Elon Musk’s Neuralink hopes brain chip would be implanted in humans within six months

Neuralink says that it expects to start implanting its coin-size computer chip in humans with the next six months. This announcement was made at a company event at its Fremont, Calif. headquarters on Wednesday evening

Elon Musk had hinted in 2021 that that his neurotechnology company might start implanting its brain chips in humans in 2022 and that 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.

The computer chip consists of a tiny device and electrode-laced wires, along with a robot that carves out a piece of a person’s skull and implants it into the brain.

Elon Musk says that the ongoing 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.

At the event, Musk also revealed that the company was working on two major products apart from the brain-computer interface. It is working on implants for the spine and the eyes. The implant for the spine is to potentially restore movement in someone suffering from paralysis while the ocular implant is meant to improve or restore human vision

According to Musk, “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.” And for the work on the ocular implant, Musk added that “even if they have never seen before, we are confident they could see.”

Bloomberg reports that “the goal of the brain-computer interface, known as a BCI, is initially 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. The Neuralink device translates neuronal spikes into data that can be interpreted by a computer. Musk’s hope is that the device could one day become mainstream and allow for the transfer of information between humans and machines. He has long argued that humans can only keep up with the advances being made by artificial intelligence with the help of computer-like augmentations.”

The project received a big boost in funding in April 2021 after raising $205 million.