Neuralink receives FDA's green light for its first human trials

Back in March 2022, the FDA refused Neuralink's approval for running the first human trials of the company's brain-computer implants. In the meantime, Elon Musk's project moved on and it looks like the dozens of problems cited by the FDA last year have been ironed out. The main concerns involved the device's battery and the potential of the implant's wires to migrate to other areas of the brain, thus making the removal of the device without damaging the patient's brain nearly impossible.

Earlier today, Neuralink posted the following message on Twitter:

"We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!

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.

Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial. We’ll announce more information on this soon!" 

In February 2021, Elon Musk revealed on Twitter his confidence in the possibility to run the first human trials of the company's brain implant before the end of that year. Sadly, he might have been off by almost 3 years. While FDA's approval is a huge step forward, the fact that the recruitment stage has not begun yet suggests that Neuralink's first tests on humans are at least a few months away.

If the tests will prove successful, Neuralink's brain implant will help patients to treat various neurological diseases, including depression, but it can go as far as restoring functionality to those with a severed spinal cord. However, Musk also said that the ultimate goal of this technology is to avoid humans being intellectually overwhelmed by AI.

Buy The Neuralink: Insights into the perceived human evolvement or redevelopment, Elon Musk's propagated Brain enhancement (by Joyce D. Ellison) on Amazon