Brain-chip start-up Neuralink on Tuesday said its implant aimed at restoring vision among blind had received the US Food and Drug Administration's "breakthrough device" designation.
The tag is given to certain medical devices that provide treatment or diagnosis of life-threatening conditions.
Founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and a group of engineers, Neuralink is building a brain chip interface that can be implanted inside the skull to help blind see.
Musk in a post on X praised the FDA for the tag and gave a brief rundown on the capabilities of the device.
"The Blindsight device from Neuralink 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 wrote.
The billionaire said the vision will at first be low resolution but may evolve into natural vision.
"... It has the potential to be better than natural vision and enable you to see in infrared, ultraviolet or even radar wavelengths, like Geordi La Forge," he said.
The start-up had earlier in January successfully implanted its chip into a human brain for the first time.
The aim of Neuralink's first product, named Telepathy, is to help people with paralysis – those either suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or spinal cord injury – access computer interfaces with mere thoughts.
The company is trying first to help such people move cursor and press keys by making the implant fire neurons in the brain that send signals to body's limb to perform actions.
Image Source: Unsplash
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