Elon Musk it is said that NeuralinkThe biotech company he founded may share a preliminary report on its first human brain implant later this week. Musk hopes the first results from last week’s operation will show that the chip they’ve developed can control a mobile phone only with the power of thought.
Neuralink made this first implant in humans after years of testing the chip on dozens of animals. Among them are monkeys and pigs. The patient, who has not been identified, was implanted with a device called “Telepathy” that would enable the activation of a brain-computer interface.
“We hope to have results from the first patient by the end of this week, but so far everything looks positive,” Elon Musk said in an interview this Sunday. According to the tycoon, the device will allow the patient to control their phone or computer “just by thinking.” And through them any device.
Neuralink plans to do 11 surgeries this year. according to a report from last November. The experiment was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In September 2023, the company opened recruitment for volunteers with quadriplegia, paraplegia, vision loss, hearing loss, inability to speak and/or amputation.
The first telepathic implants are being given to people who have “lost the use of their limbs,” Neuralink explained. The first implanted device is the size of a coin. has already recorded “promising detection of neuronal spikes”– Elon Musk said last week.
Neuralink explained that the goal of this first phase of research is, in principle, to ensure that a person with paralysis can control a computer cursor or keyboard with just their thoughts. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a fast typist or auctioneer. That’s the goal,” Elon Musk said on X (formerly Twitter).
What is Neuralink’s Elon Musk chip implantation operation?
This is the first time the chip has been used on anything other than humans. Neuralink is also testing a surgical robot designed specifically to implant the chip. It’s a kind of mechanical arm, about two meters tall, with cameras, sensors and a small laser-molded needle.
The procedure is initiated by the personnel responsible for extracting the skull fragment from patients. The robot then inserts a chip with ultra-thin flexible threads. The device is implanted in an area of the brain that controls the body’s intention to move. The robot’s needle pushes the chip threads one by one towards the brain, while avoiding blood vessels. This is a task that no human can perform, since the electrodes in question have a diameter smaller than that of a human hair.
The entire procedure takes about two and a half hours, said Ashley Vance, who published a biography of Elon Musk in 2015 and has visited Neuralink offices 10 times over the past three years. The 11 operations planned for this year are nothing compared to the forecast for the coming years. According to documents provided to investors, it is planned to carry out 27 implantations in 2025 and 79 in 2026. Since then, they plan to carry out 499 operations in 2027, with the number reaching 22,204 in 2030.
Elon Musk has said several times that he doesn’t just want to cure paralysis. He also hopes to treat diseases such as blindness, schizophrenia and depression. “In the long term, Neuralink hopes to play a role in reducing the civilizational risk of artificial intelligence by improving human-to-AI—and human-to-human—throughput by several orders of magnitude,” he wrote in X magazine last year. .
Source: Hiper Textual
