In late January, Neuralink founder Elon Musk announced that the company had successfully implanted its first brain implant in a human. Months later, we learned about the progress of the first patient, Noland Arbaugh, who’s no longer alone as of early August. Another patient, Alex, received his Neuralink implant just a few weeks ago. This week, Neuralink and Musk gave an update about Alex's condition.
A smooth recovery. According to Neuralink, doctors released Alex, who has a spinal cord injury similar to that of the first patient, the day after surgery, and his recovery has been “smooth.” He can now use 3D design programs and play video games like Counter-Strike 2.
Five minutes. That’s how long Musk’s company says it took Alex to control the cursor with his mind. “Within a few hours, he was able to surpass the maximum speed and accuracy he’d achieved with any other assistive technology on our Webgrid task,” Neuralink explained. This game involves clicking on blue squares to measure cursor accuracy.
To the right of Alex’s laptop is a 3D-printed charger mount that he designed using his implant. Imagen | Neuralink
Alex is a maker. Before his injury, the patient worked as an automotive technician and knew how to use programs such as Fusion 360. According to Neuralink, Alex could use the program to design, print, and integrate customized support for the implant charger in just two days.
This is an interesting use case because designing in 3D requires a wide range of tools and gestures that we usually do with a mouse and a few buttons. Neuralink is working to “increase his productivity with the Link by mapping intended movements to different types of mouse clicks,” so Alex can swipe, zoom in, zoom out, or drag.
Let’s talk about gaming. The patient has been able to play games such as Counter-Strike 2 using a QuadStick, an adapted controller meant to be used with the mouth and lips by pressing, blowing, and sucking. The problem is that this controller doesn’t allow him to do something that's basic in shooters, such as simultaneously moving the cursor and the character. Due to the implant, Alex can combine the QuadStick with his mind to aim and move at the same time.
Thread retractions. The connectivity problems popped up with the first Neuralink patient. In short, some of the 64 threads that connect the chip’s 1,024 electrodes to the cortex of the skull had become detached due to an air pocket inside the skull, a phenomenon known as pneumocephalus. This issue is usually asymptomatic but causes performance problems. However, the company claims that the threads have stabilized and performance has recovered.
The surgical team took several measures to prevent this from happening with the second patient, “including reducing brain motion during the surgery and reducing the gap between the implant and the surface of the brain.” The result appears positive: “Promisingly, we have observed no thread retraction in our second participant,” the company said.
Next steps. As for the future, Neuralink states it’s working on decoding multiple clicks and movement intentions, such as text entry, which should increase interaction speed. It also plans to enable the implant to interact with the physical world, allowing “users to feed themselves and move more independently by controlling a robotic arm or their wheelchair.”
This article was written by Jose García and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Image | Neuralink
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