Elon Musk: Patient with Neuralink chip in the brain can control the computer mouse

A patient from the American company Neuralink can control a computer mouse using only his brain. This was shared by entrepreneur Elon Musk, the founder of Neuralink. His company implanted a computer chip in the patient’s brain in late January. “Progress is good, the patient seems to have fully recovered and we are not aware of any side effects,” Musk said in a live audio conversation on his online service X. This is the first transplant of a Neuralink chip in a human brain.

Company employees are currently working with the patient to specifically move the mouse cursor left and right, up and down, using the power of his thoughts. Ultimately, this is necessary “if you want to click on something and move it to another location”.

The Neuralink implants are about the size of five coins stacked on top of each other. In the future, they should help people with neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but also fundamentally enable a direct connection between the brain, computers and artificial intelligence, increasing human capabilities.

For testing purposes, the implant had already been placed in a macaque, which could play the video game “Pong” without a joystick, mouse or keyboard.

Musk founded Neuralink in 2016, a company based in Fremont, California. According to data service provider Pitchbook, it had more than 400 employees in 2023. In August and November last year, the company raised investments totaling 323 million dollars (298 million euros) in two tranches. Neuralink points to a wide range of possible applications for the chips: in the future, it wants to use its implants to restore mobility to paralyzed people, restore sight to the blind and cure mental illnesses such as depression.

There are other companies working on brain-computer interfaces. In 2019, the Clinatec research institute in Grenoble, France, presented an implant that would be implanted in cases of spinal cord injury. The goal is to let the paralyzed people control an exoskeleton, regain movement of their arms or move around.

In July 2022, the Australian company Synchron announced that it had implanted a chip in a patient’s brain for the first time. Unlike Neuralink, the synchronous implant is connected to the brain from the outside, leaving the patient’s skull unharmed.

In September, the Dutch company Onward announced that it would conduct a trial linking a brain implant to an implant that stimulates the spinal cord. In this way, people with paralyzed arms and legs can become mobile again.

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