Elon Musk Announces First Human Patient Received His Firm’s Neuralink Brain Implant
Neuralink is intended to allow paralyzed people to control movement by thought.
The first human patient received an implant from the brain-chip startup Neuralink, run by CEO Elon Musk, this weekend as is recovering well.
“Initial results show promising neuron spike detection,” Musk said in a post, opens new tab on social media platform X.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had given the company clearance last year to conduct its first trial to test its implant on humans.
The first product from Neuralink would be called Telepathy, Musk said in a separate post on X.
The startup’s PRIME Study is a trial for its wireless brain-computer interface to evaluate the safety of the implant and surgical robot.
The study will assess the functionality of the interface, which enables people with quadriplegia or paralysis of all four limbs to control devices with their thoughts, according to the company’s website.
The first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well.
Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2024
The brain chip has 1,000 electrodes and allows people to wirelessly perform computer functions by just thinking of what they’d like to do via a “think-and-click” mechanism. The firm received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to perform human trials this past September.
Last month the company said it was looking for quadriplegics under 40 years old to participate in the human trials. It also said a surgeon would remove part of the test patient’s skull before a 7-foot-tall robot named R1 would take over to implant 64 threads lined with electrodes into their brain.
The electrodes are programmed to gather data about the brain, including neural activity attached to movement intention. These neural signals recorded by the electrodes would then be sent back to Neuralink computers for decoding.
“The short-term goal of the company is to build a generalized brain interface and restore autonomy to those with debilitating neurological conditions and unmet medical needs,” Seo, who also holds the title of vice president for engineering, told Bloomberg.
Other firms have also been developing similar technology. It will be interesting to see which brings a successful product to market first.
Neuralink did not disclose how many human patients will participate in its initial in-human trial. The company did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment about the recent procedure.
As part of the emerging brain-computer interface, or BCI, industry, Neuralink is perhaps the best-known company in the space thanks to the high profile of Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. A BCI is a system that deciphers brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies, and several companies like Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, Paradromics and Blackrock Neurotech have also created systems with these capabilities.
Paradromics is aiming to launch its first trial with human patients in the first half of this year. Precision Neuroscience carried out its first in-human clinical study last year. A patient who received Synchron’s BCI used it to post from CEO Tom Oxley’s Twitter account back in 2021.
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Comments
I wonder how long until the news that that person has died?
Hopefully, that never happens, either because the device and procedure do no harm, or because the harm is discovered and remedied prior to serious consequences.
Morbid much?
Not at all, but there’s also a reason you never buy into a technology until at least the third or fourth generation.
Maybe the patient feels there is not much to lose and much to be gained, even if the gain is for others down the line. One could argue that is one definition of a hero.
The first artificial heart patient lived for 112 days. Could be a long time, if at all, for this Neuralink trial.
The physical surgery aspect of this is 50 years old or more.
“remove part of the test patient’s skull before a 7-foot-tall robot named R1 would take over to implant 64 threads lined with electrodes into their brain.”
Until Musk is ready to spring for at least an R2 unit, I pass.
R2 D2
It was the R5 that had the bad motivator.
Oh, we been drilling holes in skulls for a lot longer than that. 😉 Hold my craniotome.
So I have this fairly sophisticated pacemaker on my chest. It has 3 wires, one senses the initiation of a beat at the SA node and the other two activate the ventricles independently so as to synchronize their contractions. 3 wires. Now think about what they are proposing here. Like with me, they are trying to bypass a defective conduction system, but at a level of complexity thousands of times more complex than simply running a wire around the defective AV node. Even thinking about it makes my head hurt. A spinal transection means that thousands of incoming and outgoing “wires” have been cut. I am all for advances in medicine, but we really need to be realistic here. Even a simple peripheral nerve reconstruction is hit or miss.
At best, we will end up with the monkey from “Silicon Valley.”
I was considering a link between a brain and computer in the 70″s. We simply did not have tech capable of doing this then, no computers fast enough to process the data. This tech has potential to greatly improve our intellectual capacity, especially allowing access to vast amount of data. It could also potentially help slower people function better in society.
I just want it to be clear that I will betray all of you and will be a loyal meatslave to our new metal overlords in return for favorable treatment.
Wait until they discover that Neuralink makes you lose weight and enhances your erection!
I’ll take both, and a hip replacement, please.
Nobody taking it harder than Grandma….
Funny, but there may be some truth in your comment.
They’ve already prepared the literature about that “discovery.”
Steve Austin did this for only $6 million with 1970’s tech. Come back when you’ve got something Musk.
It’s gotta make that sound whenever it does something, or it’s crap,
There is a huge difference in what is possible today.
It’s disappointing to see the collection of smug, snarky comments posted here in response to the announcement of the almost unimaginable knowledge, efforts, and collaboration of medical science and arts with engineering and computer science that promises real progress in finding assistance for an affliction as debilitating as quadriplegia. Actually, it’s disgraceful.
Yes. It is shameful. The horror!
There is no greater stain on humanity than smug, snarky comments, especially when quadriplegics are involved. Paraplegics are fair game … but quadriplegics …. that is beyond the pale!!
We are bad, bad people.
This is not going to end well.
Period
Trans humanism will destroy man and Religion as we know it
We will all be slaves
Cynical, bitter and jaded. That’s a self-imposed prison of the spirit. You’ve no special.insight into future events – a black cat bone and chicken entrails really don’t work.
Luddites would have us bleeding people with small pox or plowing fields with a stick fashioned from tree branches.
I don’t think playing God ever has a good outcome
If the Dems win this year and this can help Biden, I am all for it.
Actually in the book Frankenstein, the creature refers to himself as Frankenstein’s Adam. So we’ve been warned.
Pish tosh. Everyone here is a great proponent of transhumanist progress, and we all revere our sainted medical professionals like pagan gods. We are practically exhausted from applauding the efforts of both groups for their superhuman accomplishments over the past three years.
Are we that evil? I think it’s promising tech but we have to have fun, too. Separately, I really miss Owego.
About 2000 there was Science Fiction playing with the idea. I mentioned to a freind, how cool would it be to attach such a link to a database.
He asked me if I wanted Microsoft to make the software for it. I changed mind at that instant. It gave new meaning to “Blue Screen of Death”.
It begins…
“I’ll be back…”
I’ll take one once my body is thawed a few hundred years from now once human immortality is perfected.
“The good news is that we’ve perfected immortality. The bad news is that our refrigeration technology proved faulty.”
Second thought they really Auto install one of these in dementia joe, he seems to have a distinct lack of brain function