Elon Musk announced that the first human received a Neuralink brain implant, a milestone in the “brain-computer interface” technology that could help people with paralyzing conditions to interact with their environment.
Musk tweeted late Monday that the patient with the Neuralink brain implant was “recovering well” after the surgery, suggesting that it was successful and without major technical issues. Musk did not disclose any details about the patient. Neuralink said last September that it was seeking a trial participant with quadriplegia.
Musk also reported that initial results showed promising “neuron spike detection,” meaning that the Neuralink brain implant is detecting signals from individual neurons in the brain, a potential advancement that could decode higher-quality brain signals. Musk did not say how many neurons the Neuralink brain implant is detecting. The company did not share detailed safety and efficacy data that researchers would require to evaluate the Neuralink brain implant’s performance. Related video: Elon Musk’s Neuralink aims to connect brains to computers, introduces 1st wireless chip implant (WION) Take billionaire Elon Musk. Neural Link company has successfully implanted Current Time 0:02 / Duration 1:13 WION Elon Musk’s Neuralink aims to connect brains to computers, introduces 1st wireless chip implant 0 View on Watch View on Watch The news of the human implantation was hailed as a new frontier that can improve the lives of severely disabled and paralyzed people and a development that will need close ethical and regulatory scrutiny. After Musk’s announcement, memes spread on social media, with some showing images of human-robot hybrids from science fiction stories, but the main application for the technology is for people with extremely limited movement and function. Even for these people, it is expected to take years for the technology to develop and become available.
Neuralink has a few rivals in the brain-computer interface industry. Rival startup Synchron has developed a stent-like device that it has implanted inside the jugular vein on top of a patient’s brain, but not inside brain tissue itself. Another company, Precision Neuroscience, has temporarily implanted its microelectrode array in six patients to gather test data before removing it. The device is one-fifth the thickness of a human hair and is designed to sit on top of the brain.
Neuralink, which was founded in 2016, was last valued at $3.5 billion in a round of equity financing raised in November, according to data provider PitchBook.
A goal for the product, which Neuralink is calling “Telepathy,” is to enable control of a smartphone or computer by thinking, Musk said Monday on X. The company has shown videos of monkeys implanted with its Neuralink brain implant moving a cursor and playing the videogame “Pong.”
Neuralink’s implant consists of a quarter-size chip that is implanted in the skull. Attached to it are dozens of tiny threadlike electrodes that are implanted into the brain itself and that transmit electrical signals from neurons. One open question is how an implanted brain will react to the inserted threads over time. Tissue could grow around them, reducing the electric signals they capture.
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