Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp. aims to start putting its coin-sized computing brain implant into human patients within six months, the company announced at an event at its Fremont, Calif. headquarters on Wednesday evening.
Musk said discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration have gone well enough for the company to set a target of its first human trials within the next six months.
The interface, produced by Musk’s start-up Neuralink, would allow the user to communicate directly with computers through their thoughts, he said.
“We’ve submitted I think most of our paperwork to the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) and we think probably in about six months we should be able to have our first Neuralink in a human,”
“We’ve been working hard to be ready for our first human (implant), and obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human,” Musk said.
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In addition to the brain chip, the billionaire’s company is set to develop implants that can go into the spinal cord and potentially restore movement in someone suffering from paralysis.
“As miraculous as that may sound, we are confident that it is possible to restore full-body functionality to someone who has a severed spinal cord,” Musk said at the event.
The goal of the brain-computer interface, known as a BCI, is to allow a person with a debilitating condition — such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or suffering the aftereffects of a stroke — to communicate via their thoughts.
The company demonstrated that with a monkey “telepathically typing” on a screen in front of it.
Musk’s hope is that the device could one day become mainstream and allow for the transfer of information between humans and machines.