Musk's Brain Chip Firm Gets US Approval for Human Analysis

Uploaded on 2023-06-05 in TECHNOLOGY--Developments, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

Elon Musk's brain-chip company Neuralink has now been approved by the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) to conduct its first human tests, previously Neuralink had tested implants in pigs and monkeys.

This new approval of Neuralink represents "an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people," then FDA said. Musk has said his brain implant company will help to make paralysed people walk, the blind to see and will eventually turn people into cyborgs.

And so Musk’s Neuralink implant company aims to help restore vision and mobility to paralysed people by linking brains to computers.

And it has been building chips to be implanted into the skull for a brain-computer interface, that it says has the potential to help restore vision for the blind and assist paralysed people to walk again.

Currently it does not have immediate plans to start recruiting participants, but the FDA said it acknowledged Neuralink's announcement.

Neuralink, founded in 2016 by Musk and a group of scientists and englineers with the ultimate aim of making devices that interface with the human brain, both reading information from neurons as well as feeding information directly back into the brain.

But so far the company has been the subject of several federal investigations. A previous bid by Neuralink to win FDA approval was rejected on safety grounds. The FDA had pointed out several concerns to Neuralink that needed to be addressed before sanctioning human trials, according to the employees.

Major issues involved the lithium battery of the device, the possibility of the implant’s wires migrating within the brain and the challenge of safely extracting the device without damaging brain tissue. However now Neuralink hopes to use its microchips to treat conditions such as paralysis and blindness, and to help certain disabled people use computers and mobile technology.

The chips, which have been tested in monkeys, are designed to interpret signals produced in the brain and relay information to devices via Bluetooth. However some experts have cautioned that Neuralink's brain implants will require extensive testing to overcome technical and ethical challenges if they are to become widely available.

While Musk has said on several occasions since 2019 that the company is ready to go for experiments in humans to treat paralysis and blindness, the FDA had however rejected proposals by the company to begin human clinical trials. Over the years, Musk has publicly outlined an ambitious plan for Neuralink. He made headlines late last year when he said he was already so confident in the device’s safety that he would be willing to implant them in his own children.

Musk envisions both disabled and healthy individuals swiftly getting surgical implants at local centers. These devices aim to cure a range of conditions from obesity, autism, depression, blindness and schizophrenia, and to enabling web browsing and telepathy.

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