Elon Musk Announces First Successful Implantation of Neuralink's Wireless Brain Chip in Human
Elon Musk has announced that his company Neuralink has successfully implanted one of its wireless brain chips into the first human yesterday. The patient is doing well and recovering. Initial results showed promising nerve impulses, Musk wrote.
The goal of the experiment is to connect the human brain to computers. Neuralink says it wants to help people cope with complex neurological diseases.
A number of competing companies have already implanted similar devices.
BBC News has reached out to Neuralink and the US medical regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for comment.
As The Gaze reported, in May 2023, the FDA allowed Neuralink to test the chip in humans, a major milestone after previous difficulties in gaining approval.
This gave the green light to begin a six-year study in which a robot is used to surgically insert 64 flexible threads, thinner than a human hair, into the part of the brain that controls "movement intent," according to Neuralink.
The company says that these threads allow its experimental implant to record and transmit brain signals wirelessly to a program that decodes how a person intends to move. The implant is powered by a battery that can be charged wirelessly.
Earlier, Elon Musk said that the first Neuralink product would be called Telepathy.
According to him, Telepathy will allow you to "control your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking".
"The first users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs," he added.
"Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a fast typist or an auctioneer. This is the goal," Musk added.
Another Utah-based company, Blackrock Neurotech, implanted its first of many brain-computer interfaces in 2004.
Precision Neuroscience, founded by the co-founder of Neuralink, also aims to help people with paralysis. And its implant resembles a very thin piece of tape that sits on the surface of the brain and can be implanted through a "cranial microfissure", which it says is a much simpler procedure.
Existing devices have also produced results. In two separate recent US research studies, implants were used to monitor brain activity when a person tried to speak, which could then be decoded to help them communicate.