Has Neuralink made a breakthrough in brain implant technology?
Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface firm Neuralink has released a video of its first patient, Noland Arbaugh, controlling a computer cursor with his thoughts – is this the future?
By Matthew Sparkes
21 March 2024
Noland Arbaugh can play chess using his Neuralink implant
Neuralink
Neuralink, the brain-computer interface company founded by Elon Musk, has revealed the identity of its first patient, who says the firm’s implant has “changed his life”. However, it isn’t yet clear that Neuralink has done anything beyond replicating existing research efforts, experts say.
Who is Neuralink’s first patient?
Musk announced in January that the first human patient had received a Neuralink implant, but little detail was released at the time. We now know – from a livestream video by the company – who that individual is and how the tests are going.
Noland Arbaugh explains in the video that an accident eight years ago dislocated his fourth and fifth vertebrae, leaving him with quadriplegia. He previously controlled his computer with a mouth interface, but he is shown moving the cursor by thought alone, apparently with his Neuralink implant.
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“It just became intuitive for me to start imagining the cursor moving,” says Arbaugh in the video. “Basically, it was like using ‘the force’ on the cursor and I could get it to move wherever I wanted, just stare somewhere in the screen and it would move where I wanted it to, which was such a wild experience.”
He claims to have been using the device to read, learn languages and play computer games, including chess, for up to 8 hours at a time – at which point he needs to recharge the device. “It’s not perfect, we have run into some issues. But it has already changed my life,” he says.
