The first patient to receive a Neuralink brain implant would now be able to control a computer mouse by thought.
In any case, this is what Elon Musk, co-founder of the start-up, said Monday evening on his X platform.
“Progress is good, the patient appears to have made a full recovery, with no side effects that we are aware of.
And he is able to control the mouse, to move it on the screen just by thought,” he assured.
Also read: Telepathy: a brain implant placed on a patient, the first step towards an “augmented man”?
Located in Fremont (California), in the San Francisco Bay, Neuralink obtained the green light in May from the American Drug and Medical Devices Regulatory Agency, the FDA, to develop its implant supposed to allow control of a computer by thought .
This implant, the size of a coin, has already been placed in the brain of a macaque, which managed to play the video game “Pong” without a controller or keyboard.
At the end of January, Elon Musk announced that the company had placed its first brain implant in a human.
Elon Musk aims to offer his implant to everyone, in order to enable better communication with computers and to contain, according to him, the “risk for our civilization” that artificial intelligence represents.
Also readProject “Q*”: does the development of AI threaten humanity?
“We're trying to get as many button presses as possible through thought,” Elon Musk continued Monday of the human patient who can move a mouse.
"So we're currently working on the ability to click the mouse left and right, move it down and up, which is necessary if you want to click on something and drag it to another place." .
Give sight to the blind
Founded in 2016, Neuralink is far from the only organization developing a brain-machine interface (BMI).
Researchers from the Grenoble Clinatec institute, for example, presented in 2019 an implant allowing a quadriplegic person to animate an exoskeleton and move their arms or move around.
Neuralink says it also wants to make paralyzed patients walk again, but also restore sight to the blind and even cure psychiatric illnesses such as depression.
The startup recently raised some $323 million from investors in two tranches, in August and November.