Elon Musk's Neuralink gets FDA nod to start human trial of brain implant
Dimitrios Kambouris
Elon Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink said in a tweet that it received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct human clinical trials of the device.
"This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people," Neuralink tweeted.
The company is developing a device, which is to be implanted in the skull, and will link the brain to the computer.
The brain-computer interface is fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let the person control a computer or mobile device anywhere they go, according to the company.
Neuralink noted in the social media post that recruitment is not yet open for its clinical trial.
However, on its website the company has a Patient Registry. Anyone within the U.S. who is at least 18 years old, who is able to consent, and who has quadriplegia, paraplegia, vision loss, hearing loss, and/or is unable to speak, can participate in the Patient Registry, as per the company.
Neuralink adds that while there is no direct benefit from participating in the Patient Registry, the company may contact the people about future Neuralink clinical trials they may be eligible for, when the trials become available.
Those registering may potentially benefit in the future from research coming out of the Patient Registry and any commercial products.
Neuralink from Billionaire Musk â who is also CEO of Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPACE) and owner of social media company Twitter â is not the only company working on brain-computer interface.
Synchron, which is backed by Microsoft (MSFT) Co-Founder Bill Gates and Amazon.com (AMZN) Founder Jeff Bezos, has already started enrolling patients in trial of Switch â a brain-computer interface device implanted via blood vessels which allows people with no or limited mobility to operate technology such as mobile devices and computers using their thoughts.
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