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San Francisco | Washington

Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-08:38

  • Neuralink Elon Musk seeks volunteers to implant his revolutionary brain chip

  • Neuralink Elon Musk accused of the agonizing death of monkeys with his brain chips while searching for human volunteers

The company

Neuralink

, owned by billionaire

Elon Musk

, has implanted the first brain chip in a human, according to the businessman on his social network account X.

"The first human received a Neuralink implant yesterday and

is recovering well

," Musk wrote. "Initial results show promising neuronal spike detection."

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Technology.

Elon Musk presents Neuralink, the brain chip that aims to cure neurological diseases

  • Editorial: EFE Miami

Elon Musk presents Neuralink, the brain chip that aims to cure neurological diseases

The news of the first Neuralink implant in humans comes nine months after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave its

approval for the company to begin conducting studies in humans

.

The function of the implant will be to

"read" brain activity in order to transmit orders that help restore some

severely damaged brain functions after a heart attack or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which lead to serious damage to communication capacity.

Until now, brain implants have been developed in only one direction: from the brain to the outside (generally a computer that processes the signals), but the Neuralink project aims to be able to also transfer information in the other direction, towards the brain.

Neuralink is developing two types of implants

in parallel ,

one to restore vision "even in those who have never had it" and another to restore basic bodily functions in people with paralysis due to spinal cord damage.

The coin-sized implant is surgically placed in the

brain

. Until now it had been

tested on

monkeys

, who learned to play the video game Pong without a joystick or keyboard.

Other tests

Founded in 2016, Neuralink is not the first to perform this type of implants in humans, a field known as brain-computer interface.

The Dutch company

Onward

announced in September that it was testing the coupling of a brain implant with another that stimulates the spinal cord, to allow a quadriplegic patient to regain mobility.

In 2019, researchers at the Clinatec

institute

in Grenoble presented an implant that allowed a quadriplegic person to animate an exoskeleton and move their arms or move around.

According to data company Pitchbook, California-based Neuralink

had more than 400 employees

last year and has raised at least $363 million.