medicine
Musk’s Neuralink deploys brain implant to first person
Elon Musk’s Neuralink received permission in May to use the flat and round implant on people in a clinical trial. photo
© Michel Euler/AP/dpa
The brain implant from Elon Musk’s company Neuralink is intended to make it possible to operate a smartphone using thoughts. According to Musk, the first procedure on a human went well.
Elon Musk’s medical technology company Neuralink has inserted its brain implant into a human for the first time. The patient is recovering well after the procedure, the tech billionaire wrote on his online platform Other companies and researchers are also working on such technology.
In May, Neuralink received permission to use the flat and round implant on people in a clinical study. The technology had previously been tested on monkeys. The implant has 1,024 electrodes that a robot connects to the brain using an extremely fine needle. For the clinical study, Neuralink was looking for patients with quadriplegia – a paraplegia that affects the legs and arms.
Elon Musk: promising detection of neural activity
When people start to move, a certain area of the brain becomes active. The electrodes pick up these signals. It should be enough to imagine a movement, for example to operate a cursor on the computer. Musk wrote that initial results showed “promising” detection of neural activity. There were initially no further details.
Even with successful operations, it can take months for patients to learn to control computers with their minds. Neuralink’s clinical trial is designed to last six years.
Research into brain-computer interfaces of this type has been going on for years and some people have already had various implants inserted. Neuralink also has several competitors who also want to use the technology commercially. The company Precision Neuroscience wants to attach its implant, also with 1024 electrodes, to the brain on a film through a very fine cut in the skull in a minimally invasive manner. And its rival Synchron brings its system with 16 electrodes via blood vessels close to the right areas of the brain.