- Neuralink is Elon Musk’s neural technology company working on implanting brain chips.
- Musk announced in January that his company was the first to implant a chip in a human patient.
- Neuralink revealed its first patient, 29-year-old quadriplegic Noland Arbaugh, during a livestream.
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Elon Musk’s neural technology company Neuralink said in a livestream Wednesday that the first human patient to receive a brain chip implant was a 29-year-old who became a quadriplegic after a serious diving accident about eight years ago. revealed that he was a man.
the patient, noland arborSaid during the streamMusk’s social media company X said the chip was “not perfect,” but it had already made many improvements to Musk’s life, allowing him to play video games for hours without relying on his family. Stated. .
“It’s not perfect. I think I’ve run into some problems. I don’t want people to think this is the end of the journey. There’s a lot of work to do, but it’s already changed my life.” Arbaugh said this next to Neuralink engineer Bliss Chapman.
Founded in 2016, Neuralink works on implanting chips that allow people to control computers with their brains.
Musk first announced in January that Neuralink had implanted one of its chips in a human for the first time, after years of testing on monkeys.
After medical ethics group the Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) accused the company of “inflicting extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and highly invasive experimental head implants.” These animal experiments have been the subject of scrutiny. during the experiment. ”
PCRM has asked U.S. regulators to investigate Musk for securities fraud after he claimed in an X post that “no monkey died because of Neuralink implants.” Musk later claimed that Neuralink’s facility was like a “monkey paradise.”
“Mr. Musk knows this is false,” PCRM argued in a letter to the SEC. It is not yet clear whether the SEC will investigate Neuralink.
The company has now moved on to human clinical trials.
During Wednesday’s livestream, Arbaugh was seen sitting in front of a laptop and using a special chair.
Arbor seemed to be controlling a game of chess with his hands on the arms of his chair.
“I love chess, so this is one of the things that I’ve been able to do because of you, something I haven’t been able to do much of in the past few years, especially this time,” he said. “Before, you had to use a mouthstick or something like that, but now it’s all done with your brain.”
Arbaugh said he dislocated part of his spinal cord in a “freak diving accident” about eight years ago, leaving him paralyzed from the shoulders down.
His condition limited his ability to play his favorite video game, Civilization VI. This is because you can only play for a few hours at a time and need help from your family to adjust your sitting position.
“I had basically given up on playing in that game,” he said, adding that it was a “big game” that required a lot of sitting still. “I have to worry about bedsores and other things. So I couldn’t play as much as I wanted to.”
Arbaugh said the chip allows him to play video games for hours while lying in bed.
Arbaugh noted that the “biggest limitation” so far is having to recharge the implant after playing video games for several hours straight.
“So I’d like to play for eight hours and then come down and charge for a while and then be able to play some more,” he said.
Arbaugh said Neuralink’s controls quickly became “intuitive,” so that, for example, to move a computer cursor, all you had to do was imagine the cursor moving.
“It was basically like applying force to the cursor,” he said.