Elon Musk announced that his start-up Neuralink has performed its first brain transplant on a patient.

Elon Musk, on Monday, January 30, announced that the start-up Neuralink, of which he is a co-founder, performed its first brain transplant on a patient on Sunday, an operation that has been performed several times by other companies. and researchers “First results show promising neuronal activity”Elon Musk wrote on.

Based in Fremont, California, a suburb of San Francisco, Neuralink received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May. His implant, the size of a coin, has already been placed in the brain of a macaque, which successfully played a video game. Pong

Without a controller or keyboard.

Founded in 2016, Neuralink is far from the first to install a brain implant, also called a brain-machine interface (BMI), on a human. In September, the Dutch company Onward announced that it was testing a brain implant with other implants that stimulate the spinal cord with the aim of allowing a quadriplegic patient to regain mobility.

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raised $323 million

In early 2019, researchers at the Grenoble Clintech Institute presented an implant that allows a quadriplegic person, once installed, to animate the exoskeleton and move their arms or move around.

Neuralink recently raised around $323 million (just under €300 million) from investors in two rounds in August and November. Neuralink says it wants to make paralyzed patients walk again, but also restore sight to blind people and treat mental illnesses like depression.

Elon Musk aims to better communicate with computers and, according to him, offer his implants to everyone. “A Threat to Our Civilization” which creates artificial intelligence.

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The world with AFP