Businessman Elon Musk announced this Monday that the “startup” Neuralink, which he co-founded, installed its first brain implant on a patient on Sunday. This operation has already been carried out by other companies and researchers.
Neuralink, based in Fremont, California, a suburb of San Francisco, received the green light from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May.
His coin-sized implant has already been implanted in the brain of a monkey that has managed to play the video game Pong without a controller or keyboard.
“The first results show promising brain activity,” Elon Musk emphasized on the social network X about the implant in a person.
Founded in 2016, Neuralink is far from the first company to install a brain implant, also called a brain-machine interface (BMI), in a human.
In September, Dutch company Onward announced it was testing connecting one brain implant to another that stimulates the spinal cord, with the goal of helping a paralyzed patient regain mobility.
In 2019, researchers from the Grenoble institute Clinatec presented an implant that, once installed, allows a paralyzed person to move an exoskeleton.
Neuralink recently raised around $323 million (€298 million at current exchange rates) from investors in two tranches, in August and November.
This “startup” also aims to help paralyzed patients walk again, as well as restore sight to the blind and even cure psychiatric diseases such as depression.
Elon Musk also intends to offer his implant to everyone, to provide better communication with computers and contain, in the billionaire’s words, “the risk that civilization faces” from artificial intelligence.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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