Elon Musk’s brain chip startup Neuralink on Wednesday live-streamed its first patient playing an online chess game using the company’s chip implant to move the mouse.
Neuralink is testing its brain implant technology for “people with paralysis to control external devices with their thoughts”.
Who is the patient?
The first human trial for Neuralink is Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old patient who was paralysed below the shoulder after a diving accident.
In a live stream on Musk’s social media platform X, Arbaugh said the surgery to implant the chip in his brain was “super easy”. “I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments,” he said.
In February, Neuralink had announced that its first human patient was implanted with a brain chip from Neuralink, and had fully recovered. The company had said the patient is able to control a computer mouse using his thoughts.
Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the US National Institutes of Health, said what Neuralink showed was not a breakthrough.
“It is still in the very early days post-implantation, and there is a lot of learning on both the Neuralink side and the subject’s side to maximise the amount of information for control that can be achieved,” he said.
Even so, Mr Ludwig said it was a positive development for the patient that they have been able to interface with a computer in a way they were not able to before the implant. “It’s certainly a good starting point,” he said