Science Corporation CEO Max Hodak announced that the company has implanted its vision-restoring chip, PRIMA, into its first patient with Stargardt disease, an inherited eye disease that gradually destroys central vision. Hodak, the former president and co-founder of Neuralink, the brain implant company, explained on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt how the company’s work with PRIMA fits into its broader pursuit of a novel brain-computer interface (BCI).
“The retina is part of the central nervous system,” Hodak said on stage. “We consider cochlear implants, retinal prostheses, motor prostheses, these are all different types of BCIs.”