Elon Musk said on Wednesday that a wireless device developed by Neuralink is expected to begin human clinical trials in six months, and one of its first targeted applications is restoring vision.
The company is developing brain chip interfaces that could enable disabled patients to move and communicate again. Neuralink, based in San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, has been conducting tests on animals in recent years as it seeks U.S. regulatory approval to begin clinical trials in people.
We want to be very careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device into a human, but we submit most of our paperwork to the FDA and we think we should be able to have our first Neuralink in a human, Musk said during a much-awaited public update on the device.
Musk said that the first two human applications targeted by the Neuralink device will be in restoring vision and enabling movement of muscles in people who can't do so. Even if someone has never had vision, like they were born blind, we believe we can still restore vision, he said.
The event was originally planned for Oct. 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, who also runs electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, rocket firm SpaceX and social media platform Twitter, 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 motor function to treat brain diseases such as Parkinson's, dementia and Alzheimer's. He also talks about combining the brain with artificial intelligence.
Neuralink is running behind schedule. Musk said in a presentation that he was aiming to get regulatory approval by the end of 2020. He said at a conference in late 2021 that he hoped to start human trials this year.
Neuralink has missed internal deadlines to get FDA approval to start human trials, current and former employees have said. Musk approached Synchron earlier this year about a potential investment after he expressed frustration with Neuralink employees about their slow progress, Reuters reported in August.
Synchron implanted its device in a patient in the United States for the first time in July. It received U.S. regulatory clearance for human trials in 2021 and has completed studies in four people in Australia.