Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink broadcast a live video Wednesday showing a patient using the company’s brain implant to move a mouse and play chess on a computer.
Noland Arbaugh, 29, is the first human patient ever to be implanted with Neuralink’s device. The company is developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that aims to help patients with severe paralysis control external technologies using only neural signals. Neuralink’s first product is called Telepathy, Musk said one post on social networking site X in January.
In the video Wednesday, which aired on X, Arbaugh said he became a quadriplegic after a diving accident about eight years ago. He said the surgery to get Neuralink’s implant, which requires patients to remove a section of their skull to insert electrodes into brain tissue, was “super easy”. He was released from the hospital the next day, she said.
“It’s not perfect, I’d say we’ve run into some issues,” Arbaugh said. “I don’t want people to think this is the end of the journey, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but it’s already changed my life.”
BCI is a system that decodes brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies. If the system works right, patients with serious degenerative diseases like ALS could eventually text or browse social media with their minds.
Several companies such as Paradromics, Synchron, Blackrock Neurotech, and Precision Neuroscience have developed BCI systems with these capabilities, and many of them have also implanted devices in human patients. Neuralink is particularly well-known in the space due to the high profile of Musk, who is also its CEO Tesla and SpaceX.
In many ways, the capabilities Neuralink showed off in its video Wednesday aren’t new. Dr. Nader Pouratian, chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center, said researchers have been developing and studying BCI technology for years.
“There are things we’ve been able to do for decades, like control a cursor in two dimensions, that actually, for those of us in the field, are extremely simple to do once you get any brain signal,” he told CNBC in an interview. earlier this month.
He said there is a lot of excitement around BCIs, but admitted there are many practical challenges to solve, such as how to interpret and analyze brain signals and make them useful. Pouratian said he believes transparency from both academia and the wider BCI industry about developments will be key to progress.
Neuralink began recruiting patients for its first human clinical trial in the fall after receiving approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to conduct the study in May 2023, according to suspension. In January, Musk said the company had implanted its device in a human for the first time and that the patient, now revealed to be Arbaugh, was “recovering well,” according to a post on X.
Aside from Musk’s posts, Neuralink has shared very few details about the scope or nature of its testing. As of Wednesday, the trial is not listed on the clinical trials.gov website, where most medical device companies are located. share information about their research to help inform the public and other health professionals about their ambitions.
It’s unclear how many patients are participating in Neuralink’s trial or what the trial is trying to show. The company will have to go through several rounds of safety and efficacy testing before it can receive the FDA’s final stamp of approval and go on the market.
Neuralink did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
There’s reason to be optimistic about Neuralink’s technology, said Dr. Marco Baptista, chief scientific officer of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, which provides resources for people with paralysis. He told CNBC in early March that BCI technology could have a meaningful impact on patients, but like all emerging devices, Neuralink’s system should be viewed with skepticism.
He said he would like to see more traditional scientific reports from Neuralink to learn more about its technology, for example. Neuralink is listed as an author on a white paper from 2019, according to PubMed.
“I hope that this information will start to come out through these mechanisms that are needed in science, and that is through peer-reviewed publications,” Baptista said. “That hasn’t happened yet. Other companies are doing it.”