Elon Musk said a third patient received a Neuralink brain implant. This work is part of a booming field

Elon Musk says a third person has received an implant from his brain-computer interface company Neuralink, one of many groups working to connect nervous systems with machines.

“The three of us… who are using Neuralinks are doing a great job,” he said in a wide-ranging interview at a Las Vegas event livestreamed on social media platform X.

Musk said the company has upgraded the device since its first brain implant about a year ago with more electrodes, higher bandwidth and longer battery life. Musk also said that Neuralink hopes to implant experimental devices into another 20 to 30 people this year.

Musk did not provide any details about the latest patient, but did have updates on previous patients.

The second recipient, who has a spinal cord injury, received the implant last summer while playing video games with the device and learning how to use computer-aided design software to create 3D objects. The first patient, who was also paralyzed by a spinal cord injury, described how it helped him play video games and chess.

While progress like this from Neuralink often attracts attention, many other companies and research groups are working on similar projects. Two studies last year in the New England Journal of Medicine described how brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can help ALS patients communicate better.

Who is researching brain-computer interface technology?

According to a US research database, more than 45 trials involving brain-computer interfaces are ongoing. These efforts are intended to help treat brain diseases, overcome brain injuries and other uses.

Rajesh Rao, co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington, said many research labs have shown that humans can use brain-computer interfaces to accurately control computer cursors.

Rao said Neuralink may be unique in two ways: The surgery to implant the device is the first time a robot has been used to implant flexible electrode wires into the human brain to record neural activity and control the device. These threads may record more neurons than other interfaces.

Still, he said, the benefits of Neuralink’s approach have yet to materialize, and some competitors have eclipsed the company in other ways. For example, Rao said companies such as Synchron, Blackrock Neurotech and Onward Medical are already experimenting with brain-computer interfaces in people, combining neural recordings with stimulation “either using less invasive methods or more general methods.”

What are the benefits of BCI?

Marco Baptista, chief scientific officer of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, said the BCI technology is “very exciting” and has potential benefits for paralyzed patients.

Through clinical trials, “we’ll be able to see what the winning approach is,” he said. “It’s too early to know.”

Baptista said his foundation usually tries to support research teams with financial and expert help, although it did not provide any funding to Neuralink.

“We need to really support high-risk, high-reward efforts. This is obviously high-risk, high-reward. We don’t know how safe it is. We don’t know how feasible it is,” he said.

How is BCI tested and regulated?

Neuralink announced in 2023 that it had received permission from U.S. regulators to begin testing its device on humans.

Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at Boston University, said that while most medical devices enter the market without clinical studies, high-risk medical devices with premarket approval require a so-called “investigational device exemption” from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. . San Francisco, California, researching high-risk devices.

Neuralink said it had the exemption, but the FDA said it could not confirm or disclose information about the specific study.

The FDA is often involved in all steps, from recruiting patients to testing devices to analyzing data, Redberg said. She said the regulatory process prioritizes safety.

She also points to another layer of protection: All research involving people requires an Institutional Review Board (IRB). It may also be called an ethics review committee or an independent ethics committee. Membership must include at least one person who is not a scientist and is not affiliated with the agency or organization that makes up the board.

Redberg said the role of such a committee “is to assume that there are reasonable risks and a reasonable opportunity for benefit, and that patients are informed of that before they sign up.”

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