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
Studies detail high rates of long COVID among healthcare, dental workers
Researchers have estimated approximately 8% of Americas have ever experienced long COVID, or lasting symptoms, following an acute COVID-19 infection. Now two recent international studies suggest that the percentage is much higher among healthcare workers [...]
Melting Arctic Ice May Unleash Ancient Deadly Diseases, Scientists Warn
Melting Arctic ice increases human and animal interactions, raising the risk of infectious disease spread. Researchers urge early intervention and surveillance. Climate change is opening new pathways for the spread of infectious diseases such [...]
Scientists May Have Found a Secret Weapon To Stop Pancreatic Cancer Before It Starts
Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have found that blocking the FGFR2 and EGFR genes can stop early-stage pancreatic cancer from progressing, offering a promising path toward prevention. Pancreatic cancer is expected to become [...]
Breakthrough Drug Restores Vision: Researchers Successfully Reverse Retinal Damage
Blocking the PROX1 protein allowed KAIST researchers to regenerate damaged retinas and restore vision in mice. Vision is one of the most important human senses, yet more than 300 million people around the world are at [...]
Differentiating cancerous and healthy cells through motion analysis
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have found that the motion of unlabeled cells can be used to tell whether they are cancerous or healthy. They observed malignant fibrosarcoma cells and [...]
This Tiny Cellular Gate Could Be the Key to Curing Cancer – And Regrowing Hair
After more than five decades of mystery, scientists have finally unveiled the detailed structure and function of a long-theorized molecular machine in our mitochondria — the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier. This microscopic gatekeeper controls how [...]
Unlocking Vision’s Secrets: Researchers Reveal 3D Structure of Key Eye Protein
Researchers have uncovered the 3D structure of RBP3, a key protein in vision, revealing how it transports retinoids and fatty acids and how its dysfunction may lead to retinal diseases. Proteins play a critical [...]
5 Key Facts About Nanoplastics and How They Affect the Human Body
Nanoplastics are typically defined as plastic particles smaller than 1000 nanometers. These particles are increasingly being detected in human tissues: they can bypass biological barriers, accumulate in organs, and may influence health in ways [...]
Measles Is Back: Doctors Warn of Dangerous Surge Across the U.S.
Parents are encouraged to contact their pediatrician if their child has been exposed to measles or is showing symptoms. Pediatric infectious disease experts are emphasizing the critical importance of measles vaccination, as the highly [...]
AI at the Speed of Light: How Silicon Photonics Are Reinventing Hardware
A cutting-edge AI acceleration platform powered by light rather than electricity could revolutionize how AI is trained and deployed. Using photonic integrated circuits made from advanced III-V semiconductors, researchers have developed a system that vastly [...]
A Grain of Brain, 523 Million Synapses, Most Complicated Neuroscience Experiment Ever Attempted
A team of over 150 scientists has achieved what once seemed impossible: a complete wiring and activity map of a tiny section of a mammalian brain. This feat, part of the MICrONS Project, rivals [...]
The Secret “Radar” Bacteria Use To Outsmart Their Enemies
A chemical radar allows bacteria to sense and eliminate predators. Investigating how microorganisms communicate deepens our understanding of the complex ecological interactions that shape our environment is an area of key focus for the [...]
Psychologists explore ethical issues associated with human-AI relationships
It's becoming increasingly commonplace for people to develop intimate, long-term relationships with artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. At their extreme, people have "married" their AI companions in non-legally binding ceremonies, and at least two people [...]
When You Lose Weight, Where Does It Actually Go?
Most health professionals lack a clear understanding of how body fat is lost, often subscribing to misconceptions like fat converting to energy or muscle. The truth is, fat is actually broken down into carbon [...]
How Everyday Plastics Quietly Turn Into DNA-Damaging Nanoparticles
The same unique structure that makes plastic so versatile also makes it susceptible to breaking down into harmful micro- and nanoscale particles. The world is saturated with trillions of microscopic and nanoscopic plastic particles, some smaller [...]
AI Outperforms Physicians in Real-World Urgent Care Decisions, Study Finds
The study, conducted at the virtual urgent care clinic Cedars-Sinai Connect in LA, compared recommendations given in about 500 visits of adult patients with relatively common symptoms – respiratory, urinary, eye, vaginal and dental. [...]
