However, Neuralink has already missed similar deadlines for 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Elon Musk said in a company show-and-tell presentation on Wednesday that Neuralink was readying to plant its first chip into a human brain in six months, after successful testing on monkeys and pigs. According to prior research, a person with paralysis can control a computer mouse or keyboard just by thinking about how they want to move. Neuralink is therefore building a fully implantable, cosmetically invisible brain-computer interface to let a human control a computer or mobile device anywhere they go. (The Register)

“We have submitted most of our paperwork to the FDA, and probably in about six months we should be able to have our first neuralink in a human,” Musk said in the presentation.

The Link

The device from Neuralink is called N1 and is the size of a quarter. It is inserted into the brain after making a hole in the skull, and then linked to the brain’s grey matter through 64 threads. The device is Bluetooth capable and can charge itself wirelessly and also transmit data. N1 is equipped with 1024 channels to probe the brain with.

The N1 would be inserted into the brain using a robot because the threads on it are so fine and flexible that they can’t be inserted by the human hand.

The robotic system is designed to reliably and efficiently insert these threads exactly where the neurosurgeon wants them to be.

In the latest demonstration showed monkeys that could use their brain implants to move a cursor around, type into a keyboard, and handwrite numbers on screens.

In fact one monkey called Sake is shown moving a cursor to type out the short sentence “welcome to show and tell” with just his mind.

Related Story: Elon Musk’s Neuralink Raises $205M For Its Brain-Machine Interface