Neuralink successfully implants its chip into a second patient's brain
'I don't want to jinx it but it seems to have gone extremely well,' Elon Musk said.
Neuralink's brain chip has been implanted into a second patient as part of early human trials, Elon Musk told podcast host Lex Fridman on Saturday. The company hasn't disclosed when the surgery took place or the name of the recipient, according to Reuters.
Musk said 400 of the electrodes on the second patient's brain are working out of 1,024 implanted. "I don't want to jinx it but it seems to have gone extremely well," he said. "There's a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It's working very well."
The device allows patients with spinal cord injuries to play video games, use the internet and control electronic devices using their thoughts alone. In May, the company announced that it was "accepting applications for the second participant" in trials following FDA approval.
The original Neuralink implant patient, Nolan Arbaugh, described the surgery as "super easy." In a demo, the company showed how Arbaugh was able to move a cursor around the screen of a laptop, pause an on-screen music device and play chess and Civilization VI.
Arbaugh himself participated in the marathon podcast with Musk and Fridman. He said that the device allows him to make anything happen on a computer screen just by thinking it, helping reduce his reliance on caregivers.
However, problems cropped up shortly after his surgery when some of electrodes retracted from his brain. The issue was partly rectified later on by modifying the algorithm to make the implants more sensitive. Neuralink told the FDA that in a second procedure, it would place the implant’s threads deeper into the patient’s brain to prevent them from moving as much as they did in Arbaugh’s case.
Neuralink previously tested its implant in animals, including chimps, and some of those testing practices have been the subject of federal investigations.
Despite those issues, the company said it had over 1,000 volunteers for its second surgical trial. Musk said he expects Neuralink to implant its chips in up to eight more patients by the end of 2024.