Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old man who was paralyzed from the shoulders down in a freak diving accident eight years ago, is the first patient with a brain chip from Elon Musk’s Neuralink company that is capable of move a computer cursor with just thought. The company live-streamed a computer chess game last night in which Arbaugh could control the computer with his mind.
Elon Musk already announced in February that his company had achieved that milestone. Last night, Arbaugh offered some impressions of his surgery: “The surgery was super easy. I literally walked out of the hospital a day later. “I don’t have any cognitive impairment.” Arbaugh explained that since his accident he had not been able to play the game Civilization VI and that Neuralink had made it possible to do so again. “They gave me the ability to do it again and I played for 8 hours straight,” the patient stated.
Reuters reported last month that U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors had found problems in record-keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Neuralink less than a month after The company said it had authorization to test its brain implants in humans. Neuralink did not then respond to questions about the FDA inspection.
The Neuralink chip is the size of a coin and comes out with 1,024 electrodes thinner than a human hair that connect to the brain and has a wirelessly rechargeable battery.
