100 days later, since January 29, 2024, Nolan Arbaugh, a 29-year-old former American athlete and the first subject to have a brain chip implanted by Elon Musk’s start-up, Neuralink, finally gives his news about the changes taking place in him.
The interesting, but not so crazy, project of South African businessman Elon Musk seems to be bearing fruit.
Indeed, Nolan Arbaugh, the 29-year-old former American athlete, who unfortunately became quadriplegic (paralysis caused by lesions in the spinal cord) following a road accident, is very happy with the miraculous effects that brings him the brain implant which was installed on January 29, by the start-up, Neuralink. “You give me too much, it’s like luxury overload, I haven’t been able to do these things for 8 years, and now I don’t even know where to start and where to allocate my attention,” explains Noland Arbaugh.
According to the American company, “the operation went extremely well.” Since then, the patient’s progress has been revealed, and he has, for example, been able to manipulate a mouse with his mind, then play chess, and finally Mario Kart against a Neuralink staff member. Mr. Arbaugh can also lie in bed and use his implant without any assistance, whereas until now he had to ask for assistance to even sit up. “It allows me to live at my own pace, without needing someone to help me throughout the day,” he continues.
But placing the implant was only the first step, since the patient now collaborates with the researchers up to 35 hours per week. The rest of the time, he uses the implant for “personal use,” the company reveals. The data collected in this way makes it possible to evaluate the performance of the implant. This also made it possible, for example, to note that in the weeks following the operation, “a certain number of wires retracted in the brain, leading to a clear reduction in the number of effective electrodes”. To compensate, the algorithm was therefore modified so that it was more sensitive to certain signals.
Neuralink’s medium-term objective is to “develop electronic chips implanted in our brains in such a way as to increase our intellectual capacity and our memory to allow us to fight, to be competitive in the face of artificial intelligence”, once noted Laurent Alexandre, essayist, high-tech specialist and author of numerous works.
