Elon Musk’s company Neuralink successfully implanted a brain-computer interface (BCI) into a human for the first time, according to Musk’s recent post on X (formerly known as Twitter). BCIs like this are being considered as a way to “overcome paralysis and a host of neurological conditions,” according to Reuters.
Following an initial rejection, the FDA approved Neuralink’s request to start human clinical trials in May of last year. In September, enrollment opened for those who live with quadriplegia, a form of paralysis affecting the four limbs as well as the torso.
The news of success comes months after startling allegations regarding unethical trials on hundreds of animals. Multiple sources claim that Musk’s pressure to finish Neuralink’s studies faster have led to less-than comforting results; a prime example of this is a study in 2021 in which “25 out of 60 pigs… had devices that were the wrong size implanted in their heads, an error that could have been avoided with more preparation…” and would have prevented “unnecessary animal deaths,” according to Rachel Levy for Reuters.
In another study two years prior, a female monkey called simply “Animal 15” appeared to suffer from debilitating effects post-implant, according to an article by Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron for WIRED, evidenced by the monkey“…picking and pulling at her implant until it bled, [and how] she [would] often lie at the foot of her cage and spend time holding hands with her roommate… Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers… A necropsy report indicates that she had bleeding in her brain and that the Neuralink implants left parts of her cerebral cortex ‘focally tattered.’”
Musk claimed that the monkeys part of the trial were considered “terminal,” or already close to death, which if true, begs the question: how accurate would the results even be on an already dying animals?
However, a former Neuralink employee – kept anonymous, citing fear of retaliation – alleged to WIRED that Musk’s claims were a “straight fabrication.”
Additionally, concerns of becoming overly dependent on an implanted device in one’s brain have been raised, as many participants of studies separate from Neuralink’s have claimed that they had fallen into a depressive state after having their BCI removed (either due to a trial expiring or running out of funds). According to Evan Malmgran for Business Insider, an anonymous study participant wrote, “You grow gradually into [the brain chip] and get used to it… It became me.”
Malmgran reports, “Someone could learn a lot by studying your brain waves, and if a hacker managed to access your data, they could read your mind, in a sense, by looking for specific expressions of brain-signal activity.”
While Neuralink’s – and many other similar companies’ – visions for the future of neuroscience are indisputably revolutionary, there are considerable risks and ethical concerns that must be weighed as we make strides to “unlock human potential tomorrow,” as Neuralink claims to do.
