In a livestream, Neuralink showed Noland Arbaugh, a person with quadriplegia, playing chess on a laptop. The first patient to receive a brain implant from the company, in a surgery performed in January, Arbaugh says that all you have to do is look somewhere on the screen to move the cursor there.
“It’s not perfect. I would say that we faced some problems,” he says. “There’s still a lot of work ahead of me, but it’s already changed my life. I feel like it’s going to change the world.” Arbaugh says he was also able to play Civilization VI for eight hours, only having to stop to recharge the implant. He described the process as using the Force from the Star Wars films.
The broadcast was made by Neuralink’s account on the social network X (formerly Twitter). Elon Musk, the company’s co-founder, reposted the video, saying that it is possible to “control a computer and play video games through thoughts alone. Still, he considers it a “good starting point.”
“We are still in the early days post-implant, and it will take a lot of learning on the part of Neuralink and the patient to maximize the amount of control information that can be achieved,” he told Reuters.
The Wall Street Journal also points out that controlling a computer with a brain implant is nothing new—it was done 20 years ago. Even so, there are notable advances: data transmission did not require wires, and the patient was able to talk while controlling the computer.
In an interview with Folha de S.Paulo in January, scientist Miguel Nicolelis, professor emeritus at Duke University (USA), said that what Neuralink does is “just smoke.” Max Hodak and Tim Hanson, co-founders of Neuralink, were students of Nicolelis. Both are no longer with the company.
In the scientist’s assessment, patients with paralysis do not want to undergo neurosurgery and its risks, and it is possible to treat these cases with non-invasive techniques.
Neuralink isn’t the only company exploring the field of brain-machine interfaces. Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, Paradromics, and Blackrock Neurotech are some names in the field.
