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With his start-up Neuralink, Elon Musk has confirmed the desire to make chips available to install in our brains within six months. If he still has to get the green light from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the American health policeman, he will also have to guarantee that he wishes to promote the therapeutic aspect of these implants.
Already in 1987, Professors Alim-Louis Benabid and Pierre Pollak, from the Grenoble University Hospital, were interested in the electrical modulation of neural circuits to treat severe tremors. In particular, they worked on a type of implant which can also be used in very special cases, with great care and under strict medical supervision, to help treat visual or hearing impairments, or allow a disabled person to activate their chair by thought.
If companies, such as ni2o, Paradromics or Stentron, were interested in developing invasive chips for therapeutic purposes, the entrepreneur Elon Muskalready at the head of Tesla, SpaceX or Twitterhas just reaffirmed the ambitions of its start-up Neuralink created in 2016. “We want to be very careful and sure that it will work before implanting a device in a human, but we have submitted most of our documents to the FDA and we should probably be able to download Neuralink to a human in regarding six months,” Elon Musk said at a November 30 conference.
>> To read also: Where is Neuralink, Elon Musk’s start-up which wants to increase our brains?
However, if the staff of the American start-up guarantees that a maximum of precautions will be taken, it will be necessary to be careful that this type of operation cannot cause irreversible damage to our health. “The brain doesn’t heal like bones and muscles. Every time you cut into the brain, you do irreparable damage,” warns British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh. Finally, for the sake of transparency, explains entrepreneur Newton Howard, it would be desirable for Neuralink to publish as much of its scientific research as possible. This will ensure the therapeutic purpose of his research, as will be a guarantee of open science.
