Neuralink’s first user talks about his new sense of independence

First recipient of Musk’s Neuralink device is now playing games, answering emails, and watching videos by using his brain. Noland Arbaugh,after becoming paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury, was allowed to partake in the clinical trial for Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, reports Wired.

When he first heard about the implant, Arbauch was ecstatic. “It was very cool to see the richest man in the world, possibly one of the most powerful men in the world, taking an interest — you just don’t see this kind of funding go into things for handicapped people,” he told Wired.

How does it work? The experimental device decodes Arbaugh’s intended movement signals from his brain and translates them into computer commands, which is much more efficient than the mouth-held stick he had been using to operate an iPad.

A taste of independence. Like most quadriplegics, Arbaugh required assistance to sit up and be given a stick to put in his mouth to use an iPad. Now, he just thinks that the cursor should move on his laptop screen, and it jumps to life.

Can anyone get it? Arbauch had to go through extensive medical screenings, hours of tests, psychoanalysis, and memory tests to have a clear view of where his brain function was before the procedure. He was told that if at any point he did not meet the criteria they needed, then they would not be able to give him the implant.

Arbauch thought twice about being the first recipient of the implant. “I thought maybe someone else should get it first, and I’ll get the better version,” he said. He was concerned about the risk of losing brain function after the Neuralink was surgically installed. However, he told Wired that he “had complete faith in Neuralink.”

The Neuralink worked immediately. Arbaugh could see the signals that the implant was picking up from his brain immediately after the surgery. After some calibration and body mapping to check which brain signals were strongest, he was on cursor control to eventually set the human record for cursor control with a BCI. At the moment, the commands are received on a MacBook, but he’s excited to use the same ones on a mobile device, Arbaugh shares in his interview with the online digest.

There are some hiccups. During this clinical trial, Neuralink reported that some threads retracted from Arbauch’s brain a few weeks after the surgery which resulted in a decrease in effective electrodes. He explains: “I could tell right away that something was wrong. I just started losing control of the cursor.” The team at Neuralink ended up tweaking the software, aptly named Telepathy, and fixed the issue two weeks later.