The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Elon Musk’s company Neuralink to launch the first in-human clinical trial. This means that a company can implant a controllable device into the brain of a human subject.
The news follows Elon Musk’s claim in November that Neuralink is about six months away from its first human trial. The announcement of a future human trial is not nearly as big a milestone as the results of that trial. Musk has also promised to install an implant to his own brain in the future.
Meanwhile, Neuralink has been accused of abusing monkey test subjects and is under investigation for allegedly transporting contaminated equipment removed from the monkeys. In 2022, the FDSA rejected Neuralink’s request for human trials, citing dozens of issues the company needs to address.
Musk’s Neuralink wouldn’t be the first to implant a human brain-computer interface. In 2021, the FDA approved Synchron’s application to begin trials. Last July, Synchron announced the first brain-computer implant in the US. In January of this year, company published the results of an earlier study of four human patients in Australia.
Source: The Verge
