Neuralink founder Elon Musk explained his breakthrough and said the first human patient who is transplanted one of his company’s cybernetic implants appears to have made a full recovery. He said that by transplanting neuralink the patient will be able to control computer mouse by just thinking.
“Progress is very good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of. Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking,” Musk said in a Spaces event on social media platform X.
Neuralink
Elon Musk further added that Neuralink was now trying to get as many mouse button clicks as possible from the patient.
In January, Neuralink announced it had successfully implanted the first patient with its brain chip technology, work building on decades of research from academic labs and other companies, connecting human brains to computers to address human diseases and disabilities.
Prior to implanting the chip in the patient, Nauralink received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to implant brain chips into humans, and approval in September to recruit for the first-in-human clinical trial.
The surgery, aided by Neuralink’s surgical robot, marked a milestone for the company and its efforts to directly connect brains to computers after it received permission in September, 2023, to recruit patients to test the device’s ability to help people with paralysis regain lost functions by controlling computers with thought.
Neuralink is still in the early stages of testing and development and its hopes of widely deploying technology to “read” brains and control computers is still many years in the future. Neuralink’s first products will be aimed at restoring lost functions from people with paralysis or vision impairments, Elon Musk has previously said.
The billionaire said Neuralink’s first products will include “Telepathy,” which would allow users to control a phone or computer “just by thinking,” a feature this clinical trial is partly designed to test, as well as features that could restore sight to blind people but Musk says the technology aims to be used more widely to enhance memory and elevate intelligence.
Regulators, as well as consumer demand, naturally set the bar for implanting a device into the brain of a healthy human much higher than that for treating patients with often debilitating conditions and such use will be many years or even decades in the future. Other neurotech companies are further ahead in testing and rolling out neural products to patients than Neuralink, though such firms are focused on treatment, not enhancement.
