Morning Briefing

The Wall Street Journal: A Hardware Update For The Human Brain

Emily Borghard has a computer inside her skull, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her. A small bump behind her left ear, the only external evidence of her implant, is partially covered by a tuft of hair that’s still growing in from the last time she had the batteries changed. Before Borghard received a brain implant, she was having as many as 400 “spikes” of seizure-like activity a day, along with multiple seizures. ... The field that gave Emily her life back is known as neurotechnology, or simply neurotech—a marriage of neurology, neuroscience, neurosurgery and the kind of hardware that goes into smartphones. Today, most neurotech companies are focused on medical applications, which they think could be a multibillion-dollar market. (Mims, 6/5)