Elon Musk’s Brain Chip

One of the first British patients to receive Elon Musk’s controversial brain-computer implant has explained what it is like to live with the futuristic chip.

Sebastian Gomez-Pena is taking part in the first UK clinical study of the Neuralink gadget, which allows users to control a computer using just their thoughts.

The former medical student, who was left paralysed from the neck down after a devastating accident two years ago, told Sky News: ‘It is a massive change in your life where you can suddenly no longer move any of your limbs. 

‘This kind of technology kind of gives you a new piece of hope.’

The billionaire tech tycoon has suggested the implant could one day be rolled out to the general public, saying his ultimate ambition is to create a mass-market brain-computer interface that would directly link human minds with powerful machines to achieve ‘symbiosis with artificial intelligence’.

Mr Gomez-Pena, a keen cellist and rugby player, was in his third year of medical school when, aged 21, he dived into shallow water on holiday and hit his head, causing permanent spinal cord damage.

He is now one of seven participants in the UK trial assessing the safety and reliability of the device in severely paralysed patients. 

Neuralink has said its mission is to ‘restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs and unlock new dimensions of human potential’.

The implant was inserted during a five-hour operation at University College London Hospital, with British surgeons and engineers working alongside Neuralink staff. 

The procedure itself was carried out by the company’s R1 surgical robot, designed to insert microscopic electrodes into delicate brain tissue with extreme precision.

The device connects to 1,024 electrodes implanted around four millimetres into the brain’s surface in the area responsible for hand movement. 

Ultra-thin threads – ten times thinner than a human hair – carry nerve signals to a small processor embedded in a circular opening in his skull.

From there, data is transmitted wirelessly to a computer, where artificial intelligence software learns to interpret his brain activity.

Once implanted, Mr Gomez-Pena can simply think about moving his hand or tapping a finger to move a cursor or register a mouse click on a screen.

‘Everyone in my position tries to move some bit of their body to see if there is any form of recovery, but now when I think about moving my hand, it’s cool to see that… something actually happens,’ he said. 

‘You just think it, and it does it.’

I truly do hope that this is 100 per cent successful because it gives back life to those who need it.

I don’t personally like Elon Musk, but he is the genius of our time; there is no doubt about it. Some might even say he’s a mad genius, but Frankenstein’s creator was a mad genius as well. What seems impossible is not always impossible – my great granny said they would never get an aeroplane off the ground, but they did. James T Kirk from Star Trek said, ‘Beam me up, Scotty,’ and then we had mobile phones. Nothing is impossible, and if my great granny could see a talking robot, she would probably faint!

What Elon has brought to us is fantastic. Love him or hate him, he is awesome because he brings a vision together and the ability to create it, and this technology is a potential game-changer for all of us.

However, we also need to be mindful that we’re talking about implanting a control device into someone’s head. Perhaps I just read too much science fiction, but the potential for cybernetics can go horribly wrong in the hands of those people with little or no oversight, which means that these devices could end up being used for far more oppressive functions other than their existing therapeutic implementations.