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The operation took place on Sunday and the patient was recovering well, he added.
Musk’s announcement could mark an important milestone for Neuralink’s efforts to usher potentially life-transforming technology out of the lab and into the real world. But he offered few details, and it’s unclear from Musk’s post how significant of a scientific advancement the implantation represents.
“Initial results show promising neuron spike detection,” the world’s richest man and Neuralink founder said on X, the social media platform he owns.
Neuralink’s first product would be called Telepathy, he said in another post, adding that its initial users will be people who have lost the use of their limbs.
Neuralink has been working toward using implants to connect the human brain to a computer for half a decade, but the company faced scrutiny after a monkey died in 2022 during an attempt to get the animal to play Pong, one of the first video games. In December 2022, employees told Reuters that the company was rushing to market, resulting in careless animal deaths and a federal investigation.
In May last year, Neuralink received FDA clearance for human clinical trials, and a few months later, the startup began recruiting patients with quadriplegia caused by cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The trial is part of what Neuralink is calling its “PRIME Study,” short for “Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface,” which aims to study the safety of its implant and surgical robot, and to test the functionality of its device, the company said in a September blog post about recruiting trial participants.
