Neuralink, a neurotechnology company owned by Elon Musk that focuses on developing brain-machine interfaces, on Friday posted a YouTube video that shows a monkey playing a video game by navigating an on-screen cursor using only his mind.
The narrator in the video explained that Pager, a nine-year-old Macaque monkey, had a Neuralink chip implanted about six weeks before the video was shot.
The monkey was initially trained to play the game using a joystick in turn of banana smoothie as a reward through a metal straw.
In the video, Pager continues to play the game using a joystick as the Neuralink device recorded information about which neurons were firing to control which movements.
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The joystick was later disconnected leaving the monkey to control the game using only his mind.
Watch the video:
Elon Musk also shared the video on his Twitter handle writing, "Monkey plays Pong with his mind" and "A monkey is literally playing a video game telepathically using a brain chip!!"
In his response regarding the experiment, he posted a series of tweets saying that the first product by Neuralink might enable a paralysed person to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using their thumbs.
A statement issued by Neuralink read, "We are pleased to reveal the Link's capability to enable a macaque monkey, named Pager, to move a cursor on a computer screen with neural activity using a 1,024 electrode fully-implanted neural recording and data transmission device."
