Neuralink, Elon Musk’s medtech company focused on brain implants, said it has submitted its approval paperwork to the FDA and is about six months out from putting its device in a human subject.
During a “show and tell” event Wednesday, Musk said the long-term goal for Neuralink is to create a generalized input/output device that can “interface with every aspect of your brain.”
“We’ve been working hard to be ready for our first human. Obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human,” Musk said, who assured the audience that he plans to have a Neuralink device implanted in his own brain.
According to CNBC, Musk said Neuralink’s early applications will focus on restoring sight to subjects who were born blind and restoring motor functions for subjects with severed spinal cords.
The device would be implanted in the brain so it can record neuron activity and send the data to external devices via Bluetooth. According to the company’s website, users will think about moving their arms or hands and then those intentions would be decoded and sent to the user’s computer.
“Users would initially learn to control a virtual mouse. Later, as users get more practice and our adaptive decoding algorithms continue to improve, we expect users would be able to control multiple devices, including a keyboard or a game controller,” the company wrote.
