Controlling your smartphone with your thoughts – what sounds like science fiction is now supposed to help patients with paraplegia or Alzheimer’s. A company owned by Elon Musk has now implanted a brain chip in a human for the first time.
Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink has used a wireless brain computer chip on a patient for the first time. The patient is recovering well after the procedure on Sunday, the tech billionaire and Tesla boss wrote on his online platform X.
First tests on monkeys
Neuralink’s implant is intended to make it possible to use your thoughts to operate a smartphone – and other technology. Other companies and researchers are also working on such technology.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the company the green light last year to carry out an initial study with the implant on humans. The technology had previously been tested on monkeys.
patient with Paraplegia
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. The aim of the study is to enable people with paralysis of all four limbs to control devices with their thoughts, according to the company’s website.
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.
It can take months
Musk wrote on Monday that initial results showed promising detection of neuronal activity. 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. Neurotechnology companies have been developing brain implants since 2016 and some people have already had various implants inserted. Musk wants to use the interfaces to cure neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, dementia and spinal cord injuries.
A Billion dollar market?
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.
Nils Dampz, ARD Los Angeles, tagesschau, January 30, 2024 8:27 a.m