Elon Musk claims that experimental ‘Blindsight’ implant will even allow those blind from birth to see for the first time.
Elon Musk has revealed that his brain implant company Neuralink has received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for its experimental device designed to restore vision to blind people. The FDA’s Breakthrough Program is designed to accelerate patients’ access to innovative technologies that could be more effective than existing treatments.
While there is currently little information about Neuralink’s latest project, Musk said on X that the implant, dubbed ‘Blindsight’, will “enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see.”
“Provided the visual cortex is intact, it will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time,” he said.
Musk cautioned that early iterations of the product will only provide low resolution vision, comparing it to “Atari graphics”, in a reference to the famous games console from the 1980s. However, he also claimed that the technology has the potential to one day be “better than natural vision” and could even allow patients to see in “infrared, ultraviolet or even radar wavelengths”, comparing it to the device famously used by the blind character Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Neuralink is developing a wireless brain-computer interface technology to help treat a range of degenerative diseases. The company’s chip-based technology first aims to help patients to regain independence by controlling computers and mobile devices using their brain.
In January, Neuralink successfully implanted one of its brain chips in a human patient for the first time, and Musk revealed that the company’s first product, Telepathy, will initially be for people “who have lost the use of their limbs.” Today’s news indicates that the company’s second product is likely to be Blindsight, a move that could lead to therapies for age-related vision loss.
Last year, Neuralink raised $280 million in a Series D funding round led by Founders Fund, the San Francisco based venture capital firm founded by Peter Thiel.
