Neuralink expands beyond US with breakthrough brain chip implants in Canada

Two Canadian men with spinal cord injuries have become the first patients outside the United States to receive Neuralink brain implants, Toronto’s University Health Network (UHN) confirmed this week. 

The operations mark Neuralink’s first international expansion of its clinical trial program.

A new step in Neuralink’s trials

The surgeries were performed at Toronto Western Hospital. The two patients, both in their early 30s from Ontario and Alberta, underwent the procedures on August 27 and September 3 under the leadership of neurosurgeon Dr. Andres Lozano. Both patients were implanted with Neuralink’s first device, Telepathy, which allows users to interact with tech devices using only their thoughts.

Lozano noted that the effects were visible almost immediately. “The first patient was able to control a cursor by just thinking within minutes. It is extremely rapid. The signals are decoded and the artificial intelligence reads the signals and then translates them into movement on the cursor,” he said. “They just think about it and it happens.” 

Both men were discharged the day after surgery, as noted in a CBC report.

Clinical trials, safety, and quality of life

The Canadian patients will be monitored for at least a year, with the research team permitted to enroll up to four additional participants with either spinal cord injuries or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). The trial will focus on safety and quality-of-life improvements, and doctors will be watching for potential side effects such as seizures, infections, or strokes.

Over the coming months, the patients are expected to advance from moving a cursor to typing on a virtual keyboard using only their thoughts. “It’s really as a preliminary step to see whether this should be scaled and rolled out to a larger population. The device right now is a cursor, but in the future you could drive a car, you could drive your wheelchair, you could drive a robot,” Lozano stated.

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