2021 Time’s Person of the Year, Elon Musk, has revealed that his neurotechnology company Neuralink might start implanting its brain chips in humans in 2022. According to Musk, the first recipients will be people with severe spinal cord injuries.
Founded by Elon Musk, Max Hodak, Ben Rapoport, Dongjin Seo, Paul Merolla, Philip Sabes, Tim Gardner, Tim Hanson, and Vanessa Tolosa, a group of experts in areas such as neuroscience, biochemistry, and robotics in 2016, Neuralink is working on a chip that would be implanted in people’s brains to simultaneously record and stimulate brain activity. The chip is designed to have medical applications such as the treatment of severe spinal cord injuries and neurological disorders.
Musk was asked what Neuralink planned to do in 2022, during a live-broadcast interview at The Wall Street Journal’s Board of Directors Summit on Monday.
He replied saying, “We are doing a lot of testing and confirming that it is safe and reliable and that the Neuralink device can be safely removed.” He also confirmed that it is working well in monkeys.
Musk further said that they hope to begin implants in people with severe spinal cord injuries, such as tetraplegics– next year, pending approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
According to reports, Musk said that Neuralink’s standards for implanting the device are “substantially” higher than what the FDA requires.
In a Twitter post, Musk said, “Progress will accelerate when we have human devices (It’s hard to have nuanced conversations with monkeys) next year.”
To highlight the progress achieved in the development of the chips, a video was posted in April of a monkey playing a video game with a Neuralink device.
The project received a big boost in funding in April after raising $205 million. The funds will be channeled to the development of its chip so that tetraplegics could control digital devices with their minds.
