Doctors at a clinic affiliated with the Technical University of Munich have implanted an electronic transmitter into the brain of a 25-year-old patient paralyzed below the neck, DW reports. A total of 256 microelectrodes were connected to the brain to register neural signals. An AI-based device will study the relationship between these signals and the patient’s limb movements and will decode them. At the first stage, the patient is expected to be able to move a cursor across a computer monitor and produce a mouse “click” signal using only mental effort. The next step will be controlling a smartphone and a robotic arm.

The five-hour surgery was the first of its kind in Europe for a patient with spinal cord paralysis. In 2022, the same clinic implanted a similar device in a patient whose speech was impaired due to a stroke.

The doctors in Munich named the United States as their main competitor in the development of this new technology. Back in January 2024, Elon Musk’s company Neuralink implanted a neurochip into a human brain for the first time, enabling the person to control gadgets using only their thoughts.