Telepathy, the first brain chip implanted in a human being

The company Neuralink, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has already implemented the first brain chip in a human being, a product called Telepathy whose first users will be those who have lost the ability to use their limbs.

“The first human received a Neuralink implant yesterday and is recovering well,” Musk wrote, “initial results show promising neural spike detection.”

The news of Neuralink’s first human implant comes nine months after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave approval for the company to begin conducting human studies.

The function of the implant will be to “read” brain activity to transmit commands that help restore some brain function seriously damaged after a heart attack or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which leads to serious impairment of communication abilities.

Until now, brain implants have only been developed in one direction: from the brain to the outside (generally a computer that processes signals), but the Neuralink project aims to enable the transfer of information in the other direction as well, to the brain.

Neuralink is developing two types of implants in parallel, one to restore sight “even to those who never had it” and the other to restore basic bodily functions to people with paralysis due to spinal cord damage.

Musk described the product on his social network, where he said: “It allows you to control your phone or computerand through them almost every device, just by thinking.”

The initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs, Musck said, adding: “Imagine Stephen Hawking being able to communicate faster than a fast typist or an auctioneer. That’s the goal.”

Little is known about the product. In 2021, Neuralink posted a video on YouTube showing a monkey with a chip implanted in its brain playing a video game that it controls from its mind.

In the three-and-a-half-minute video, nine-year-old Pager the macaque plays a version of the classic video game Pong and gets rewarded every time he guesses correctly banana smoothie which is fed through a straw.

Musk assured that the monkey was “literally playing a video game telepathically using a brain chip.”

A few months earlier, Neuralink had successfully tested a chip on pigs that, implanted in the skull, made it possible to measure the animals’ brain activity.