May 26 (UPI) — Neuralink, the California-based neurotechnology company owned by Elon Musk, said Friday it has approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a human clinical trial for its brain implant.
© Mitrey/Pixabay https://pixabay.com/images/id-6841384/
Photo by Mitrey/Pixabay https://pixabay.com/images/id-6841384/
The company has been working since 2017 to implant electrodes into human brains to enhance their computer interface. The FDA has not commented publicly on the approval or specified exactly what it entails.
The Link brain-computer interface implant is geared towards patients with severe paralysis, helping to control external technology via neural signals.
“This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” the company said in a Tweet Friday.
“Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial. We’ll announce more information on this soon!”
Neuralink’s goal is to “create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow,” the company says on its website.
The hope is eventually to have the brain-computer interface restore some people’s ability to communicate after suffering from degenerative diseases such as ALS.
Those patients would be able to control the interface using the Neuralink app.