READ: Elon Musk’s Neuralink Brain Implant Suffers Setback in First Human Trial
Who could have predicted it?! Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant device recently ran into some hiccups during its very first human trial. The Neuralink company, which is dabbling in the futuristic art of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), aims to let people control gadgets with their grey matter alone. Their device, aptly named the Link, brags about being able to tap into the brain's signals through 1,024 electrodes spread across 64 ultra-fine threads.
The human guinea pig for this high-tech experiment was 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, who had the Link implanted in January. Arbaugh previously suffered a spinal cord injury that left him quadripeligic, and was implanted with the Neuralink device to help him regain digital automony. The initial procedure was broadcast live and seemed to go off without a hitch at the time. Unfortunately several weeks after the procedure, some of the Link’s threads — which are thinner than a human hair — began to retract from Arbaugh’s brain. As a result, fewer electrodes were left in place to do their job, throwing a wrench into the works for measuring the device’s performance.
Neuralink kept mum on exactly how many threads retracted from Arbaugh’s brain, and they were a bit slow in responding to the media buzz. When pressed by inquiries, they admitted to tweaking their recording algorithms and sprucing up the user interface to mitigate the issue. They even pondered yanking the implant out, but since it doesn’t seem to be posing a direct threat to Noland’s critical cranial organ, they let it remain.
Despite the slight snag, Noland is quite the trooper, using the BCI for up to 10 hours a day on weekends, dubbing the experience a "luxury overload" and a way to "reconnect with the world." Still, it’s early days, and Neuralink has a marathon of safety and efficacy tests to sprint through before they can get the FDA’s thumbs up to bring this tech to the brains of the masses.
