Musk Says Next Neuralink Brain Implant Expected ‘In The Next Week Or So’

BCIs have been studied in academia for decades, and several other companies, including Synchron, Paradromics, and Precision Neuroscience, are developing their own systems. No BCI company has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market its devices.

In a live stream with Neuralink executives on Wednesday, Musk said the company hopes to implant its device in a large number of patients this year. It’s not yet clear when or where those procedures will take place.

A Neuralink spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

In January, Neuralink implanted its BCI in its first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, 29, at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, as part of an FDA-approved clinical study.

Neuralink said in a blog post in April that the surgery went “extremely well.” However, in the weeks following the procedure, Neuralink said some of the implant’s wires retracted from Arbaugh’s brain. The company reportedly considered removing the implant, but the issue did not pose a direct risk to the patient’s health and safety, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Elon Musk and Neuralink executives said during the livestream that only 15% of the channels in Arbaugh’s implant were functional. Despite that, he uses the BCI to watch videos, read, and play chess and other video games, sometimes up to 70 hours a week.

For future implants, the company said it is working to mitigate shrinkage and measure it more accurately. Neuralink President DJ Seo said one way it plans to do this is to sculpt the surface of the skull to minimize the space under the implant.

Neuralink also plans to insert some wires deeper into brain tissue and track the extent of movement, according to the company’s livestream. Dr. Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s head of neurosurgery, said he would insert wires “at different depths” now that he knows retraction is a possibility.

“The FDA will continue to monitor the safety of individuals enrolled in the Neuralink implant device study through required periodic reporting,” an FDA spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.