A patient with a Neuralink chip in his brain can control a computer mouse
A patient in San Francisco can control a computer mouse using only his thoughts thanks to a Neuralink implant. Elon Musk, the company's founder, confirms the success of this treatment and points to potential applications, including helping people with neurological diseases.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk's startup, Neuralink, inserted a brain implant into a patient for the first time in January.
Photography: Zarek Sokolowski (Keystone)
According to the company's founder Elon Musk, a patient who recently had a chip from the American startup Neuralink inserted into his brain can control a computer mouse via his brain. “The progress is good, and the patient appears to have fully recovered, without us knowing any side effects,” Musk said in a live voice chat on his online service.
Musk confirmed that the patient was “able to control the mouse and move it on the screen using only his thoughts.” We are currently working with the patient to specifically move the cursor left and right, up and down, using the power of his thoughts. Ultimately, this is necessary “if you want to click on something and take it to another location.”
Neuralink implants are about the size of five coins stacked on top of each other. In the future, they will help people with neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but they will also fundamentally enable direct communication between the brain, computers and artificial intelligence, thus increasing human capabilities. For testing purposes, the implant has already been inserted into a macaque, which was able to play the video game Pong without a joystick, mouse or keyboard.
Neuralink, headquartered in Fremont, California, was founded in 2016. According to data service provider Pitchbook, it had more than 400 employees in 2023. In August and November last year, the company raised investments totaling $323 million (€298 million). On two slices. Neuralink points to a wide range of potential uses: In the future, it wants to use its implants to restore mobility to people with paralysis, make blind people see again and treat mental illnesses like depression.
However, Musk's startup is not the only company working on brain-computer interfaces. In 2019, the Clinica Research Institute in Grenoble, France, introduced an implant intended to be implanted in paraplegics so they can control an exoskeleton, move their arms again, or move around. In July 2022, the Australian company Synchron announced that it had connected an electronic chip to a patient’s brain for the first time. Unlike Neuralink, the synchronous implant is attached to the brain from the outside, so the patient's skull does not have to be opened.
In September, the Dutch company Onward announced that it would test pairing a brain implant with an implant that stimulates the spinal cord. In this way, people with paralysis in the arms and legs can become mobile again.
AFP/Sawa
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