The race for neural chips has begun, and China aims to lead it.

From a limbless man who was able to play a video game to paralyzed people who were able to regain their move your hands, the race for neural chips has begun: after the American one by Elon Musk's Neuralink , whose first device was implanted in a patient in February 2024, China has begun to invest heavily in the sector , with various human-machine interfaces already in the testing phase, as the journal Nature reports on its website.

This remarkable development is being driven by companies like StairMed and NeuroXess of Shanghai , supported by the Chinese government, which has identified neural chips as a priority area for innovation. One of these devices currently being tested, according to Nature, consists of a minimally invasive interface composed of just eight probes , capable of restoring hand movement in a paralyzed person using a pneumatic glove . The first patient, followed by 20 others, underwent the operation in October 2023 and is now able to eat and drink independently .

Another team, in July 2024, implanted a device composed of 256 probes into the brain of a woman with epilepsy : after two weeks of practice, she was able to control a wheelchair and use social media . A similar chip allowed another woman with a brain tumor to communicate in Mandarin at a speed of 50 words per minute (normally around 150 words per minute) and a delay of 100 milliseconds .

But Chinese companies are also experimenting with more invasive interfaces, as Nature reports. One of these is equipped with 64 super-thin sensors , one hundredth the thickness of a human hair, that penetrate the cortex : the first participant in the trial used the system to play chess and other video games on a computer .