Elon Musk Reveals First Neuralink Wireless Brain Chip Implant
According to co-founder Elon Musk, Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup based in California, has successfully implanted a wireless brain chip in a human for the first time. Musk made the significant announcement on January 29 through a series of posts on X (previously known as Twitter).
Neuralink has been developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that can be implanted. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the company permission to commence human testing in May of last year. The neurotechnology company started recruiting for human trials in September 2023.
“The first human received an implant from Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well,” Musk announced in a post. Early findings indicate that neuron spike detection is promising. In a second statement, he disclosed that Telepathy was the name of the company’s original BCI product. According to the co-founder, the brain chip allows users to operate a computer or smartphone simply by thinking. Fascinatingly, the business uploaded a video to YouTube in 2021 showing a monkey with the chip implanted managing a game of ping-pong with his thoughts.
“Consider if Stephen Hawking was able to converse more quickly than an auctioneer or speed typist. That’s the aim,” he continued. Those who are limb-loss victims will be the product’s initial consumers.
Although Neuralink was granted FDA authority to carry out human trials last year, the company turned down an application to do so in 2022. The regulatory body had raised serious safety concerns at the time, according to a Reuters report, about “the device’s lithium battery; the potential for the implant’s tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain; and questions over whether and how the device can be removed without damaging brain tissue.”
During a 2019 presentation, Musk clarified that the majority of the components of Neuralink BCIs were polyimide with a thin platinum or gold conductor. A surgical robot carried out an automated procedure to implant them into the brain.
The chip has a large number of incredibly thin nodules connected by wires known as probes. These probes’ ends have electrodes on them that can find and interpret electrical signals in the brain. After that, a device that can translate these signals into electronic commands to operate a gadget receives them wirelessly.
The business has a history of using animals in large-scale testing and has reported a high success rate. Although successfully implanting a brain chip is a significant accomplishment, the product’s long-term viability and absence of adverse effects will decide its success.
