Will You Sign Up for Neuralink’s Human Trials?
An announcement was made on September 19th 2023 that Elon Musk’s brain-computer-interface (BCI) company Neuralink will be open to recruitment for their first-in-human clinical trials in 2024. The trials are meant only for people suffering from major types of paralysis. Are you in?
I’m sure that there is no need for introductions, but keeping it short, Neuralink’s implant is meant to help paralyzed people interact with external devices in their environment on the same frequency as Bluetooth. Effectively — digital mind control.
The company states that an ideal candidate would be an adult person under 40 and above 22 years of age, with paralysis of all four limbs. You can read their official announcement here. The implant would be put over the “Hand Knob” area of the premotor cortex which controls the hands, wrists and forearms. So far the company has performed almost 300 trials on animals that have shown conclusive results — garnering interest from the mass of human volunteers.
The Primary Study involves a combination of 9 at-home and in-person clinic visits and takes place over approximately 18 months. You will be asked to participate in BCI research sessions for the duration of the study, with a minimum commitment of 2 sessions per week, for 1 hour per session. The long-term follow-up begins immediately after completion of the Primary Study and takes place over 5 years, with a total of 20 visits.
Neuralink plans to perform 11 surgeries on humans in 2024, another 27 by 2025 and 79 in 2026… and then with an explosive boost of 22,204 surgeries by the year 2030. The surgeries will take only a few hours but the implants themselves will be done in around 20 minutes by the R1 robot —the charge on this procedure will be ~40,000 USD.
The R1 Robot has been designed to reliably and efficiently insert the threads of the N1 Implant into the appropriate region of the brain. Making it the most important tool for the procedure.
Neuralink Patient Registry Application
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