Elon Musk’s Neuralink aims to start putting its coin-sized computing brain implant into human patients within six months.
The company announced its intention at an event at its Fremont, California headquarters on Wednesday.
Neuralink has been refining the product, which consists of a tiny device and electrode-laced wires, along with a robot that carves out a piece of a person’s skull and implants it into the brain.
Discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration have gone well enough for the company to set a target of its first human trials within the next six months, Mr Musk said.
In typical fashion for an Elon Musk venture, Neuralink is already bounding ahead, aiming implants at other parts of the body.
During the event, Musk revealed work on two major products in addition to the brain-computer interface.
It is developing implants that can go into the spinal cord and potentially restore movement in someone suffering from paralysis. And it has an ocular implant meant to improve or restore human vision.
“As miraculous as that may sound, we are confident that it is possible to restore full-body functionality to someone who has a severed spinal cord,” Mr Musk said.
Turning to Neuralink’s vision work, he added that “even if they have never seen before, we are confident they could see”.
The goal of the brain-computer interface, known as a BCI, is initially to allow a person with a debilitating condition — such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or suffering the after-effects of a stroke — to communicate via their thoughts.
The company demonstrated that with a monkey “telepathically typing” on a screen in front of it.
The Neuralink device translates neuronal spikes into data that can be interpreted by a computer.
Mr Musk’s hope is that the device could one day become mainstream and allow for the transfer of information between humans and machines. He has long argued that humans can only keep up with the advances being made by artificial intelligence with the help of computer-like augmentations.
“You are so used to being a de facto cyborg,” Mr Musk said. “But if you’re interacting with your phone, you’re limited.”
As has been the case with past Neuralink events, some of the things demonstrated by Mr Musk and his team have already been accomplished in academic settings. The company’s critics have long accused Mr Musk of overhyping Neuralink’s advances and over-promising what the technology will be able to do in the near future, if ever.
Brain-machine interface technology has been researched and advanced by academia for decades. Mr Musk’s entry into the arena, however, has spurred a wave of investment from venture capitalists into start-ups and helped push the field forward at a much more rapid clip.
A couple of similar start-ups are ahead of Neuralink when it comes to human trials.
Synchron, for example, has been able to implant a small stent-like device into the brains of patients in Australia and the US. The product has made it possible for patients who were unable to move or speak to communicate wirelessly via computers and their thoughts. Onward has also done breakthrough work restoring some movement in people with spinal cord injuries.
The type of brain surgery proposed by Neuralink is far more invasive than that of Synchron or most other competitors in the industry.
A patient must have a chunk of their skull removed and allow wires to be implanted into their brain tissue. Neuralink has been doing tests for years on primates to prove that the surgery is safe and that the implant can remain inside the brain for long periods of time without causing harm.
Animals rights groups have been critical of the primates’ past treatment when Neuralink relied on a partner laboratory for some of its experiments.
Neuralink brought its animal husbandry programme in-house years ago and has endeavoured to make it an example for others to follow. Over the past two years, this reporter has visited the primates on a handful of occasions. They appeared well cared for and did not show any ill effects from the implants.
Neuralink’s advantage over its rivals is one of processing power. Mr Musk’s bet is that the more invasive surgery coupled with greater computing capabilities will help Neuralink’s hardware achieve better results and restore more functions in humans than competing products.
Mr Musk’s company has already missed some of the billionaire’s ambitious timelines for placing the BCI implant in people.
In meetings with his team over the past several months, Mr Musk urged his engineers in blunt terms to work faster and harder. “We will all be dead before something useful happens,” Mr Musk told his team during a recent product review meeting. “We need to step it up. We need to ship useful products.”
During the same meeting, Mr Musk expressed fear that advances in AI would outpace the work being done at Neuralink, rendering the company’s efforts worthless.
Some of Neuralink’s main concerns with the BCI implant have been making sure that the robot can perform operations quickly and with minimal harm to the body. Mr Musk foresees a day when people get brain implants as a quick outpatient procedure.
The paralysis and ocular work only started relatively recently, and Mr Musk has been pressing his teams to advance the state-of-the-art in the technology at a record pace.
Autumn Sorrells, the animal care director at Neuralink, has been working to make sure that the experiments done on the primates and pigs are conducted in a safe manner and has been implementing new techniques to train them. Neuralink has an enclosure for the primates in Fremont that includes toys and televisions to keep the animals entertained as people check to see how their implants are functioning.
In recent months, the animals had to leave their cages and be restrained to have their implants recharged. More recently, however, Neuralink devised a more relaxed set-up that lets the primates recharge under a helmet in their cages while they eat. The company is building out a much more expansive animal enclosure at a campus in Austin, Texas.
While still very much in its early days, the work being done by Neuralink makes it the only general-purpose BCI company. Other start-ups have focused on the brain or the eye or the spinal cord. Meanwhile, Neuralink hopes to do it all.
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Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
GAC GS8 Specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 248hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
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Profile Idealz
Company: Idealz
Founded: January 2018
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Size: (employees): 22
Investors: Co-founders and Venture Partners (9 per cent)
The biog
Favourite car: Ferrari
Likes the colour: Black
Best movie: Avatar
Academic qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in media production from the Higher Colleges of Technology and diploma in production from the New York Film Academy
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
History's medical milestones
1799 - First small pox vaccine administered
1846 - First public demonstration of anaesthesia in surgery
1861 - Louis Pasteur published his germ theory which proved that bacteria caused diseases
1895 - Discovery of x-rays
1923 - Heart valve surgery performed successfully for first time
1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1953 - Structure of DNA discovered
1952 - First organ transplant - a kidney - takes place
1954 - Clinical trials of birth control pill
1979 - MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, scanned used to diagnose illness and injury.
1998 - The first adult live-donor liver transplant is carried out
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
The five pillars of Islam
The finalists
Player of the Century, 2001-2020: Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus), Lionel Messi (Barcelona), Mohamed Salah (Liverpool), Ronaldinho
Coach of the Century, 2001-2020: Pep Guardiola (Manchester City), Jose Mourinho (Tottenham Hotspur), Zinedine Zidane (Real Madrid), Sir Alex Ferguson
Club of the Century, 2001-2020: Al Ahly (Egypt), Bayern Munich (Germany), Barcelona (Spain), Real Madrid (Spain)
Player of the Year: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)
Club of the Year: Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Real Madrid
Coach of the Year: Gian Piero Gasperini (Atalanta), Hans-Dieter Flick (Bayern Munich), Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)
Agent of the Century, 2001-2020: Giovanni Branchini, Jorge Mendes, Mino Raiola
The years Ramadan fell in May
Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
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Price: From Dh590,000
War 2
Director: Ayan Mukerji
Stars: Hrithik Roshan, NTR, Kiara Advani, Ashutosh Rana
Rating: 2/5
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela
Edited by Sahm Venter
Published by Liveright
Results:
Women:
1. Rhiannan Iffland (AUS) 322.95 points
2. Lysanne Richard (CAN) 285.75
3. Ellie Smart (USA) 277.70
Men:
1. Gary Hunt (GBR) 431.55
2. Constantin Popovici (ROU) 424.65
3. Oleksiy Prygorov (UKR) 392.30
The%20specs
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Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
Smoother border management with use of e-gates
Cutting red tape on import and export of food
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Zayed Sustainability Prize
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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Know before you go
- Jebel Akhdar is a two-hour drive from Muscat airport or a six-hour drive from Dubai. It’s impossible to visit by car unless you have a 4x4. Phone ahead to the hotel to arrange a transfer.
- If you’re driving, make sure your insurance covers Oman.
- By air: Budget airlines Air Arabia, Flydubai and SalamAir offer direct routes to Muscat from the UAE.
- Tourists from the Emirates (UAE nationals not included) must apply for an Omani visa online before arrival at evisa.rop.gov.om. The process typically takes several days.
- Flash floods are probable due to the terrain and a lack of drainage. Always check the weather before venturing into any canyons or other remote areas and identify a plan of escape that includes high ground, shelter and parking where your car won’t be overtaken by sudden downpours.
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
The UAE's journey to space
