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Neuralink to start implanting its brain chips in humans in 2022 later than anticipated
Elon Musk has revealed that the first humans to receive the chips would be people with severe spinal-cord injuries. Musk has previously given earlier timeframes for Neuralink to implant its chips in humans.
Neuralink, the brain-interface technology company that cofounded by Musk in 2016, is developing a chip that would be implanted in people’s brains to simultaneously record and stimulate brain activity. It is intended to have medical applications such as treating serious spinal cord injuries and neurological disorders.
During a live-streamed interview recently, Musk was asked what Neuralink planned to do in 2022 and he said, “Neuralink’s working well in monkeys and we’re actually doing just a lot of testing and just confirming that it’s very safe and reliable and the Neuralink device can be removed safely.
“We hope to have this in our first humans which will be people that have severe spinal cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics next year, pending FDA approval. Neuralink’s standards for implanting the device are substantially higher than what the FDA requires”.
He, however, reiterated in a post on Twitter
that the 2022 timeline’s progress “will accelerate when we have devices in humans (hard to have nuanced conversations with monkeys) next year”.
Recall that Musk has previously offered earlier timeframes for Neuralink implanting its chips in humans for the first time, noting that Neuralink could start implanting the tech in people by the end of 2021.
In April last year, video of a monkey playing video game with the aid of Neuralink device was released, after raising $205 million in July, Neuralink said it would channel the funds towards developing its chip so it could allow quadriplegics to control digital devices with their minds.