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Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of the Neuralink startup, announced yesterday on X social network that the first human received the Neuralink brain chip and is recovering well. “Preliminary results indicate promising identification of neuronal activity,” Musk wrote in his post.
Neuronal activity or spikes are electrical and chemical signals that nerve cells (neurons) in the brain use to transmit information to other parts of the brain and body. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the first human trial of this implant, which is an important step towards realizing Neuralink's ambitions to help patients with a wide range of neurological disorders.
Neuralink announced in September that it had received approval to recruit volunteers for human trials. This research uses a robot to precisely implant a brain-computer interface (BCI) in the area of the brain that controls movement intention. The primary goal of this project is to communicate between people's brain waves and the computer and control its functions, such as moving the mouse pointer or typing with thought. In a separate post on the X social network, Musk stated that Neuralink's first product will be called Telepathy.
The company was valued at around $5 billion last June, but in late November, four US lawmakers asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to open an investigation into Musk's possible misleading of investors about the technology's safety. This request was raised following reports that according to veterinary records, the testing of this implant on monkeys was associated with side effects such as paralysis, convulsions and swelling of the brain.
In a September 10 post on social media, Musk claimed that “no monkeys have died as a result of using the Neuralink implant.” He also added that the company has chosen among them animals in the “end stage of life” to minimize the risk to healthy monkeys.
Source: Reuters
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