The wires attaching the first Neuralink patient’s brain to the implant in his skull have become “more or less very stable” after being detached months ago, the company announced Wednesday.
“Once you do the brain surgery, it takes a while for the tissues to come in and anchor the wires in place, and once that happens, everything was stable,” Neuralink CEO Dongjin “DJ” Seo said during a live stream late Wednesday said on Twitter/X.
Same day CEO Elon Musk said the company would soon test its pound-coin-sized implant and brain-computer interface, collectively called Telepathy, on a second patient. The unnamed patient’s surgery is planned for “the next week or so,” Musk said.
Neuralink, founded by Musk, said in May that a number of wires in the head of Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down, had pulled out of position. The company did not specify why the release occurred. Neuralink’s implant uses 64 wires to connect to the brain; only 15% of them worked after disconnection.
Air was trapped in Arbaugh’s head after the surgery, Neuralink executives said. In light of that and the promiscuity, the company will implement new risk mitigation measures, such as skull sculpting and reducing blood carbon dioxide concentration to normal levels in its future patients, company executives said during the live stream.
“In future implants, our plan is to very deliberately sculpt the surface of the skull to minimize the gap under the implant … which will place it closer to the brain and eliminate some of the stress on the wires,” Matthew MacDougall , Neuralink’s head of neurosurgery, said.
So far, Arbaugh, who lost the use of much of his body after a 2016 diving accident, is the only patient to receive the implant, but Musk said he hopes to have participants in the high single digits this year.
Neuralink is testing its implant to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone. The device works by using tiny wires, which are thinner than a human hair, to pick up signals from the brain and translate them into actions. The company published a video of Arbaugh using his implant to play online chess and move a computer mouse. After the release, he was no longer able to control the mouse, but functionality returned, executives said on the live stream.
Musk said during the live stream that the device does not damage the brain. The US Food and Drug Administration initially considered the device years ago, but finally gave the company the green light last year to begin human trials.
Neuralink is also working on a new device that it believes will require half the number of electrodes to be implanted in the brain to make it more efficient and powerful, the executives said. Musk said the company is working on another product called Blindsight that will allow the blind to see.
