Musk: First human gets brain implant from Neuralink

SCIENTIFIC NEWS - Owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, in the early hours of Tuesday 30 January, announced on X that Neuralink, his neurotechnology startup, had installed a brain implant in a human to enable communication between the patient and a computer.

Musk’s first tweet about the implant read: ”The first human received an implant from Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well. Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.”

Then he tweeted: “The first @Neuralink product is called Telepathy”, followed by “Enables control of your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking. Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs. Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal.”

Comments posted underneath Musk’s announcement had by Tuesday afternoon received 32 million views. It ranged from “Wow, congrats!” to “I’m terrified by the thought of it”. Other X users had a go at Joe Biden with a meme of the US president asking: “How soon can I get one?”

More than two years ago an Australian company, Synchron, also in the brain-computer interface, or BCI industry who is backed by the mega rich Jeff Bizos and Bill Gates, implanted a “Synchron Switch” through blood vessels that allows patients with impaired or no mobility to operate technology using their minds.

At this stage Neuralink’s technology places an implant, the “Link”, inside the brain through surgery. According to Garrin Lambley of Agence France-Presse, the Link is a device about the size of five stacked coins.