Inside STAT: Do Elon Musk’s brain implants have potential? Experts say they might

(DOM SMITH/STAT)

At a big event on Tuesday night, Elon Musk’s company Neuralink revealed a new brain-computer interface. A sewing machine of sorts, the device will use an insertion needle to implant thousands of electrodes into the brains of rats, monkeys, and eventually people, so that robot limbs can be maneuvered using thoughts alone. But there are other such devices that have been in development — and for decades longer. And because this new piece of technology hasn’t been peer-reviewed, STAT’s Rebecca Robbins and Sharon Begley asked five experts to weigh in with their thoughts. “A lot of this still seems to be conceptual,” says Andrew Schwartz, a brain-computer interface pioneer at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s hard to tell what’s aspirational and what they’ve actually done.” Read more from the other experts here.