Technology
Elon Musk claims he can BLOCK brain signals to help weight loss with his Neuralink chip
ELON Musk has claimed a controversial brain chip he’s developing could be used to fight morbid obesity.
And better still, experts don’t think the bold idea is as wild as you might think.
AFPMusk’s Neuralink has been working on a chip since 2016[/caption]
How it works
The billionaire – who could soon be the owner of Twitter – started working on a microchip that’s implanted into a person’s skull in 2016.
One day it could be used by people with paralysis to control smartphones and computers using their brain activity.
His Neuralink firm wants to cure a range of neurological disorders as well, like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.
But speaking in a recent TED Talk session, Musk, 50, said the tech could also be used to help people lose weight.
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Professor Andrew Jackson, from Newcastle University, told Insider: “I don’t think it is any more implausible than other claims for the potential of neurotechnology.”
And Professor Sadaf Farooqi from the University of Cambridge said it is doable.
“We and others have shown that in some people with severe obesity, it’s the function of a particular brain region, the hypothalamus, that’s really driving often an increase in appetite,” she said.
“If you could find a way to target that particular region and even those particular neurons that drive appetite, then in theory, a drug or a technology that did that could improve the lives of patients.”
However, the chip is still a long way off being used in humans.
And more recently it has been hit by accusations of torturing monkeys used for testing purposes.
Separately, the company released a video last year of a brain-chipped monkey apparently playing video games with its mind.
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The aim is to create a full brain interface within 25 years.
Musk claims that the technology will stop humans being outpaced by artificial intelligence, which he believes might turn against us sometime in the future.
AFPMusk could soon be the owner of Twitter as well[/caption]
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