Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk says he has successfully implanted a wireless brain chip in a human being through his company Neuralink.
On Monday, Elon Musk announced on the social media site X that the first patient in the world has gotten a brain implant made by his business, Neuralink.
Neuralink received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration as well as a hospital ethics board, and after years of delays, they began enrolling patients for a clinical study in the fall. The business is creating an apparatus known as a brain-computer interface.
Musk has stated that Neuralink wants to “achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence,” but for the time being, he’s focusing on a much more achievable goal: enabling people who are paralyzed to use their brains to control a keyboard or cursor. According to a research brochure from Neuralink, the company is looking for participants who are at least 22 years old and have quadriplegia, or paralysis in all four limbs, as a result of either amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or cervical spinal cord injury. It projects that the study will be finished in six years.
According to the company’s brochure, the implant of a brain chip will be inserted into the part of the brain that regulates movement intention using a surgical robot that it designed. The coin-sized gadget is intended to capture and wirelessly transfer brain impulses to an app that decodes those signals once it is in position.
The patient was “recovering well,” Musk continued in his Monday tweet, and “initial results show promising neuron spike detection.” However, it can take months before we find out if the patient can effectively operate a computer or other equipment with the implant. In addition to recovering from surgery, it may take several weeks to teach someone how to use a BCI.
Neuralink Brain chip
By no means is the Neuralink patient the first person to receive a BCI. The brain chip has been installed in a few dozen subjects worldwide as a component of research projects. Matt Nagle was the first to do so in 2004. Through the years, these brain chips have made it possible for people who are paralyzed to write emails with just their thoughts, control robotic arms, and play video games.
The majority of BCI research was done in academic settings until recently. They were inconvenient to use at home since they needed complicated setups with bulky wires. With 64 threads that are each thinner than a human hair and more than 1,000 electrodes spread out across them, Neuralink’s device is wireless in nature and records neural activity. The Utah array, the most widely utilized tool in BCI research, captures data from 100 electrodes.
Controversy has also surrounded the company, especially regarding how it treats research animals. A September investigation by Tech Tale revealed how the company’s brain chip implant experiments caused the deaths of several of its monkey subjects. According to reports, the company is the target of a government inquiry about how it treats animal subjects. Additionally, Neuralink was penalized last month for breaking US Department of Transportation regulations about the transportation of hazardous goods, according to a Reuters story.
A few businesses have emerged to commercialize these systems since Neuralink was founded in 2016. In addition to surpassing Neuralink in the number of BCI implants, rival Synchron, based in New York, has demonstrated that its technology is secure and enables paralyzed patients to surf the internet, buy online, and conduct online banking from the comfort of their own homes.
Neuralink has not disclosed the trial’s location or the total number of participants who received brain chips. To find out if they are eligible for the trial, prospective participants can visit the patient registry that the company has set up. It is not registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, a central database that contains details about clinical trials supported by government and business organizations.
As of right now, one tweet from Musk provides all the information that is known about the Neuralink procedure. Even while it might not significantly advance the goal of fusing AI and humans, it would be a significant advancement for a promising technology.
