Tesla Inc and Twitter Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk’s start-up Neuralink on Thursday said it has approval from US regulators to test its brain implants in people.
Neuralink said clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its first in-human clinical study is “an important first step” for its technology, which is intended to let brains interface directly with computers.
“We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first in-human clinical study,” Neuralink wrote on Twitter.
Photo: AFP
Recruitment for a clinical trial is not yet open, Neuralink said.
The aim of Neuralink implants is to enable human brains to communicate directly with computers, Musk said during a presentation by the start-up in December last year.
“We’ve been working hard to be ready for our first human [implant], and obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human,” he said at the time.
Neuralink prototypes, which are the size of a coin, have been implanted in the skulls of monkeys, demonstrations by the start-up showed.
At a presentation, Neuralink showed several monkeys “playing” basic video games or moving a cursor on a screen through their Neuralink implant.
The technology has also been tested in pigs.
Using a surgical robot, a piece of the skull is replaced with a Neuralink disk, and its wispy wires are strategically inserted into the brain, an early demonstration showed.
The disk registers nerve activity, relaying the information via common Bluetooth wireless signal to a device such as a smartphone, Musk said.
“It actually fits quite nicely in your skull,” Musk said during a presentation. “It could be under your hair and you wouldn’t know.”
Musk said the company would try to use the implants to restore vision and mobility in humans who had lost such abilities.
“We would initially enable someone who has almost no ability to operate their muscles ... and enable them to operate their phone faster than someone who has working hands,” he said.
“As miraculous as it may sound, we are confident that it is possible to restore full body functionality to someone who has a severed spinal cord,” he said.
Beyond the potential to treat neurological diseases, Musk said his goal is to ensure that humans are not intellectually overwhelmed by artificial intelligence.
Other companies working on similar systems include Synchron, which announced in July last year that it had implanted the first human brain-machine interface in the US.
Members of the Neuralink team have shared a “wish list” that ranged from technology returning mobility to paralyzed people and sight to the blind, to the uploading of memories for later reference — or to be downloaded into replacement bodies.
FIRST STEP: Business groups in Taiwan welcomed the deal, which does not include tariff reductions at this stage, as they called for the elimination of double taxation Taiwan and the US yesterday signed an initial agreement under the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade. The agreement was signed yesterday morning by Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Managing Director Ingrid Larson in Washington, the Office of Trade Negotiations in Taipei said. The ceremony was witnessed by Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中) and Deputy US Trade Representative Sarah Bianchi. Taiwan and the US started talks under the initiative in August last year, after Taipei was left out of the Washington-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. “The deal that will be signed tonight is not only very historic,
Beijing yesterday blamed US “provocation” for an incident last week in which a Chinese plane crossed in front of a US surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea. The incident came at a time of frayed ties between Washington and Beijing over issues including Taiwan and the shooting down of an alleged Chinese spy balloon that flew over the US this year. “The United States’ long-term and frequent sending of ships and planes to conduct close surveillance on China seriously harms China’s national sovereignty and security,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning (毛寧) said when asked about the latest incident. “This
‘GLOBAL NETWORK’: The only way to deter a Chinese invasion is for the international community to unite in its resolve, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Roy Lee said Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Roy Lee (李淳) yesterday urged democratic nations around the world to not let Beijing dictate the definition of their “one China” policies, saying that they should increase cooperation with Taiwan to build a resilient democratic network. Lee made the remarks during his speech, titled “Ukraine and Taiwan: Why Global Unity Matters,” at the annual Bratislava Forum in Slovakia. “People in Taiwan have been paying close attention to the situation in Ukraine and admire Ukrainians for defending their homeland. They are [also] fighting for Taiwan and democratic countries around the world,” Lee told forum participants. “The international
HARD-WON FREEDOM: Beijing’s 1989 crackdown on protesters has not been and should not be forgotten, as China tightens its grip on Hong Kong, Lai said Taiwanese enjoy democracy and freedom and have multiple ways to express their creativity, and hopefully young people in China would also one day have the freedom to sing and express themselves, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yesterday was the 34th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s bloody crackdown on student-led protests in Beijing in 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident. Tsai posted a photograph taken in March in a subway station in Guizhou, China, where hundreds of young people gathered to sing People With No Ideals Don’t Get Hurt (沒有理想的人不傷心), saying that they
RSS