Musk’s Neuralink shows first patient playing chess with mind

ELON Musk’s Neuralink livestreamed an update with its first brain implant patient on Wednesday (Mar 20), showing a quadriplegic man who was able to play video games and online chess using his mind.

Neuralink is a brain technology startup founded by Musk. Its implant allows a patient to use their thoughts to control a computer. Musk has said that the company will start by working with patients who have severe physical limitations such as cervical spinal cord impairment or quadriplegia.

In the video on Wednesday, which was streamed on Musk’s social platform X, the patient, Noland Arbaugh, was able to use his computer to play chess and the game Civilization VI. “I had given up on playing that game,” he said.

“It has already changed my life,” Arbaugh said. “The surgery was super easy.”

Arbaugh, 29, said he sustained a spinal cord injury in a “freak diving accident” eight years ago. He also said he was released from the hospital a day after the Neuralink procedure in January, which went smoothly. He added that there was “still work to be done” to refine the technology.

Neuralink is not the only company working on brain devices that connect with computers. Modern demonstrations of cursor control by using thoughts have taken place in other humans with various types of implants, such as those deployed by the BrainGate consortium of research institutions and hospitals.

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However, the Neuralink device contains more electrodes than other devices, suggesting it may have more potential applications in future. The Neuralink technology works without needing a wired connection to external devices.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Musk hinted that the device may have the capability to restore vision. “Blindsight is the next product after Telepathy,” he wrote, referring to the name of the implant for paralysed patients.

“I’m happy for the individual that he’s been able to interface with a computer in a way he was not able to before the implant,” said Kip Allan Ludwig, co-director of the Wisconsin Institute for Translational Neuroengineering. “That is not a breakthrough compared to what others have shown previously, but it is certainly a good starting point.”

According to a Facebook page for Arbaugh, which has not been publicly updated since 2017, his accident took place at a children’s camp in June 2016. In 2017, he successfully raised US$10,000 via a GoFundMe campaign to purchase an accessible custom-built van. BLOOMBERG