Elon Musk’s Neuralink has successfully restored the functionality of a paralyzed man, by way of his thoughts after the company successfully implanted one of its wireless brain chips in a human for the first time.
The brain-chip company had its first patient during a live stream on X moving a cursor on a computer using the implanted device and playing a video game – Civilization VI for eight minutes.
The test patient was Mr Arbaugh, a man who was paralysed below the shoulders after a diving accident.
“The surgery was super easy,” Mr Arbaugh. He, however, noted that they encountered some issues.
The Neuralink device is about the size of a coin and is inserted into the skull, with microscopic wires that can read neuron activity and beam back a wireless signal to a receiving unit.
An electrical impulse is generated and sent from one neuron to another every time we want to move, feel, or think. The human brain itself houses about 86 billion neurons nerve cells
The Neuralink brain chip works by detecting those signals.
The company which claimed to have successfully run trials in pigs and monkeys was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May 2023, to test the chip on humans.
