Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink has used its brain implant on a human for the first time. The patient is recovering well from the procedure, the tech billionaire announced on his online platform X. SRF science editor Katharina Bochsler answers the most important questions about Neuralink’s implants.
Katharina Bochsler
SRF science editor
Open the people box. Close the people box
Katharina Bochsler has been working in the SRF science editorial team since 2006. She studied psychology and German. Her areas of expertise are psychology, anthropology, ethics and space travel.
What can Neuralink brain implants do?
The aim of the Neuralink project called “Telepathy” is that a person should be able to operate a computer or smartphone using just their thoughts. Paralyzed people will one day benefit from this.
However, Elon Musk’s start-up is not alone in this. Many teams around the world are researching brain implants. Specifically, the implants are intended to translate a person’s wishes when they can no longer speak, write or walk. In contrast to electrodes that are attached to the skull, implants are electronic chips that are “implanted” in the brain. So it’s about invasive procedures on a very sensitive organ.
Neuralink’s product is transplanted into a region of the brain where the planning of movement sequences takes place. This translates the excitation pattern in this area and forwards the information to a computer. Musk has not yet provided any information about whether the implant does what it is supposed to do for the current patient.
Where should the neuroimplants be used?
It’s primarily about movement sequences that a person can no longer carry out themselves. This is the case, for example, in patients with a spinal cord injury or after a stroke. Here, brain implants are supposed to work like a bridge, for example by having the affected person “think” a letter, the computer recognizes it and then writes it.
Research teams have already had experience with simple electrodes that emit weak current to activate certain areas of the brain. This technique is used successfully, among other things, in people with Parkinson’s disease or severe depression.
How far is research into brain implants?
There are definitely successes, but the more complex neuroimplants are not yet ready for the market. In recent months, however, there have been some breakthroughs that make people sit up and take notice. A US research team has trained an algorithm that recognizes neural patterns of individual letters and punctuation marks. A man who is paralyzed from the neck down could write on his computer using imaginary letters at the same speed as a healthy person on a cell phone – error correction included. Researchers at Stanford achieved something similar with a brain-computer interface in the brain that enables speech.
A few months ago, the ETH Lausanne (EPFL) succeeded in enabling a paraplegic patient to walk again with two brain implants and additional electrodes in the spinal cord. With these implants, the affected person can now walk around 200 meters.
How is Neuralink different from the competition?
Neuralink is nothing special at the moment. There is enough competition, especially with longer experience.
What is explosive is that Musk is the owner of a social network and the head of a neurotechnology company. This is a delicate situation and there are ethicists who warn that Musk could develop invasive neurotechnologies based on the data from X users.