Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink on Wednesday streamed live video of patients using its brain implants to move a mouse and play chess on a computer.
Noland Arbaugh, 29, was the first human patient to receive a Neuralink device. The company is developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) that aims to allow severely paralyzed patients to control external technology using only neural signals. Neuralink’s first product is called Telepathy, Musk said. post on his social media site X in January.
In a video broadcast on X on Wednesday, Arbaugh said he had a diving accident about eight years ago that left him a quadriplegic. He said the surgery to place the Neuralink implant, which required patients to remove part of their skull to insert electrodes into brain tissue, was “very easy.” He said he was discharged from the hospital the next day.
“It’s not perfect. I would say we ran into some issues,” Arbaugh said. “I don’t want you to think this is the end of the journey and there’s still a lot of work to do, but my life has already changed.”
A BCI is a system that decodes brain signals and translates them into commands for external technology. If these work properly, patients with severe degenerative diseases like ALS could eventually use these systems to mentally send messages or scroll through social media. You will be able to do this.
Several companies, including Paradromics, Synchron, Blackrock Neurotech, and Precision Neuroscience, are developing BCI systems with these capabilities, and many are implanting the devices in human patients. Neuralink is particularly well-known in this space, thanks in part to the high profile of Musk, who is also CEO. tesla And SpaceX.
In many ways, the capabilities Neuralink demonstrated in Wednesday’s video aren’t new. Dr. Nader Poulatian, director of neurosurgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center, said researchers have been developing and researching BCI technology for many years.
“There are things we’ve been able to do for decades, such as controlling a cursor in two dimensions. In fact, for those of us in the field, as soon as we can receive brain signals, we can do them.” It’s very easy to do,” he told CNBC in an interview earlier this month.
He said that while there is a lot of excitement around BCI, there are still many practical challenges to solve, such as how to interpret and analyze brain signals to make them useful. He said he believes transparency about progress from both academia and the broader BCI industry will be key to progress.
Neuralink began recruiting patients for its first in-human clinical trial in the fall after receiving approval to conduct the study from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May, according to people familiar with the matter. Blog post. According to a post on
Aside from Musk’s post, Neuralink has provided few details about the scope or nature of the trial. As of Wednesday, the trial was not listed on clinicaltrials.gov, a website where most medical device companies are registered. Information sharing Help inform their ambitions to the public and other medical professionals about their research.
It’s not clear how many patients are participating in the Neuralink trial or what the trial is intended to demonstrate. The company will need to undergo several rounds of safety and efficacy testing before it can get the FDA’s final seal of approval and go on the market.
Neuralink did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Dr. Marco Baptista, chief scientific officer of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which provides resources to people with paralysis, said there is reason to be hopeful about Neuralink’s technology. He told CNBC in early March that BCI technology has the potential to have a meaningful impact on patients, but as with all emerging devices, Neuralink’s system should be viewed with skepticism.
He said he would like to see more traditional scientific reports from Neuralink, for example, to learn more about Neuralink’s technology. According to Neuralink, Neuralink is listed as the author of one of his 2019 whitepapers. pub med.
“We hope that this information will start to come out through these mechanisms that science requires, through peer-reviewed publications,” he said. “That hasn’t happened yet. Other companies are doing it, too.”
