Elon Musk's startup Neuralink has successfully implanted a chip in a second patient that is designed to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices with just a thought.
This is reported by Reuters.
Musk reported that the second patient also had a spinal cord injury. According to him, the 400 electrodes of the implant in the brain of the second patient are working. The Neuralink website states that their implant has 1,024 electrodes.
«I don't mean to jinx it, but the second implant seems to have gone extremely well. (He submits – ed.) a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It's working very well,'' Musk told host Lex Friedman during the podcast.
Musk did not say when Neuralink operated on the second patient. However, he said he expects Neuralink to provide the implants to eight more patients this year as part of clinical trials.
The first patient, Noland Arbo, who suffered a spinal cord injury while diving, was also interviewed on the podcast . According to Arbo, with the implant, he can now simply think about what he wants to happen on the computer screen, and the device does it. Currently, Arbo can control the cursor using only thoughts, “when only about 10-15% of the electrodes are working,” Musk said in the podcast.
As Ukrinform reported, at the end of January, Elon Musk said that the company Neuralink has successfully implanted a chip into the human brain for the first time.
Neuralink has developed a brain implant designed to help people use neural signals to control external technology. The company aims to restore people's lost abilities, such as vision, motor skills, and speech.