Bad news for the first patient of the Neuralink of Elon Musk who was implanted with a brain chip. The device has indeed had a malfunction, with the dislocation of some protective threads of the neurons. The company itself revealed it, prompted by a report from the Wall Street Journal, in a post on its website official blog.
It is not clear what causes the problem and what risks the patient faces. Neuralink, a startup from Elon Musk that deals with interfacing the human brain with the computer, has not yet responded to questions posed by the press and has not clarified some of the points raised by the announcement itself. According to the post, the problem began in late February and the subsequent data loss was partially compensated for by changing the algorithm.
Dislocated wires
Neuralink’s implant includes 64 flexible wires carrying a total of 1,024 electrodes capable of detecting neuronal activity. The wires are thinner than a human hair and are inserted into the brain by a surgical robot company, with the goal of placing them close to neurons of interest so that the signals detected by the electrodes can be recorded and translated into intentional actions, such as moving a cursor on a computer screen.
The first patient to have a Neuralink chip implanted was Noland Arbaugh, aged 29, suffered from quadriplegia following an accident in 2016. The surgery was performed at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, with promising initial results. To demonstrate the goodness of the chip, Neuralink and the patient have since started a kind of social campaign, with videos and livestreams dedicated to the man’s activities, in particular video games, including chess and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
It is currently unclear what caused the problem. The hypothesis is that there was air left in the patient’s brain after surgery, a condition called pneumocephalus. There is also talk of removing the implant, as a hypothesis to resolve the situation.
In the meantime, Neuralink appears to have communicated to the Food and Drug Administration, the US institution that regulates clinical trials and has granted approval to Neuralink to test its device on humans, that it knows how to solve the problem, also in anticipation of other implants in arriving in the next few months, 10 in total during 2024 if everything goes according to plan.
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