The first patient with an implanted chip controls the mouse cursor with his thoughts

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At the end of January, the first patient had a Neuralink chip implanted in his brain. At that time, the company commented on the operation only in the sense that the patient is recovering well and the first results show a promising detection of neuronal impulses. After three weeks, it is clear that the operation was successful.

The text was published on the website Živě.cz

Neuralink startup founder Elon Musk broke his silence about the first patient. “The patient made a full recovery without any side effects that we are aware of. And he can move the mouse around the screen with just a thought,” he said on Monday on the X social network, formerly known as Twitter.

Neuralink received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for human clinical trials last May. In September, he started recruiting volunteers, in which several thousand people signed up. A condition for participation in the project was a diagnosis of quadriplegia, i.e. complete or partial paralysis of all four limbs and trunk.

The selected patient became part of the first clinical study named PRIME (Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface; editor’s note), which, among other things, includes a test of the surgical robot and verification of the safety of the entire procedure.

The robot was responsible for precisely placing the implant in a specific area of ​​the brain that gives instructions for body movements. The implant directly connects the human brain to the computer interface, and experts are now working with the patient to use his thoughts to achieve as many “button presses” of the mouse as possible.

Neuralink’s first product is Telepathy. No one else has yet managed to control a mouse using the thoughts in the brain. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a typist or an auctioneer,” Musk said some time ago on the social network X. “That’s our goal,” he added.

But Musk’s approach is also criticized by many scientists. For example, the American Hastings Center, which focuses on bioethics, does not like that such sensitive research on people takes place behind closed doors, which they say contradicts the basic ethical standards in this field.