Elon Musk’s company, which develops electronic brain implants Neuralink, announced that it has received the green light to enroll volunteers with paralysis in its first clinical trial.
The California company’s study has already enrolled patients with mobility problems due to spinal cord injury or ALS, it said Tuesday, without disclosing the number of participants. The robots, developed by Neuralink itself, will implant a chip in patients’ brains that will allow them to mentally control the computer keyboard and mouse. This technology is called “brain-computer interface” or BCI.
Expected that The study will last about six years and is only the first phase of testingrequired for approval. Even if the results are positive, experts who spoke to Reuters noted, it could be more than a decade before the chip is cleared for widespread use.
Musk has big ambitions for the technology, which he claims will treat diseases such as obesity, depression, autism and schizophrenia. So far, the implant has only been tested on laboratory animals.
For now, another US company, Synchron, which has been invested in by two other billionaires, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, appears to be in the race for a new generation of brain implants. Synchron has already tested an experimental device called Synchron Switch in humans, designed to read and interpret brain activity. And in this case, the implant is intended for paralyzed patients so that they can control electronic devices with the power of thought.
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