JAKARTA - Elon Musk said on Wednesday, November 30 that he hopes the wireless brain chip developed by his company, Neuralink, could start clinical trials on humans in the next six months. This can be done, after the company missed the previous schedule set by the Tesla CEO.
Neuralink is developing a brain chip interface that it says can help disabled patients to move and communicate again. Last Wednesday Musk also added that the chip would target visual recovery.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Areas and Austin, Texas, Neuralink has in recent years been testing on animals while seeking approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start clinical trials on humans.
"We want to be very careful and confident it will work well before placing the device into humans," Musk said during a much-awaited public update to the device.
Speaking to the elected crowd of invitees in a presentation at Neuralink's headquarters that lasted nearly three hours, Musk stressed the speed with which the company developed its devices.
"Progress initially, especially that applies to humans, may seem very slow, but we are doing everything to improve it in parallel," Musk said, quoted by Reuters. "So, in theory, progress should be exponential."
The FDA said it could not comment on the status or existence of the potential product application.
According to Musk, the first two human apps targeted by Neuralink devices will restore vision and allow muscle movement in people who can't. "Even if someone never has vision, like they were born blind, we believe we can still restore vision," Musk said.
Neuralink's latest public presentation, more than a year ago, involved a monkey with a chip in his brain, who plays computer games with his own thoughts.
Musk, who also runs the electric vehicle factory Tesla, rocket company SpaceX, and social media platform Twitter, is known to have noble goals such as exploring Mars and saving humanity. His ambition for Neuralink, which he launched in 2016, has the same large scale.
He wants to develop a chip that allows the brain to control complex electronic devices and ultimately allows paralyzed people to regain motor function and treat brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, dementia, and Alzheimer's. He also talked about combining the brain with artificial intelligence.
Neuralink, however, runs behind the targeted schedule. Musk said in a 2019 presentation that he hopes to receive regulatory approval by the end of 2020. He later told a conference at the end of 2021 that he hopes to start human trials this year.
Neuralink has repeatedly missed an internal deadline for approval from the FDA to start human trials, current and previous employees said.
Musk approached Synchron's rival earlier this year about a potential investment after he expressed frustration with Neuralink employees about their slow progress, Reuters reported in August.
Synchron passed a major milestone in July by embedding its device in a patient in the United States for the first time. They have received permission from the US government for human trials in 2021 and have completed studies on four people in Australia.
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