| The hundreds of doctors and scientists who gathered at a conference hotel just outside of Washington earlier this month couldn’t have been more excited to talk about their work on brain implants to help patients with debilitating diseases. They sipped beers and bantered about what materials to use in the implants and what sort of electrical stimulation was most effective. And they couldn’t have been more worried about where research funds would come from, as President Donald Trump had proposed cutting the budget of the National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, by 40%. “The funding climate is challenging right now,” said Douglas Weber, a professor of mechanical engineering and neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University, who was moderating a panel on funding. An NIH employee had just given a talk outlining recent changes at the agency, including the departure of 143 staffers from the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. NIH didn’t respond to a request for comment. As the government steps back, the role that wealthy private individuals play becomes more important. “Someone like Elon Musk being interested, it’s good for the field,” Parag Patil, a neurosurgery professor at the University of Michigan, who chaired the conference planning committee, told me in between sessions. Musk, the world’s richest person, started Neuralink in 2016 to build brain implants, and it’s raised $1.3 billion so far, according to Pitchbook. Five patients have received the implants, which have allowed them to interact with computers. One patient even edited a video using just his brain. Other wealthy tech magnates, like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, are also getting into brain technology. Several other companies are testing devices. Many in the industry are aiming to treat mental disorders or help people who are paralyzed use electronic devices or regain movement. Some, including Neuralink, are hoping to enhance human cognition. At the conference, which was run by the North American Neuromodulation Society, Neuralink engineer Joseph O’Doherty talked about the company’s work to treat blindness and grant superhuman vision, and showed that the Neuralink device let a monkey see something that wasn’t really there. And O’Doherty co-authored a poster presented at the conference about how a Neuralink chip stimulated the spinal cord of a monkey, moving the monkey’s muscles. Despite the funding challenges, the field is attracting new scientists. One of them is Owen Anderson, a 21-year-old undergraduate at Case Western University, who woke up at 3 a.m. to catch a flight from Cleveland to the conference. He was drawn to the field because of how drastically brain devices can help patients who have run out of other options. “Being able to provide that impact to people,” Anderson said, “is probably the best and most important way you can live your life.” — Ike Swetlitz | 
