San Francisco (AFP)

Gertrude takes part in a science fiction experiment: Elon Musk's start-up, Neuralink, has implanted a connected chip in the brain of this guinea pig pig, a prototype with a view to making the version for humans, which will give back speech and mobility to the paralyzed.

"It's like a Fitbit (smartwatch) in your skull," Elon Musk enthused Friday, during an online talk on the progress of his interface project connecting the brain to computers.

The billionaire entrepreneur and futurist (Tesla, SpaceX) presented a year ago a chip with ultra-thin wires, which can be implanted in the brain by a robot.

The new model is wireless thanks to bluetooth technology, recharges at night and measures 23 mm in diameter (like a small coin) by 8 mm in thickness.

The idea will be to have the round chip implanted in the brain, without even spending a night in the hospital, and not to keep any trace of it, except a small scar under the hair.

It will first be used to treat neurological diseases. But the long-term goal is to make implants so safe, reliable and simple that they could be considered elective (comfort) surgery for individuals who dream of empowering their brains with computing power.

For now, in Neuralink's labs, the pig Gertrude is walking on a treadmill, snout in a feeder around its neck, while the chip is relaying its neurological signals.

From this information, the computer is able to predict at any time where each of its members are.

What gives hope to restore mobility to paraplegic people: in the event of injury to the spinal cord, we could implant another chip at the site of the injury, and bypass the damaged "transmission circuits", thus imagines Elon Musk.

"In the long term, I am sure we will be able to regain full use of his body," he said.

The whimsical boss explained that his goal with this presentation on YouTube was above all to recruit many engineers, vets and other employees to move the project forward. The start-up has only a hundred employees at this stage.

He added that Neuralink had just obtained approval from US health authorities for testing, without specifying a horizon for the first human implantations.

In July 2019, Neuralink promised to carry out its first tests on individuals from 2020.

© 2020 AFP