Elon Musk’s Brain Implant Company Is Inching Toward Human Trials

Elon Musk isn’t just a name in the technological space, but also in key industries vital to humanity. The billionaire and entrepreneur is recognized as one of the most powerful men in the world with an estimated net worth running into billions of US dollars making him the current richest man in the world. Musk doubles as CEO of a Space company called SpaceX and auto manufacturing company Tesla. He is also the founder of The Boring Company, Co-founder of OpenAI and Neuralink.

The billionaire got tongues wagging sometime last year when he announced that he was considering leaving his numerous jobs to become an influencer. Famed for his Twitter ‘cruise’ and chitchat interactions with his teeming followers, due to his extroverted online nature Elon Musk has raised regulatory and corporate governance questions, and has in many cases drawn the attention of the public with his controversial postulations.

In 2016, after Neuralink was founded, he promised that the technology “will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs.” Fast forward to 2022, Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink is now looking to hire a clinical trial director. Reports say this is an indication that the company’s longstanding goal of implanting chips in human brains is eventually getting closer. Successes have been recorded by the Silicon Valley Company, especially the success of an implanted artificial intelligence microchips in the brains of a macaque monkey named Pager and a pig named Gertrude. The brain implant allowed the monkeys to play video games with their thoughts alone, — the same technology is intended to help humans treat a variety of neurological disorders, starting with paralysis.

The position of Clinical trial director, Neuralink is looking to hire would be responsible for overseeing the startup’s long-promised human trials of its medical device. The position is based in Fremont, California, and will have the applicant “work closely with some of the most innovative doctors and top engineers” as well as with “Neuralink’s first Clinical Trial participants.” Also, the job will involve leading and building “the team responsible for enabling Neuralink’s clinical research activities.”

While the medical device makers must go through the FDA approval, the first-in-human test that must be carried out is the feasibility test. The next, after a submission, review and approval process with the FDA based on the results of the feasibility test. Although it is not clear where Neuralink and the FDA stand in the process as all requests for comment were left unanswered.

Last month, in a chat with a popular news source, Musk revealed that Neuralink hopes the implant of its device in human brains is expected to commence sometime in 2022. However, similar predictions he has made in the past including in 2019, prove some form of him being overly optimistic.  Musk says “We hope to have this in our first humans, which will be people that have severe spinal cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics, next year, pending FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval.” He further explains “I think we have a chance with Neuralink to restore full-body functionality to someone who has a spinal cord injury. Neuralink’s working well in monkeys, and we’re actually doing just a lot of testing and just confirming that it’s very safe and reliable and the Neuralink device can be removed safely.”

Musk has also disclosed that the device would be “implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look and feel totally normal”. He added that people should think of the technology as similar to “replacing faulty/missing neurons with circuits”. “Progress will accelerate when we have devices in humans (hard to have nuanced conversations with monkeys) next year,” he said.

Meanwhile, some time ago in 2021, another company by the name of Synchron whose is also known for working on brain-machine interfaces disclosed its FDA approval after a well-planned feasibility study. Synchron is currently looking to fill key roles that can help achieve all its set goals.