Elon Musk said during a livestream on X that the Neuralink device does not harm the brain.
The small wires of Neuralink’s brain chip implant used in the first trial participant from Elon Musk’s company have become “more or less very stable,” a company executive said Wednesday.
The company had said in May that several small wires in the brain of Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down as a result of a diving accident in 2016, had been pulled out of position.
“Once you do the brain surgery, it takes some time for the tissues to come in and anchor the wires in place, and once that happens, everything is stable,” says Dongjin “DJ” Seo, director of Neuralink.
So far, Arizona-based Arbaugh has been the only patient to receive the implant, but Musk said he hopes to have participants in the high single digits this year.
The company is now taking risk mitigation measures such as sculpting skulls and lowering blood carbon dioxide to normal levels in patients, company executives said in a livestream on social media platform X.
“For upcoming implants, our plan is to very deliberately shape the surface of the skull to minimize the gap under the implant… bringing it closer to the brain and eliminating some of the tension on the wires,” says Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s chief of neurosurgery, said.
Neuralink is testing its implant to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone. The device uses tiny wires, thinner than a human hair, to receive signals from the brain and translate them into actions such as moving a mouse cursor on a computer screen.
Musk said during the livestream that the device does not harm the brain. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raised safety concerns when it initially considered the device years ago, but ultimately gave the company the green light to begin human trials last year.
So far, the device has allowed Arbaugh to play video games, surf the Internet and move a cursor on his laptop just by thinking, according to the company’s blog posts and videos.
Neuralink is also working on a new device that it believes will require half the number of electrodes implanted in the brain to make it more efficient and powerful, executives said.
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