Elon Musk's novel brain implant set off all the alarms, when on January 29 he published on X the success of his first surgical intervention implanting a brain device in a human. This development, carried out by his start-up Neurolink, is a new step towards the possibility that one day we will all be able to be mentally connected and interact with any device. 

After Musk's publication, there was some uneasiness about the possibility of our thoughts being read. Doubts began to arise as to whether or not in the future human beings would be able to carry out tasks such as driving a car with their minds. In fact, the following month, in Spain, during a closed-door session at the science and technology office of the congress de los Diputados, a committee of experts discussed the disruption of neurotechnologies. The main challenge was to ensure mental privacy.

However, I think that in order to answer whether or not we will be able to drive a car with our thoughts and, therefore, to consider its feasibility, it is necessary to explain what this connection implies. To begin with, there is some confusion in finding affinities between the human brain and machines. Sometimes we simplify the comparison and associate the estimated 86,000,000,000,000 neurons in the brain with the 134,000,000,000,000 transistors in, for example, a microprocessor.

Comparisons of this subject lead us to believe that we understand how the brain works or that we can measure thoughts. However, these claims are misleading as long as the physical basis of the mind is not substantiated. The brain is an organ that can be examined, but the mind cannot be seen or touched. Through brain signals, we can detect certain desires or interests of the person we are monitoring. For example, we are able today to identify whether a person wants to turn right or left, go forward or brake. But the leap to driving a car seems unattainable at the moment.

To put into perspective what I am referring to, I propose an analogy with the finding of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick, in 1953. Before their finding, known as "the double helix", nothing was known about DNA. Only that there was some transmission from parent to offspring and that offspring resembled their parents. It was not known how or why it happened, but there was a supporting reality: from a white father and a white mother, a black child was not born. Today, thanks to this finding, anyone who wants to know how this inheritance occurs can hold on to a physical, quantifiable, measurable and observable reality. It has been established that the human being is expressed by 3,000,000,000,000 molecules called nucleotides, each composed of four possible letters (A, C, G and T). Since the double helix was described until today, an incalculable issue of people have made an effort to relate the four. And the relationships they try to make are just about anything we can think of. Rambling on about the possibilities that are drawn by knowing people's DNA ceases to be anything more than a science fiction story.

However, such a finding has not yet occurred in the brain. Science has found multiple observable relationships between the brain and the mind, but there is no final explanation that can set us in motion. There is no physical description of report, although there is evidence that report has a physical support.

When the brain deteriorates, a person may forget his or her name and lose his or her identity. But what is this physical support? 

As long as a rationale such as the one that happened with Genetics is not discovered, we should not be concerned that our thoughts can be read. And, therefore, speculations and expectations about the brain should be very restrained.