(Reuters) – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s neuroscience startup Neurelink on Friday unveiled its latest innovations for implanting miniscular computer chips in the human brain, raising expectations among scientists watching the company closely.
Co-founded by Musk in 2016, Neurlink aims to implant a wireless brain-computer interface that includes thousands of electrodes to help treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s, dementia and spinal cord injuries, and ultimately fuses humanity.
The company said it would provide an update on its work during a live webcast late Friday afternoon, in which Musk tweeted that the presentation would include a “working neuralink device.”
As chief executive of the musk electric vehicle company Tesla Inc. and aerospace maker SpaceX, which has repeatedly warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence, there is no stranger to revolutionizing the industry.
During the Neurlink presentation in July 2019, Musk said the company aims to get regulatory approval to implant its device in human devices by the end of this year.
“This has a very good purpose, which is to cure important diseases – and ultimately to secure the future of humanity as a civilization relative to AI,” Musk said at the time.
The company promises to implant sensors smaller than eight millimeters in diameter or finger, possibly only under local anesthesia. With the help of a sophisticated robot, flexible threads or wires smaller than human hair are implanted in the areas of the brain responsible for motor and sensory functions.
While Neurlink’s mission to read and stimulate brain activity in humans is possible, the company’s timeline appeared more ambitious, neuroscience experts said.
Grammy Moffett, a neuroscience research fellow at the University of Toronto, said he would be very impressed if everyone in the field showed data from a device implanted in a human.
Small devices that electronically stimulate nerve and brain areas to treat hearing loss and Parkinson’s disease have been implanted in humans for decades.
Neuroscientists have also performed brain implant trials with very few people who have lost control of bodily functions due to neurological conditions such as spiral cord injuries or strokes. In those tests humans could control robotic limbs or small objects, such as a computer keyboard or mouse cursor, but more sophisticated tasks remained to be accomplished.
Much of the current research on animals in the brain-machine interface has been done on animals, with scientists noting that safety challenges and lengthy regulatory approval procedures prevent large human trials.
Brain-machine interface science has seen a boom in investment and business activity over the past five years, largely thanks to advances in content, wireless and signaling technology.
But scientists still face a number of issues, including the development of machinery-learning algorithms for interpreting brain signals to prevent tissue scarring around implants, said Amy Orson, an assistant professor at the University of Washington in Washington who conducts research on neural interfaces. .
“I don’t think we know what the magic bullet is, we just know the problem,” Orsbo told Reuters.
(Reporting by Tina Ballon in New York; Editing by Joe White and Dan Grebler)
