The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed Elon Musk's Neuralink to conduct clinical trials on humans, in 2022 the FDA rejected a similar request to allow brain implants to be tested. Neuralink posted a statement to this effect on Twitter.
“We are pleased to announce that we have received FDA clearance to conduct the first human clinical trial! This is the result of the incredible work of 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. Recruitment of participants for our clinical study is not yet open. We will announce more information about this soon."
The fact that Neuralink plans to test brain chips on humans has been reported by Musk several times since 2019. Reutres points out that, despite Musk's claims for four years, his company first requested FDA approval only in early 2022. Then Neuralink pointed out several problems.
Neuralink was founded in 2016 with an estimated value of more than $1 billion. In April 2021, the company showed a monkey that had a chip implanted in the motor cortex of both hemispheres of the brain. The animal could control the cursor on the computer monitor with the power of thought and play ping-pong in this way: the cursor moved depending on patterns of neural activity emerging in the motor cortex of the brain.
Neuralink's most successful brain chip competitor is Synchron, which has already received approval for human testing of a BCI implant designed to help paralyzed patients and has performed several surgeries.