'Three little pigs': Musk's Neuralink puts computer chips in animal brains

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's neuroscience startup Neuralink on Friday unveiled a pig named Gertrude that has had a coin-sized computer chip in its brain for two months, showing off an early step toward the goal of curing human diseases with the same type of implant.

Musk did not provide a timeline for those treatments, appearing to retreat from earlier statements that human trials would begin by the end of this year. Neuralink's first clinical trials with a small number of human patients would be aimed at treating paralysis or paraplegia, the company's head surgeon Dr. Matthew MacDougall said.

Musk described Neuralink's chip, which is roughly 23 millimeters in diameter, as"a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires."One comment from a webcast viewer described the animals as"Cypork." "Going from that to the fully implanted system in several pigs they showed is impressive and, I think, really highlights the strengths of having a large multidisciplinary team focused on this problem," Stavisky said.Neuralink's chip could also improve the understanding of neurological diseases by reading brain waves, one of the company's scientists said during the presentation.Musk said the focus of Friday's event was recruiting, not fundraising.

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