Elon Musk's startup Neuralink live-streamed a video on Wednesday showing a patient using the company's brain implant to move a mouse and play chess on a computer.
Noland Arbaugh, 29, is the first human patient ever to be implanted with a Neuralink device. The company is developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that aims to help patients with severe paralysis control external technologies using only nerve signals. Neuralink's first product is called Telepathy, Musk said in a post on his social media site X in January.
In Wednesday's video, which aired on Channel X, Arbaugh said he became a quadriplegic after a diving accident about eight years ago. He said the surgery to get the Neuralink implant, which requires patients to remove part of their skull to insert electrodes into brain tissue, was “very easy.” He added that he was released from the hospital the next day.
“It's not perfect, I would say we've had some problems,” Arbault said. “I don't want people to think this is the end of the journey. There's still a lot of work to do, but it really changed my life.”
BCI is a system that decodes brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies. If the system works properly, patients with severe degenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis could eventually text or browse social media with their minds.
Several companies, such as Paradromics, Synchron, Blackrock Neurotech, and Precision Neuroscience, have developed BCI systems with these capabilities, and several have also implanted the devices in human patients. Neuralink is particularly popular in this space due to the high profile of Musk, who is also the CEO of Neuralink. Tesla And SpaceX.
In many ways, the capabilities Neuralink demonstrated in its video on Wednesday are nothing new. Researchers have been developing and studying BCI technology for years, said Dr. Nader Pouratian, chief of neurosurgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
“There are things we've been able to do for decades, like controlling a 2D cursor, which actually, for those of us who work in this field, is very easy to do once you can get any brain signal,” he told CNBC in an interview. I performed with him earlier this month.
He said there was a lot of excitement around BCIs, but acknowledged there were a host of practical challenges to solve, such as how to interpret and analyze brain signals and make them useful. Pouratian said he believes transparency from both academia and the broader BCI industry about developments will be key to progress.
Neuralink began recruiting patients for its first human clinical trial in the fall after receiving FDA approval to conduct the study in May 2023, according to a blog post. In January, Musk said the company had implanted its device in a human for the first time, and that the patient, now found to be Arbo, was “recovering well,” according to a post on X.
Aside from Musk's posts, Neuralink has shared very few details about the scope or nature of its experiment. As of Wednesday, the trial was not listed on the website clinicaltrials.gov, the place where most medical device companies share information about their research to help inform the public and other health care professionals about their ambitions.
It's not clear how many patients are participating in the Neuralink trial, or what the trial is trying to prove. The company will have to conduct several rounds of safety and effectiveness testing before it can get the final stamp of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and go to market.
Neuralink did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.
Dr. Marco Baptista, chief scientific officer at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which provides resources for people who have been paralyzed, said there is reason to be optimistic about Neuralink's technology. He told CNBC in early March that BCI technology could have a beneficial effect on patients, but like all emerging devices, the Neuralink system should be viewed with skepticism.
He said he would like to see more traditional scientific reports from Neuralink to learn more about its technology, for example. Neuralink is listed as an author on one white paper as of 2019, according to PubMed.
“I hope that this information will start to emerge through these mechanisms that are needed in science, through peer-reviewed publications,” Baptista said. “That hasn't happened yet. Other companies are doing it.”
