First human with Neuralink brain chip demonstrates moving cursor with thoughts | Top Vip News

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By Allie Griffin

The first human being to have a Neuralink computer chip surgically implanted in his brain demonstrated how he uses his thoughts to move a computer cursor across a screen to play online chess and turn a music stream on and off.

Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old man who is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a diving accident eight years ago, joined a livestream alongside a Neuralink engineer on X to show the public how the technology works. brain-computer interface.

“Everything is being done with my brain. If you can see the cursor moving across the screen, that’s me,” she said as the livestream showed his cursor moving through an online chess game. “It’s cool, huh?”

The chip contains 1,000 electrodes programmed to collect data on the brain’s neural activity and movement intention and then send that data to a Neuralink computer to decode it and transform thoughts into action.

Arbaugh explained that he simply imagines the cursor moving where he wants it to go and it does.

“Basically, it was like using the Force on the cursor and I could move it wherever I wanted. It would just look somewhere on the screen and move where I wanted it, which was such a wild experience the first time it happened,” she said, referencing “Star Wars.”

The quadriplegic became the first human test subject for the chip developed by the company owned by Elon Musk when a robot surgeon connected the implant to his brain in late January.

He said the surgery was “super easy” and he was released from the hospital a day later without any cognitive decline since.

“It’s crazy, it really is. It’s so good. “I’m very lucky to be a part of this,” she said. “Every day it seems like we are learning new things and I can’t describe how cool it is to be able to do this.”

Before receiving the chip, Arbaugh would need the help of another person to play online chess and video games like “Civilization VI.”

“Now I can literally just lie in bed and play to my heart’s content,” he said, at least until the battery on his rechargeable chip runs out.

The short 9-minute video stream posted to Neuralink’s X account is the closest look the human technology startup has shared with the public. The company, founded in 2016, has kept most information about its technology and human trials secret, prompting calls for greater transparency.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to human trials of the brain chip last year after the company conducted hundreds of tests on animals, facing backlash from rights groups in the process. of the animals.

Neuralink has not revealed how many people will be enrolled in the six-year trial or where the trials will take place. Nor has he registered his study on a government website that records medical trials with human test subjects. according to wiring.

For her part, Arbaugh said she signed up to try the implant because “I wanted to be a part of something that I feel is going to change the world.”

But he admitted that being the first human being to have the chip implanted in his brain was not without challenges, without giving further details.

“Is not perfect. I would say we have run into some problems,” she told those watching the live broadcast. “I don’t want people to think this is the end of the journey. There is much work to be done. But it has already changed my life.”