An experimental brain implant will soon be implanted in a second person, according to Elon Musk, co-founder of Neuralink.
IN video update on wednesdayMusk said the surgery is expected to take place “in the next week or so.” The company is making changes to the surgical procedure and device placement to avoid problems that occurred in its first participant, whose implant partially separated from his brain weeks after the surgery.
Neuralink is developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that uses a person’s brain signals to control an external device. Its first product, called Telepathy, aims to lend a hand paralyzed people operate a computer using only their thoughts. Musk said Neuralink working on a second productcalled Blindsight to provide artificial vision to blind people.
“You can think of the Neuralink device as a Fitbit or Apple Watch with little wires or electrodes,” Musk said in the video, which was livestreamed on his X social media platform. In the brief term, the Neuralink device is intended to lend a hand people with disabilities, but Musk said his long-term goal is to apply BCI technology “to mitigate the civilizational risks of AI through a closer symbiosis between human intelligence and digital intelligence.”
The company is currently conducting an early feasibility study to assess the safety and functionality of its device in people with paralysis. As part of the study, Noland Arbaugh became the first person to receive a Neuralink brain implant in January. Arbaugh is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a swimming accident in 2016.
The coin-sized Neuralink implant is placed in the skull and has 64 versatile wire strands thinner than a human hair that reach into brain tissue. Each strand contains 16 electrodes that collect signals of intended movement from neurons.
At first, the device worked as it should. Arbaugh was able to apply the cursor by simply thinking about it, allowing him to play video games, email friends and browse the Internet. But a few weeks after the surgery, the implant began to malfunction and Arbaugh lost control of the cursor.
IN Maybe a blog post On its website, Neuralink said a number of threads had withdrawn from Arbaugh’s brain, reducing the number of effective electrodes. In response, Neuralink modified its neural recording algorithm to be more sensitive and improved the way it translates neural signals into cursor movements.
Arbaugh is back using a computer with a brain, although Neuralink executives say only 15 percent of the implant’s threads are working. In an interview with WIRED, Arbaugh said the device has given him back a sense of independence.
Still, Neuralink is trying to avoid the same problems with a second study participant. “We really want to make sure we make as much progress as possible between each Neuralink patient,” Musk said Wednesday.
During a video update, company executives acknowledged that air was trapped in Arbaugh’s skull after the surgery, which may have contributed to the threads’ release. Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s chief neurosurgery officer, said the company is taking steps to eliminate that air pocket in a second volunteer. It also plans to implant the threads deeper into brain tissue and track the threads’ movement.
“You might think that the most obvious way to soften the threads that have been pulled out of the brain is to put them in deeper. We think so too, so we’re going to expand the range of depths at which we put the threads in,” MacDougall said.
In addition, the company’s surgeons plan to “sculpt the surface of the skull” to minimize the gap under the implant so that it adheres to the normal contour of the skull. This, MacDougall said, should “minimize the gap under the implant” and “bring it closer to the brain and eliminate some of the stress on the threads.”
Musk said he hopes to implant the Neuralink device in “high single digits” of study participants this year. (A Neuralink list on ClinicalTrials.gov (The company plans to include three people in the study.)
He added that Neuralink is working on a next-generation implant that has 128 strands, each with eight electrodes per strand, a change that he said would “potentially double the throughput if we’re precise with the strand placement.” Musk did not provide a timeline for when the device would be ready for human testing.