On January 30, 2024, Elon Musk announced that his company, Neuralink,[1] had successfully implanted neurons in a human being. The implant consists of a thousand electrodes, positioned in the region of the brain that controls the intention to move. This experiment follows on from those carried out on monkeys that were able to play the game of Pong using their brain activity alone.
Such experiments are not entirely new: in July 2022, Synchron, an American company specialising in endovascular brain-computer interfaces, announced the first implants of this type in the United States. The wearer of a StentrodeTM implant is able to use a numeric keypad by thought. We might also mention the work of Clinatec, a French research centre based in Grenoble, which has documented the case of a patient able to walk by controlling his legs with his mind.[2] Of course, the short-term ambition is medical, but the prospects for these devices go far beyond that.
Neuralink’s activities should be seen in the context of the considerable growth
