Neuralink, Elon Musk’s startup, announced that it received the FDA’s approval to launch its first-in-human clinical study of brain implants in a post on Twitter.
On Thursday, Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink said it has approval from US regulators to test its brain implants in people.
Neuralink said clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its first-in-human clinical study is “an important first step” for its technology, which is intended to let brains interface directly with computers.
Recruitment for a clinical trial has yet to be opened, according to Neuralink.
Neuralink implants aim to enable human brains to communicate directly with computers, Musk said during a presentation by the startup in December.
Neuralink prototypes, which are the size of a coin, have been implanted in the skulls of monkeys, demonstrations by the startup showed.
The technology has also been tested in pigs.
Thanks to a surgical robot, a piece of the skull is replaced with a Neuralink disk, and its wispy wires are strategically inserted into the brain, an early demonstration showed.
The disk registers nerve activity, relaying the information via standard Bluetooth wireless signal to a device such as a smartphone, according to Musk.
Musk said the company would try to use the implants to restore vision and mobility in humans who had lost such abilities.
Beyond the potential to treat neurological diseases, Musk’s goal is to ensure that humans are not intellectually overwhelmed by artificial intelligence (AI), he said.
Other companies working on similar systems include Synchron, which announced in July that it had implanted the first human-brain-machine interface in the United States.
Miroslava Salazar with AFP
