affects your mental health - Evening Standard

Elon Musk couldn't resist a small joke when he gave the world a first look at Neuralink, thebrain-computer interface (BCI) projectthat he's been working on for the past two years. "I think it's going to blow your minds," he said.

The aim of his startup is to develop technology to tackle neurological problems, from damage caused by brain or spine trauma to the type of memory problems that can become more common in people as they age. The idea is to solve these problems with an implantable digital device that can interpret, and possibly alter, the electrical signals made by neurons in the brain.

"If you can correct these signals you can solve everything from memory loss, hearing loss, blindness, paralysis depression, insomnia, extreme pain, seizures, anxiety, addiction, strokes, brain damage; these can all be solved with an implantable neural link," Musk said at the demonstration of the technology, which also unexpectedly featured live pigs that had actually been implanted with the company's technology.

SEE: Building the bionic brain (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

So isNeuralink as revolutionary as the hype might suggest?

The demo, led by Musk and streamed earlier this month, was the first major update on Neuralink's development since last summer. Musk used the demo to show off the latest iteration of the company's hardware: a small, circular device that attaches to the surface of the brain, gathering data from the cortex and passing it on to external computing systems for analysis.

The system was demonstrated in situ in a pig, gathering data on the animal's neural activity when its snout touched something, and creating a visual representation of that information.

But for all the excitement of what Musk also called the equivalent of "a Fitbit in your skull" (including a minor hitch when the pig became camera shy) all the technology concepts showcased during the demo had been seen elsewhere before now. Several different types of working brain-computer interfaces already exist, gathering data on electrical signals from the user's brain and translating them into data that can be interpreted by machines.

And while Neuralink has yet to implant any of its devices into human subjects, a number of research laboratories have done just that -- to date, a handful of individuals have been fitted with functioning brain-computer interface devices. Typically, they are people who have suffered a spinal injury that's left them paralysed, and who use BCIs help them regain some of that lost function. (One notable user has already been able to recover enough movement in his hands to play Guitar Hero.)

"Other than the implementation of the system they built, all of the things they showed are things that have been shown in the past," neural engineer Edoardo d'Anna, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh, tells ZDNet. "So from a scientific point of view, there was nothing novel in that sense." Musk's achievement is instead in building something that is starting to resemble a product that might actually help real patients, rather than a research project -- the stage many other BCIs are currently at.

And that's not the only difference between Neuralink's implementation of a brain-computer interface and those now used elsewhere.

While many current BCIs often involve wired systems, Musk's uses Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate wirelessly. Traditional BCIs use arrays that integrate with the brain using rigid electrodes; Neuralink uses flexible threads. Usually, BCIs leave their users with a box of hardware that sits outside the skull; the Neuralink shouldn't be visible externally. Most research-BCI hardware is implanted by a human neurosurgeon; Neuralink has a robot to do most of the same surgical heavy-lifting.

"They've done a very nice job of the engineering," says Professor Andrew Jackson, professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University. "They've made progress in all the areas where you would expect a well-resourced, well-funded tech company to make progress. That means things like miniaturising electronics, making things low power off a battery, getting things to operate wirelessly.

"It's a bit unfair to say, but to some extent, these are low-hanging fruit for a big investment from a Silicon Valley tech company, because traditionally a lot of the technology that has been used in neuroscience has been done on a much smaller budget than this, and so things haven't always been kind of optimised to the same level that you are used to in that consumer electronics world," he says.

While the Neuralink demonstration may not have come loaded with never-before-seen technology, it does serve as an illustration of how the technology is progressing towards commercialisation.

"I think the bigger question is what are the new things that can be done with this technology? I think that's to some extent a more interesting question," says Jackson. It's also a question that Musk isn't short of answers to.

SEE: Mind-controlled drones and robots: How thought-reading tech will change the face of warfare

Most BCI work currently ongoing falls into two camps: either it's looking at making consumer-grade, non-invasive kit that could ultimately offer a way of interacting with devices like smartphones -- UIs based on thoughts rather than key presses or voice commands -- or medical-grade systems to help people with brain or spinal injuries overcome paralysis. Musk has far broader aims for his BCI, however. The demo offered the possibility of curing numerous medical conditions, as well as more futuristic aims from telepathically summoning a Tesla to downloading your consciousness and being able to download memories.

Achieving those aims would need a whole new set of functionality to be included in the Neuralink device, and the surgical robot would need to learn new techniques. For example, the current Neuralink sits on the surface of the brain, while some of the longer-term uses of the device Musk touted would mean it would need access to the deeper structures of the brain. Hooking up electronics to deep-brain structures has already been done -- deep-brain stimulation is already used for treating conditions such as Parkinson's -- but it's something of a blunt instrument. Doing something like Musk is proposing would need a much more subtle approach, and not one we've seen discussed by the company yet. It would also require Neuralink to stimulate the brain (sending data into the brain, rather than reading information from it), though there's been no discussion of any stimulation technology from the company so far.

Some of the more long-term, almost sci-fi, visions for Neuralink would also mean addressing some of the black holes in our knowledge of certain areas of neuroscience. Playing back memories and similar applications would first need us to have a better understanding of what memory is and which bits of the brain are involved -- scientists have a good idea, but there's no consensus on whether we know all the pieces (and it all gets more complicated when you start thinking about different types of memory -- remembering your last holiday, how to play the piano, or a list of the Queens and Kings of England by date all live in different brain regions).

"The short-term goal that they talked about of impacting someone who's paralysed and giving them control over a cursor and keyboard or something like that, that is something we know how to do. There's no doubt you can build a product like that, that is totally achievable," says d'Anna. But he says the long-term ideas like capturing your memories and replaying them are something we know very little about. "There's significant gaps in our scientific understanding that needs to be addressed before we can even talk about doing them," he adds.

Does that mean such ideas might be held up by the need for more neuroscience research? Dr Tennore Ramesh, non-clinical lecturer at the University of Sheffield's Department of Neuroscience, believes that AI could enable some of Neuralink's long-term goals, whether we come to understand the neuroscience behind them or not.

SEE: Human meets AI: Intel Labs team pushes at the boundaries of human-machine interaction with deep learning

Treating it as if it's a neuroscience problem "is the wrong way of thinking. It's actually an engineering problem," he says. "The neurons are sending information in bits -- it's almost like a computer program. Of course, it's more complicated than that but, especially with the advent of artificial intelligence and things like that, I think it is pretty feasible," he says.

"In terms of using AI for solving this, though, does it mean that we'll understand how the brain functions? Probably not, because many of these AIs are basically black boxes, but it doesn't mean that we can't put them to use or utilise whatever functionality they provide. So from that point of view, maybe we may not understand the neuroscience very much, but it doesn't mean that we can't make a product that can do those things," Ramesh says.

Either way, the function of setting goals for the Neuralink that outstrip current scientific and engineering capabilities not only gives scientists a bold vision to aim for, but it also generates hype and interest in the company -- unlike the researchers who have worked on BCIs in labs, Musk ultimately has to turn a profit, and that's something he can only do if he can convince the world that Neuralink is as much a consumer device as it is a medical one.

That also means convincing thousands of average people with no health conditions to undergo brain surgery. For most, the idea of having a chunk of skull bored out just to a get Fitbit installed is going to seem outrageous -- the one on their wrist works fine, thanks -- but replaying memories, downloading consciousness or merging with AI offers buyers the prospect of cheating death in an oblique way. That prospect could be decades away, at least, but perhaps in the long-term, the messaging of 'get a neural interface, avoid mortality' might be persuasive to many.

Original post:
Elon Musk's brain-computer startup is getting ready to blow your mind - ZDNet