Neuralink, Elon Musk’s start-up that is developing a brain implant, said this Thursday that it has corrected a problem that temporarily reduced its first patient’s ability to move the mouse cursor through thought.
The company had released a video in March, showing the patient playing online chess with his mind, without mentioning the incident.
This clarification appeared on your blog after revelations from Wall Street Journalreported this Thursday the agency France-Presse (AFP).
Noland Arbaugh, 29, a quadriplegic since a diving accident, received Neuralink’s N1 implant in January — the first implantation of the device in a human.
But “in the weeks following the operation, several wires retracted from the brain, resulting in a clear reduction in the number of effective electrodes”, explained the ‘start-up’.
The wires are coated with electrodes that capture neural signals. Arbaugh’s ability to control the on-screen cursor was therefore diminished.
“In response to this change, we changed the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to signals, improved the techniques for translating those signals into cursor movements, and improved the user interface,” detailed Neuralink, explaining that the control capabilities through the implant it has now exceeded “Noland’s initial performance”.
In March, Noland Arbaugh marveled at his new ‘powers.’
“It’s so spectacular. There’s still a lot to do, but it’s already changed my life”, he stressed, with smiles, in a video broadcast live on Neuralink.
According to the Californian company, the patient now spends almost 70 hours a week using the device, half of the time in tests related to clinical trials, and the other half in personal activities, from video games to foreign language classes.
“I haven’t been able to do these things for eight years and now I don’t even know where to start”, he highlighted in a blog post.
Neuralink got the green light from the US Food Safety Agency (FDA) in May 2023.
His implant, the size of a coin, has already been placed in the brain of a monkey, who was then able to play a video game without physical controls.
In addition to the medical ambitions shared by numerous laboratories and ‘start-ups’, Elon Musk intends to offer his implant to everyone, in order to communicate better with computers and contain, according to the billionaire, the “risk to civilization” represented by “artificial intelligence”.
