Elon Musk: the first human patient of Neuralink controls a computer mouse with their mind

Elon Musk announced that the first patient to receive a brain implant from Neuralink, a startup he co-founded, is now able to control a computer mouse with their thoughts. "Progress is promising, the patient appears to have fully recovered, with no known side effects. And they can control the mouse, moving it on the screen simply with their thoughts," the billionaire said during a conversation on Monday evening on the audio platform (Spaces) by X, formerly Twitter.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO, and owner of X, had announced at the end of January that Neuralink had placed its first brain implant in a patient as part of its initial clinical trials.

Several other laboratories and companies have already achieved similar operations, allowing patients to perform computer tasks with their thoughts, and even regain control of some of their limbs.

"We are trying to get as many button presses as possible through thought," Elon Musk continued. "So we are currently working on the ability to click the mouse left and right, move it up and down, which is necessary if you want to click on something and drag it to another place."

Located in Fremont, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Neuralink received FDA approval in May for its brain-machine interface (BMI) implant, the size of a coin. It has already been implanted in the brain of a macaque, which successfully played the video game "Pong" without a controller or keyboard.

Founded in 2016, Neuralink is not the only organization developing a brain-machine interface (BMI). Researchers at the Clinatec Institute in Grenoble, for example, presented an implant in 2019 that allows a tetraplegic person to control an exoskeleton and move their arms or walk.

Neuralink recently raised around $323 million from investors in two rounds, in August and November. The startup also aims to help paralyzed patients walk again, restore vision to the blind, and even cure psychiatric illnesses such as depression.

Elon Musk also aims to offer his implant to everyone, to improve communication with computers and, according to him, to mitigate the "risk to our civilization" posed by artificial intelligence.