Elon Musk has claimed the first human patient implanted with his wireless Neuralink brain chip can move a computer cursor 'just by thinking'.
'Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with neural effects that we are aware of,' Musk said in a Spaces event X.
'Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking.'
Musk said Neuralink, a company working to develop a brain-computer interface (BCI) that can be poked into human brains, is now trying to get as many mouse button clicks as possible from the patient.
Neuralink wedged its first product, called Telepathy, in a person last month.
Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, said Telepathy's initial users will be those with paralysis.
The dream, Musk says, is to help make phone and computer control possible outside of a lab setting. (Similar earlier tests have involved people being connected to a computer with a cord.)
It's hoped users will be able to control electronic devices 'just by thinking'.
The company does not have approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to sell the device but was given the green light for human trials after officials evaluated its safety risks.
Volunteers for the first human clinical trials are 'open', Neuralink says, for people with limited or no use of both hands due to a cervical spine injury or a neurological disorder that affects nerve cells called neurological disorder that affects nerve cells
'This study involves placing a small, cosmetically invisible implant in a part of the brain that plans movements,' Neuralink's website reads.
'The device is designed to interpret a person's neural activity, so they can operate a computer or smartphone by simply intending to move – no wires or physical movement are required.'
Subjects in the company's PRIME study - short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface – have a coin-sized chip surgically inserted by a robot in a part of the brain that controls movement intention.
The tiny computer, called N1, contains 64 flexible polymer threads that provide 1,024 sites for recording brain activity.
Experts say that the technology is still rather far off and won't be on the market for a good few years.
Neuralink may also have to slow down a bit, Dr Mhairi Aitken, an ethics research fellow at The Alan Turing Institute, told Metro.co.uk.
'The advances with Neuralink are worrying in that they appear to be moving forward at a rapid pace without a great deal of transparency and without the usual scientific oversight,' he said.
'AI offers great potential in assistive technologies for people with disabilities but it needs to be developed responsibly and cautiously.
'The vision that this technology will enable people in the future to connect with machines and communicate with AI, drives a type of innovation that risks making humans more machine-like rather than focussing on creating AI to support and help humans in their lives today.'
Long-term studies are needed to ensure the devices are safe and ethical, with worries of the immediate impact of the device – think strokes and vasculature damage – being the ones to watch.
Neuralink's study brochure says that volunteers will be followed for five years.
How transparent the study is has also come under fire. It's nowhere to be found on ClinicalTrials.gov, the US National Institutes of Health's online registry.
In 2022, animal rights groups alleged Neuralink 'mutilated monkey brains', while the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine non-profit accused it of conducting 'invasive and deadly' experiments on primates.
With all these worries, doubts and criticisms, Musk showing off the chip's computer cursor-wiggling powers isn't a surprising one, says Dr Andrew Jackson, a professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University's Biosciences Institute.
'What we don't know is whether their BCI, is performing better than previous technologies that have been used to do this kind of thing, and that would require seeing their data and ideally publishing results from their studies,' he told Metro.co.uk.
'But it sounds plausible and a sensible thing that they would want to show having implanted the device.'
News
Cancer’s Hidden Antioxidant Shield Helps It Escape the Immune System
Blocking an antioxidant protein that tumors use to suppress immune attacks improved cancer immunotherapy responses in mice. Cancer cells can release antioxidants that interfere with the immune cells trying to kill them. Researchers have [...]
Scientists Find a Berry Compound That Helps Muscle Cells Burn Fat
Pterostilbene, a compound found naturally in some foods, affects how skeletal muscles process fats by stabilizing a protein called PPARδ and increasing its signaling activity. Pterostilbene, a natural compound found in blueberries, grapes, and [...]
Two Hidden Forces Help Build the Human Brain Before Birth
Scientists have uncovered two surprising forces that help guide how the human brain forms before birth. Before birth, the human brain is shaped in large part by an unusual class of stem cells known [...]
Researchers Uncover a Hidden Trigger Behind Chronic Inflammation
The findings offer new insights that could help guide the development of future therapies. A protein called human resistin may help flip on one of the immune system’s most powerful inflammatory switches. Researchers at [...]
Scientists Have Uncovered Previously Hidden Microbial Activity on Human Skin
The most abundant microbes on your skin may not be the ones doing most of the work. Human skin supports vast communities of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that can influence its protective barrier, immune [...]
Brazilian Tree Compounds Fight COVID-19 on Multiple Fronts
Scientists found compounds in a Brazilian tree that hit SARS-CoV-2 on multiple fronts, revealing a promising new lead in the search for COVID-19 treatments. Researchers have found that galloylquinic acids extracted from the leaves [...]
Cutting Two Amino Acids Slowed Prostate Cancer in Mice
A newly identified link between amino acid metabolism and cholesterol production may help prostate tumors adapt to hormone therapy. Prostate cancer can find ways around treatments designed to deprive tumors of the hormones they [...]
Largest-Ever Physics Survey Raises New Doubts About Our Model of the Universe
Physicists around the world remain deeply divided on key mysteries of the universe, from dark matter to quantum gravity. The standard cosmological model failed to gain majority support, and no leading theory dominated the [...]
Scientists Just Overturned a 100-Year-Old Belief About Bacteria in the Lungs
New findings raise questions about the role of microbes living in the lungs. More than 35 trillion bacteria live throughout the human body, forming microbiomes in the gut, mouth, lungs, skin, and urogenital tract. [...]
GHCE Concept
From the preface of the book Global Health Care Equivalency in the Age of Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine and Artificial Intelligence, Edited by Frank Boehm: Since the publication of my first book (Nanomedical Device and Systems [...]
Novartis, Ionis drug failure spurs questions
Pelacarsen didn’t protect heart health despite lowering levels of a protein particle, “Lp(a),” in a large clinical trial — a result with important implications for cardiovascular drug research. Dive Brief: An RNA drug from [...]
New injectable treatment helps the brain rebuild after stroke
Biomedical engineers at Duke University have created an injectable biomaterial that may help the brain recover from damage left behind by an ischemic stroke. In experiments with mice, the material transformed the cavity created [...]
Scientists Discover a Hidden “Immune Organ” Inside the Skull
Researchers discovered lymph node-like immune hubs inside skull bone marrow that appear to act as rapid-response centers for the brain. For decades, the brain was thought to operate largely apart from the immune system. [...]
Engineered tRNAs and lipid nanoparticles target nonsense mutation cystic fibrosis
Researchers have developed a potential new approach for treating a form of cystic fibrosis caused by so-called nonsense mutations, combining chemically modified transfer RNAs with lipid nanoparticles designed to deliver the therapy directly to [...]
New pancreatic cancer drug carries a $39,800 monthly list price
A groundbreaking treatment for one of the most common forms of pancreatic cancer has been approved in pill form by the FDA. Revolution Medicines’ oral tablet daraxonrasib, branded as Rasonque, reduced the risk of [...]
Researchers Have Discovered a New Way To Reduce Chronic Nerve Pain
A cancer-linked protein called BRAF may help drive chronic nerve pain, and existing cancer drugs targeting it reduced pain sensitivity in preclinical models. Chronic nerve pain can persist long after an injury and often [...]
