Elon Musk revealed at the VivaTech event held in Paris, France that his brain-computer connection technology company Neuralink will conduct its first human trial this year.
According to Elon Musk, Neuralink's human trial will implant the device in a quadriplegic or amputee patient, but it did not disclose how many patients will participate in the trial or how long the trial will last.
Neuralink has recently received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug AdministrationApproveIt is an application for a trial of implanting chips in the human brain, and emphasizes that this is an important development in brain-computer connection technology.
Prior to this, Neuralink had conducted experiments on pigs, monkeys and other animals. Although it claimed to have successfully connected brain wave information in pigs, the experiments on monkeys caused the deaths of many subjects, and therefore faced a lot of social condemnation at the time.
Previous reports indicated that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was still concerned about the potential impact of the lithium batteries used in its devices on the human body and would therefore refuse to approve Neuralink's application for human trials. However, judging by Neuralink's recent announcement, it seems that the FDA's concerns have been successfully addressed.
However, the market believes that even if Neuralink can prove that the device is quite safe to be implanted in the human body, it will still take several years, or even more than 10 years, to obtain commercial approval. This is because Neuralink has previously been controversial due to failed animal trials, and there are concerns that the device used to connect to the brain may still have adverse effects on the human body.
