How Elon Musk Wants to Wire the Human Brain, and the Rivals Racing to Beat Him
Neuralink’s brain implant allowed a patient to move a cursor with his brain and play videogames
In March, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink introduced its first human trial participant, a quadriplegic who showed the world how he could control a computer cursor with just his thoughts.
Neuralink’s fully implantable, wireless device—if it proves safe during clinical trials—would be a major upgrade on older technology, returning function to thousands of disabled individuals who have lost it.
Neuralink has raised over $600 million to invest in research. It recently got a green light from the Food and Drug Administration to implant a second trial participant with its device, which the company hopes to do shortly, Elon Musk said during a Neuralink presentation last month. The go-ahead demonstrates that the agency is comfortable with fixes Neuralink has proposed for a problem with the first participant’s implant.
That participant, Noland Arbaugh, noticed about a month after his January surgery that the performance of his Neuralink implant had declined. He was no longer able to move and click a virtual mouse as effectively as he had just days after the surgery. Some of the tiny threads that had been inserted in Arbaugh’s brain had retracted. Enough remained in place that the company was able to return Arbaugh’s capabilities to him after some tweaks to its algorithms.
One fix the company has proposed for patients after Arbaugh is to insert the threads deeper into the motor cortex, up to about 7 millimeters instead of about 3 to 4 millimeters for Arbaugh. Musk said during last month’s presentation that Neuralink hopes to implant a “high single digit” number of participants with its device this year and thousands within a few years.