Elon Musk’s brain-computer technology Nueralink approved for human clinical trials

"We're excited to announce that recruitment is open for our first-in-human clinical trial! If you have quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), you may qualify," the company wrote on X.

Neuralink, which was founded by Elon Musk and a team of scientists and engineers in 2016, said that they received approval from the independent institutional review board to conduct human clinical trials for its PRIME Study, which stands for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface.

According to Neuralink, its fully-implantable medical wireless brain-computer interface (BCI) "aims to evaluate the safety of our implant (N1) and surgical robot (R1) and assess the initial functionality of our BCI for enabling people with paralysis to control external devices with their thoughts."

"During the study, the R1 Robot will be used to surgically place the N1 Implant’s ultra-fine and flexible threads in a region of the brain that controls movement intention. Once in place, the N1 Implant is cosmetically invisible and is intended to record and transmit brain signals wirelessly to an app that decodes movement intention. The initial goal of our BCI is to grant people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone," Neuralink explained.

Musk boasted about the groundbreaking medical technology on X and explained that it could restore full-body movement for people suffering from neurological diseases.

"The first human patient will soon receive a Neuralink device. This ultimately has the potential to restore full body movement. In the long term, Neuralink hopes to play a role in AI risk civilizational risk reduction by improving human to AI (and human to human) bandwidth by several orders of magnitude. Imagine if Stephen Hawking had had this," Musk said.

"When a Neuralink is combined with Optimus robot limbs, the Luke Skywalker solution can become real," he added.

Neuralink says that those who have quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may qualify for the trial.

The mission of the company is to "create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow," according to its website.