Counter-Strike maker to launch a brain chip later this year
What's the story
Gabe Newell, the co-founder and CEO of Valve Corporation, is making progress in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) with his start-up, Starfish Neuroscience.
Since its founding in 2019, Starfish has been developing a custom "electrophysiology" chip to record and stimulate brain activity.
Now, the company has announced plans to launch its first brain chip later this year.
Valve, the company behind DOTA 2, Counter-Strike, and PC game platform Steam, has long explored the idea of bringing your brain closer to your computer.
Chip details
Step toward brain-computer interface
Starfish's first chip isn't a full implant but a custom "electrophysiology" device that records brain activity and stimulates the brain for disease therapy.
The company has clarified it doesn't yet have the systems to power it or the components to implant it.
Newell's interest in BCIs started over 10 years ago, with in-house psychologists studying people's biological responses to video games.
Valve Corporation publicly explored this concept of BCIs for gaming at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2019.
Innovative design
Smaller, less invasive solution
Starfish hopes to develop a smaller, less invasive implant than its competitors, one that can "enable simultaneous access to multiple brain regions" rather than just one site.
Its chip works without a battery, consuming just 1.1 milliwatts during "normal recording." This paves way for wireless power transmission.
The chip is 2mm x 4mm in size and can record (spikes and LFP) & stimulate (biphasic pulses). It is fabricated in TSMC's 55nm process.
Competition
A comparison with Neuralink's N1
Starfish's chip features 32 electrode sites and 16 simultaneous recording channels at 18.75kHz, along with onboard impedance monitoring and stim voltage transient measurement.
Neuralink's N1, on the other hand, has 1,024 electrodes on its 64 brain-implanted threads and consumes about six milliwatts (as of 2019).
The complete implant is about 23mm wide and 8mm thick.
Although some threads detached from the first patient's brain, functionality was retained.
Applications
Potential applications and future plans
Starfish thinks connecting multiple parts of the brain at once could help solve problems like Parkinson's disease.
The company is also working on a "precision hyperthermia device" to kill tumors with targeted heat and a brain-reading.
In addition, there's also a robotically guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) system to treat neurological issues like bipolar disorder and depression.
Newell's vision of fusing our brains more closely with PCs lives on through these innovative projects at Starfish Neuroscience.