A first cerebral implant was successfully placed on a patient, announces Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and Space X. “The first results show a promising neural activity”, he wrote on X (ex-Twitter), indicating that the patient was doing “well”.
Indeed, the Neuralink start-up which he is co-owner, managed to pose his first cerebral implant last Sunday on a patient. The device had already been placed in the cranial box of a macaque, which had managed to play the Pong game without controller or keyboard.
In May 2023, the American Agency for Medicines and Medical Appliances, the FDA, authorized the start-up to do its first test on humans.
Founded in 2016, Neuralink is not the first to install a cerebral implant on a human. In September, the Dutch company Onward announced that it was testing a cerebral implant to another stimulating the spinal cord, in order to allow a quadriplegic patient to find mobility.
In fact, as early as 2019, researchers from the Grenoblois Institute Clinatec had presented an implant allowing, once posed, to a quadriplegic person to animate an exoskeleton and stir their arms or to move.
At first, the first product that will be marketed by Neuralink in the years to come is called “telepathy” and “allows control of your phone or computer, and by them, all your devices, just by thought”.
