Elon Musk's Neuralink footage shows monkey with a brain-chip playing video game

Multimillionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's brain-chip startup released a video that apparently showed a monkey playing a basic video game after receiving implants of the latest technology, on Friday.

Pager, a male macaque with chips implanted on either side of its brain, plays 'Mind Pong' in this 3-minute video by Neuralink. Although he was taught to turn a joystick, it is now unplugged. He actually thinks of moving his hand up and down to guide the paddle.

On Thursday, Musk tweeted that "the first @Neuralink product would enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs."

“Future models would be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in the brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, allowing paraplegics to walk again, for example. The gadget is inserted flush with the skull and charges wirelessly, allowing you to appear and feel completely normal.”

According to the video's voiceover, Neuralink operates by capturing and interpreting electrical signals from the brain using more than 2,000 electrodes implanted in regions of the monkey's motor cortex that coordinate hand and arm movements.

“We calibrate the decoder using these data by mathematically modelling the relationship between patterns of neural activity and the various joystick movements they produce.”

Musk, co-founded Neuralink in 2016, with the aim of implanting wireless brain-computer chips to help cure neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's, dementia, and spinal cord injuries, as well as fusing humanity with artificial intelligence.

Musk unveiled a pig with a Neuralink chip implant in August 2020, describing it as "a Fitbit in your skull."

Musk has a proven record of bringing together international experts to create technology that was previously restricted to academic laboratories, such as rockets and electric vehicles, through companies such as Tesla Inc and SpaceX.