The first human recipient of Neuralink’s controversial brain implant has reportedly reached a new milestone, successfully operating a computer mouse cursor using only their thoughts.
According to Reuters, Neuralink founder Elon Musk gave an update on the trial subject’s progress on February 19 via Spaces, a service that facilitates audio conversations through social media platform X (formerly Twitter), purchased by Musk in 2022.
“Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with neural effects that we are aware of. Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking,” Musk reportedly said.
The update comes less than a month after it was announced that the first human had received a Neuralink implant.
The first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well.
Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2024
Through its Precise Robotically IMplanted Brain-Computer InterfacE (PRIME) study, Neuralink aims to trial an implantable, wireless brain-computer interface (BCI) that seeks to allow users with paralysis to control devices with their thoughts alone.
BCIs themselves are not a new idea. Notably, startup Synchron pipped Neuralink to the post back in 2021 when it secured Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to trial a similar device that gets around the tricky matter of complex brain surgery by being inserted into a blood vessel instead, in a minimally invasive procedure.
After its initial application was rejected by the agency, Neuralink obtained FDA approval for the PRIME study in May 2023; although, as Nature reports, the trial does not appear to be registered in the National Institutes of Health’s online repository, which is often a requirement imposed by medical journals before trial results can be published.
While other BCI approaches do exist, Neuralink’s stands out in being the first wireless model to record inputs from individual neurons, something many experts agree is required to achieve more sophisticated functions. By removing the need for the implant to be wired up to an external computer, you remove a potential source of infection and allow users to go about their daily activities without having to be tethered to a device.