Elon Musk said Wednesday that a wireless device developed by his brain chip company Neuralink is expected to begin human clinical trials in six months, and that one of its first targeted applications is to restore vision.
The company is developing brain chip interfaces that enable disabled patients to move and communicate again. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Neuralink has been testing on animals in recent years as it seeks US regulatory approval to begin clinical trials in people.
“We want to be extremely careful and certain that this is going to work well before we put a device into a human, but we’ve submitted, I think most of our paperwork to the FDA and we think about In six months we should have our first NeuraLink in a human,” Musk said during a highly anticipated public update on the device.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Musk said the first two human applications targeted by the Neuralink device would be to restore vision and enable muscle movement in people who cannot do so. “Even if someone doesn’t have sight, ever, as if they were born blind, we believe we can still restore sight,” he said.
The event was originally scheduled for October 31, but Musk postponed it a few days earlier without giving any reason.
Neuralink’s last public presentation, more than a year ago, involved a monkey with a brain chip that played a computer game thinking alone.
Musk, who also runs electric vehicle maker Tesla, rocket firm SpaceX and social media platform Twitter, is known for lofty goals such as colonizing Mars and saving humanity. His ambitions for Neuralink, which he launched in 2016, are on the same scale.
He wants to develop a chip that would allow the brain to control complex electronic devices and eventually allow people with paralysis to regain motor function and treat brain diseases such as Parkinson’s, dementia and Alzheimer’s. He also talks about merging the brain with artificial intelligence.
Neuralink, however, is running behind the times. Musk said in a 2019 presentation that he was aiming to get regulatory approval by the end of 2020. He then told a conference in late 2021 that he hoped to start human trials this year.
Current and former employees have said that Neuralink has repeatedly missed internal deadlines for obtaining FDA approval to begin human trials. Musk approached competitor Synchrony earlier this year about the potential Investment When he expressed frustration about the slow progress of Neuralink employees, Reuters reported in August.
Syncron passed a major milestone in July by implanting its device in a patient in the United States for the first time. It received US regulatory approval for human trials in 2021 and has completed studies in four people Australia,
The text of this story is published from a wire agency feed without any modification. Only the headline has been changed.
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