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Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-08:38
Neuralink Elon Musk seeks volunteers to implant his revolutionary brain chip
Neuralink Elon Musk accused of the agonizing death of monkeys with his brain chips while searching for human volunteers
The company
Neuralink
, owned by billionaire
Elon Musk
, has implanted the first brain chip in a human, according to the businessman on his social network account X.
"The first human received a Neuralink implant yesterday and
is recovering well
," Musk wrote. "Initial results show promising neuronal spike detection."
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Elon Musk presents Neuralink, the brain chip that aims to cure neurological diseases
Editorial: EFE Miami
Elon Musk presents Neuralink, the brain chip that aims to cure neurological diseases
The news of the first Neuralink implant in humans comes nine months after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave its
approval for the company to begin conducting studies in humans
.
The function of the implant will be to
"read" brain activity in order to transmit orders that help restore some
severely damaged brain functions after a heart attack or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which lead to serious damage to communication capacity.
Until now, brain implants have been developed in only one direction: from the brain to the outside (generally a computer that processes the signals), but the Neuralink project aims to be able to also transfer information in the other direction, towards the brain.
Neuralink is developing two types of implants
in parallel ,
one to restore vision "even in those who have never had it" and another to restore basic bodily functions in people with paralysis due to spinal cord damage.
The coin-sized implant is surgically placed in the
brain
. Until now it had been
tested on
monkeys
, who learned to play the video game Pong without a joystick or keyboard.
Other tests
Founded in 2016, Neuralink is not the first to perform this type of implants in humans, a field known as brain-computer interface.
The Dutch company
Onward
announced in September that it was testing the coupling of a brain implant with another that stimulates the spinal cord, to allow a quadriplegic patient to regain mobility.
In 2019, researchers at the Clinatec
institute
in Grenoble presented an implant that allowed a quadriplegic person to animate an exoskeleton and move their arms or move around.
According to data company Pitchbook, California-based Neuralink
had more than 400 employees
last year and has raised at least $363 million.