05/24/2024 – 19:08
In early May, Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company that develops brain implants, admitted that it had problems with the device inserted into its first human patient, Nolan Arbaugh. In a blog, the company stated that several wires “retracted” from the young man’s brain, “resulting in a decrease in the number of effective electrodes”, without detailing how many of the 64 wires lost connection. Now, in a report by The New York Times, it has been revealed that 85% of the filaments have detached from Arbaugh’s brain, which only has 15% of the connectors working.
The Neuralink team expected his brain to form scar tissue around the wires at the base of the brain to hold it together, according to Arbaugh, something that didn’t happen.
Despite this, Neuralink made adjustments to the chip’s system to use the reduced amount of signals captured from Arbaugh’s brain and translate them into digital commands. The setback caused Arbaugh to lose the ability to “click” with the mouse cursor, a feature that had to be improvised by Neuralink. With this, Arbaugh has been able to control a cursor on the computer and play video games for hours on end, with just “the power of thought”.
Cristin Welle, a neurophysiologist at the University of Colorado who initiated the neural interfaces program at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and approved the implants, said Neuralink’s first case suggests the company is still faces obstacles in developing a durable device. “It’s hard to know whether this would work,” Welle told the Times. “It may be the case that a fully flexible device is not a long-term solution.”
Lake accident
The report also detailed the life of the patient, who is quadriplegic and lost movement below his neck after hitting his head while diving into a lake in the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania, while swimming with friends.
In the years after the accident, he tried several devices designed for people with paralysis, but, according to Arbaugh, only Siri on his iPad became really useful, allowing him to make calls and text friends using just his voice.
The young man, who is now 30 years old, was convinced by a friend to sign up for Neuralink’s first human trials in 2023, and confesses that he did not have “strong connections” to Musk, but that he felt that he was driving progress and that “Everything he touched turned to gold.”
After the surgery that implanted the small device in his brain, in January, Arbaugh underwent a series of training sessions that he classified as “tedious and repetitive but rewarding”. On his first day using a computer alone, Arbaugh broke the 2017 world record for cursor control accuracy and speed on a computer.
Arbaugh said he will have the option to leave the Neuralink study after a year, but hopes to be able to continue working with the company longer.
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