The first patient to have a computer chip implanted in the brain by Tesla boss Elon Musk’s start-up Neuralink is apparently making progress in controlling a computer mouse with his thoughts. The 29-year-old patient, who is paralyzed below the shoulder after a diving accident, was seen playing chess online on his laptop in a livestream on Musk’s social media platform X on Wednesday.
“The surgery was super easy,” the patient said in the video. He was discharged from the hospital one day after implantation and has no cognitive impairment. “I don’t want people to think this is the end of the journey. There is still a lot to do, but it has already changed my life,” he said, citing some of the problems with the new technology.
In February, Musk announced that the operation was successful and that the patient was able to move a mouse across the screen just by thinking.
“Still at a very early stage”
What Neuralink has demonstrated is not a “breakthrough,” says Kip Ludwig, former program director for neurotechnology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “We are still in the very early stages post-implantation, and both Neuralink and the subjects still have a lot to learn to maximize the amount of information available for monitoring,” he added.
Still, being able to interact with a computer in a way that was not possible for them before the implant is a good starting point and a positive development for patients.
Less than a month before the brain implants were approved for human testing, inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discovered problems with Neuralink’s data and quality control of animal testing. Neuralink did not respond to questions about the FDA inspection at the time.
Source: Krone
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