The first to be able to benefit from implantable chips are individuals who are unable to make any movement because they are paraplegic or affected by neurodegenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis: it is a path that has been opened for some time by several short-term experiments and which has now arrived like a cyclone, Neuralink, Elon Musk's company which announced that it had implanted its Telepathy chip in a human being for the first time.
However, there is a big question mark regarding the future.
In general, "the medium-term objective is to have a technology for patients with motor pathologies and being able to validate and develop it in the next 6 or 7 years is a real prospect", Luca Berdondini, an expert in Microtechnology for neuroelectronics, tells ANSA. 'Italian Institute of Technology.
"It would mean - he observes - being able to say restoring motor capacity to those who have lost it due to trauma or pathologies".
The project he coordinates, called Corticale, paves the way for a new generation of implantable devices with over a thousand electrodes, which is more complex than Musk's chip and, unlike Telepathy, completely integrated.
Later in time, implantable chips they could also be used to treat other problems, for example epilepsy: "it will be possible to achieve the ability to modulate brain capacity through electroceutics, i.e. with devices that prevent epileptic attacks, without having to take drugs", says the 'expert.
Another possible target is drug-resistant depression.
If this path is clear and linear, however complex, implantable chip technology also opens the door to new scenarios.
"Create a generalized brain interface to restore the autonomy of those who today have unmet medical needs", reads the short sentence with which Neuralink presents itself online, and in which it also indicates a second objective: "unlock human potential tomorrow ".
Musk himself presented Telepathy as the "product" that "will allow you to control your phone or computer and through these, many other devices".
According to Berdondini "it is not clear where Musk wants to take Neuralink. Applications on healthy people are not excluded, for example for home automation or other technologies. It is an intention that has always remained subdued. What is clear - he concludes - is that in the uses outside the clinical context a difficult world opens up."
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