![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/c.ndtvimg.com\/2023-01\/e3p66s1o_elon-musk-afp-650_650x400_26_January_23.jpg\"\/ "\\"Elon")
<\/div>\nIn 2019, Elon Musk vowed that Neuralink would be able to perform its first tests on humans in 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
San Francisco: <\/b><\/p>\n
Elon Musk’s start-up Neuralink on Thursday said it has gotten approval from US regulators to test its brain implants in people.<\/p>\n
Neuralink said clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its first in-human clinical study is “an important first step” for its technology, which is intended to let brains interface directly with computers.<\/p>\n
“We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study,” Neuralink said in a post on Musk-run Twitter.<\/p>\n
“This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA.”<\/p>\n
Recruitment for a clinical trial is not yet open, according to Neuralink.<\/p>\n
The aim of Neuralink implants is to enable human brains to communicate directly with computers, Musk said during a presentation by the start-up in December.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been working hard to be ready for our first human (implant), and obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human,” he said at the time.<\/p>\n
Musk — who bought Twitter late last year and also owns SpaceX, Tesla and several other companies — has been known to make ambitious predictions about his companies, with several such forecasts ultimately failing to pan out.<\/p>\n
In July 2019, he vowed that Neuralink would be able to perform its first tests on humans in 2020.<\/p>\n
Product prototypes, which are the size of a coin, have been implanted in the skulls of monkeys, demonstrations by the startup showed.<\/p>\n
At the Neuralink presentation, the company showed several monkeys “playing” basic video games or moving a cursor on a screen through their Neuralink implant.<\/p>\n
Musk said the company would try to use the implants to restore vision and mobility in humans who had lost such abilities.<\/p>\n
“We would initially enable someone who has almost no ability to operate their muscles… and enable them to operate their phone faster than someone who has working hands,” he said.<\/p>\n
“As miraculous as it may sound, we are confident that it is possible to restore full body functionality to someone who has a severed spinal cord,” he said.<\/p>\n
Beyond the potential to treat neurological diseases, Musk’s ultimate goal is to ensure that humans are not intellectually overwhelmed by artificial intelligence, he said.<\/p>\n
Other companies working on similar systems include Synchron, which announced in July that it had implanted the first brain-machine interface in the United States.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n