Musk said on Wednesday a wireless device developed by his brain chip company Neuralink is expected to begin human clinical trials in six months.
The company is developing brain chip
interfaces that it says could enable disabled patients to move and communicate
again. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Neuralink has in
recent years been conducting tests on animals as it seeks US regulatory
approval to begin clinical trials in people.
"We want to be extremely careful and
certain that it will work well before putting a device into a human, but we've
submitted I think most of our paperwork to the FDA and probably in about six
months we should be able to upload Neuralink in a human," Musk said during
a much-awaited public update on the device.
The event was originally planned for
October 31, but Musk postponed it just days before without giving a reason.
Neuralink’s last public presentation, more
than a year ago, involved a monkey with a brain chip that played a computer
game by thinking alone.
Musk is known for lofty goals such as
colonizing Mars and saving humanity. His ambitions for Neuralink, which he
launched in 2016, are of the same grand scale. He wants to develop a chip that
would allow the brain to control complex electronic devices and eventually
allow people with paralysis to regain motor function and treat brain diseases
such as Parkinson’s, dementia and Alzheimer’s. He also talks of melding the
brain with artificial intelligence.
Neuralink, however, is running behind
schedule. Musk said in a 2019 presentation he was aiming to receive regulatory
approval by the end of 2020. He then said at a conference in late 2021 that he
hoped to start human trials this year.
Neuralink has repeatedly missed internal
deadlines to gain US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to start human
trials, current and former employees have said. Musk approached competitor
Synchron earlier this year about a potential investment after he expressed frustration
to Neuralink employees about their slow progress, Reuters reported in August.
Synchron crossed a major milestone in July
by implanting its device in a patient in the US for the first time. It received
US regulatory clearance for human trials in 2021 and has completed studies in
four people in Australia.