100 days after implantation, Neuralink assumes that the brain chip is defective

Last Wednesday (8), Elon Musk celebrated on his account on X, formerly Twitter, the 100-day anniversary since the first human implantation of his company’s brain chip, Neuralink.

In the post, the billionaire shared the publication from the corporation’s official account, which includes a link to a summary of the experiment’s progress.

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In the document, the company states that the brain chip behaved unexpectedly in the weeks immediately after the implant.

“In the weeks following surgery, several wires retracted from the brain, resulting in a net decrease in the number of effective electrodes. This led to a reduction in BPS,” Neuralink wrote in a statement.

BPS is the acronym for the term bits per second, which refers to a measurement used to quantify the speed of data transmission in communication systems.

Thus, the defect in the Neuralink chip appears to have affected the signals that the brain of Noland Arbaugh, who received the first implant, sent with commands to the user interface.

With the problem apparently overcome, Musk celebrates the 100th day after implanting the brain chip as a success. In the Neuralink statement, the study participant states that he achieved autonomy for day-to-day activities who, as he was quadriplegic, required him to have a companion.

What could have happened

According to what experts in brain implants told Bloomberg, Neuralink’s chip sits inside the bones of the skull, not on the surface of the brain tissue. However, the brain moves within the intracranial space, according to Eric Leuthardt, a neurosurgeon at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

“Just shaking your head or moving it abruptly can cause disturbances of several millimeters,” he explained to Bloomberg. In this way, the electrodes may have moved, retracting the wires that connect to them.

Therefore, experiments of this type usually install implants on top of the brain tissue. Leuthardt believes that tests carried out on animals did not reveal the error before because, as the animal’s brain is smaller than that of humans, the electrodes do not move as much.

Next steps

According to Neuralink’s statement, its team is working on improvements to the system. Furthermore, it also intends to expand the use of brain chips to the physical world, in conjunction with robotic arms and wheelchairs, for example.

For now, the company is seeking approval from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, which is equivalent to Anvisa in the USA) to implant more brain chips in humans.