This is how Neuralink wants to translate thoughts into text

Neuralink has announced that it will begin a clinical trial in October with the aim of translating thoughts into text using its brain implants. This support for those with speech impairments has already received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. government agency responsible for regulating drugs and medical devices, among other things.

Neuralink, a company co-founded by Elon Musk in 2016, develops brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), small neural implants that can be inserted into the human brain to allow people with disabilities to control devices such as computers or prosthetics with their thoughts.

The symbiosis between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the human brain is one of the goals Elon Musk has been talking about since 2018, and this experiment serves to expand the possibilities offered by brain implants, already used, for example, to restore the voice of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and to help quadriplegics interact with the world.

Neuralink's Brain-Computer Interface

News of the trial, reported by Reuters , highlights the rapid growth of Neuralink , whose implants had been used on three patients in February 2025. Seven months later, in September, the number of patients quadrupled to 12, albeit slightly behind the initial plans according to which it would have been possible to reach 11 patients by the end of 2024.

These 12 people who participated in the trial and, in total, exceeded 15,000 hours of use of the neural interfaces, confirming their applications in the medical field.

Now a further step forward that Dongjin “DJ” Seo , president and chief operating officer of Neuralink, encapsulates in a slogan: “If you are imagining saying something, we will be able to perceive it.”

Neuralink's expansion is only in its early stages. In fact, the company aims to implant 20,000 chips by 2031 (again , revising expectations downwards ), also moving beyond purely medical applications and entering the consumer market with dedicated technologies. The goal, in short, is to equip healthy people with human-machine interfaces as well .

The competition

Another aspect to consider is that Neuralink does not operate under a monopoly. The market is contested by several companies, including the Italian company Corticale , a spinoff of the Italian Institute of Technology (ITT), an Italian scientific research center in Genoa .

Competition stimulates the market and drives innovation. The suspicion may arise that we're going beyond what's legal to outsmart the competition. This and other topics are addressed with the help of Silvestro Micera, author and full professor of Bioelectronics at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa.

Professor Micera, how realistic is the possibility of mediating thought and transforming it into text?

The first implantation of a brain-computer interface in a patient with spinal cord injury dates back 20 years. What Neuralink has done is create a very interesting new technology that can have much superior performance to other similar technologies, particularly because it is completely wireless, uses a robot that allows for a less invasive implant, and has developed interfaces that have thousands of electrodes (i.e., thousands of points of contact with the brain tissue, each of which is capable of capturing or stimulating the signals of multiple neurons, ed .). So the great advantage of Neuralink is a technological advantage, but the application of brain-computer interfaces in general has already been around for twenty years , and the application for transforming thought into language is also already there. In the last two years alone, there have been articles in Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine. In short, there are several colleagues who have already done what Neuralink intends to do on a large scale . It's a very interesting idea because, unfortunately, there are many patients with neurodegenerative diseases whose consequences can lead to "locked-in" syndrome , that is, Essentially, they're still conscious but stuck inside their bodies because they can't speak anymore. It's like being walled in alive. One of the most unpleasant conditions possible, because you lose the ability to interact with everyone, with loved ones and with the world. Neuralink's idea is to take this technology, which isn't entirely new, and transform it into a technology with widespread usability , thus scaling from a few patients to hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. Another interesting thing Neuralink is doing is stimulating a part of the brain, specifically the visual cortex .

How will this stimulation help man?

"This idea of ​​stimulating the visual cortex is certainly interesting, but it's not new in itself. The first blind patient to receive an implant in the visual motor cortex to restore their sight was sixty years ago ( in 1968 , ed. ). The interesting thing about Neuralink is its wireless technology, which means it can be used at home on a daily basis, and its extremely powerful focus. Thanks to the funding it has received , Neuralink can be applied to many different fields. I'm a bit pessimistic about vision; I doubt Neuralink will be able to significantly improve on what others have already done in the past, but I hope I'm wrong. It remains an important attempt because it points the way forward, little by little, to the desired results."

Is the fact that the sector is becoming populated by diverse players a real benefit? Isn't there a risk of pushing the envelope dangerously to overwhelm the competition?

"If there is any risk, it's truly minimal, because there are very strict rules in clinical management . In reality, Musk's arrival in the sector has generated a positive boost, as venture capitalists have invested hundreds of millions of euros in companies in the sector, both existing and new ones. Elon Musk's arrival on the scene has increased the appeal of neurotechnology in the eyes of financiers, and this is a good thing, because it allows more players to try new things."

According to Musk, these experiments could extend beyond the medical sector and into consumer electronics. What consumer products can we expect in the future?

"As of today, there's no chance that electrodes implanted in a brain will be approved for consumer use. In fact, what Musk says is already happening, but with non-invasive systems. Meta has created a bracelet that records muscle activity and will be used to control computers. High-end cars like BMWs have a gesture recognition system that allows users to control some of the car's functions without physically touching the controls. Musk's idea is generally sound, but the current Neuralink technology won't be usable for at least several years."

What are the main ethical issues raised by such chips?

There are short-term and medium- to long-term ones. In the long term, there's the consumer product aspect. Every now and then, Elon Musk goes out on a limb, claiming it will be possible to put the brain into a computer. This isn't possible for several reasons. We don't have the technology to control millions of neurons, and secondly, we haven't fully understood many of the brain's mechanisms. Furthermore, most importantly, it's ethically impossible because no one would give Musk, or anyone else, permission to make implants for healthy people. These interfaces are intended for clinically relevant applications. In the short term, the ethical aspect will be regulated very seriously by the competent authorities, such as the Ministry of Health in Italy and the FDA in the US, whose job is to ensure that trials are conducted properly—that is, that they don't harm patients and that they offer them benefits. The ethical aspect is already being considered, but, in my opinion, it will need to be considered more broadly in the near future,” concludes Professor Micera.