Elon Musk's Startup Neuralink Gains Approval To conduct Human Trials

Rabat – Elon Musk’s brain implant company “Neuralink” announced on Thursday that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had given the approval to conduct its first-in-human clinical trials.

“We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!” the company tweeted.

Neuralink is an American-based neurotechnology company building implantable brain-computer interfaces. It was founded by the world-renowned serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter in partnership with his team of scientists.

Both on its website and in the tweet announcing the approval of its human clinical trials, the company clearly stated its mission to help patients with severe neurological issues such as paralysis and loss of vision by moderating neural signals.

“Brain-computer interfaces have the potential to change lives for the better. We want to bring this technology from the lab into peoples’ homes,” the company states on its website.

Neuralink’s brain technology consists of the Link, a small circular implant able to process and translate neural signals. Patients will have to go through invasive brain surgery to insert the Link and connect it to the brain tissue, making it able to detect neural signals. The patients will be connected to the company’s app through a Bluetooth connection.

“This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” the company noted in its tweet.

But the company said it is still not recruiting candidates for the trials, noting: “Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial. We’ll announce more information on this soon!”

Neuralink faced a lot of controversy over the past few months over ethical concerns surrounding its projects and practices. In February, the U.S. Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Neuralink’s questionable packaging and transporting of contaminated hardware.

The company also faced a lot of backlash over its mysterious treatment of animals, with details about experiments revealing internal bleeding, chronic infections, and declining health among its monkeys.