Neuralink intends to put its computational brain implant into human patients within the next six months, the company announced Wednesday, Bloomberg reports. “We are now confident that the Neuralink device is ready for humans,” Elon Musk confirmed in a tweet posted that night.
“The moment” of the implementation “will depend on the process of the FDA”, the United States Agency for Medicines, continues the billionaire, who has just bought Twitter.
“We want to be very careful and make sure it will work before implanting a device in a human, but we have submitted most of our papers to the FDA and we should probably be able to download Neuralink into a human in about six months.” Elon Musk said at an event organized to present the progress of the project, explains Reuters.
At its last public event, more than a year ago, Neuralink featured a monkey, whose brain had been implanted with a chip, playing a video game using only its mind.
Control equipment remotely simply by thinking.
Neuralink is one of multiple companies started by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. The SpaceX and Tesla boss quietly launched it in 2016, hoping to make brain implants. In practice, Neuralink must design brain-computer interfaces that allow equipment to be controlled remotely simply by thinking.
The goal would be to restore mobility to paralyzed people by allowing them to interact with their environment or easily manipulate mechanical arms. Implants could also be a solution to neurological disorders, promises Neuralink.
An American animal rights organization has filed a complainton February 10, against Neuralink for cases of sometimes fatal abuse of monkeys. She, according to the Committee of Professionals for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), carried out experiments on at least 23 monkeys, between 2017 and 2020. Only 7 of them survived, according to information reported by Business Insider.
The PCRM informs in your press release of “extreme suffering, resulting from animal mistreatment and extremely invasive cranial implants during experiments”
Source: BFM TV
