Brain implants today: what's real and what's still speculation
September 28, 2026 · 20 min read
Neuralink's neurosurgeon, a retinal implant researcher and a computational neuroscientist describe what brain-computer interfaces already do and where they fall short, while Rogan and Strassman speculate further. It helps separate genuine progress from hype.
The rules, numbers and steps worth keeping in front of you.
- Real today: decoding movement intentions from motor cortex to move a cursor and type (MacDougall).
- Real today: retinal implants giving some blind people blobs and streaks of light (Chichilnisky).
- Not yet: moving one's own limbs, which needs a spinal implant still in development.
- Not yet: mood, appetite, addiction, pain or sleep; current electrodes reach only the brain's surface.
- Not yet: natural-quality vision; current devices ignore the retina's roughly 20 ganglion cell types.
- Huberman calls memory-chip talk hype: nobody knows what each hippocampal cell type does.
- MacDougall: for brain-wide plasticity, drugs beat implants.
- MacDougall's metric is bit rate: how much useful information flows in and out.
- Chichilnisky's test: can the device recognize distinct cell types and stimulate them separately?
- Chichilnisky: AI is an engineering tool, not a source of understanding.
- Sejnowski: AI is at its Wright-brothers stage, with control still the hard problem.
- Telepathy, universal language and the end of lying are Rogan's speculation; Strassman says it would take a change in human nature.
- MacDougall's horizon: deep-brain treatments in 10 to 20 years, cognitive expansion in his children's lifetimes.
- Considering a trial: talk with a neurologist, ophthalmologist or the trial team.
This is the short form. The full insight has every expert's reasoning, their own words and the sources.