Elon Musk's Neuralink Is Safe And Ready To Implant A Second Volunteer, Assures Company

Neuralink co-founder Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that a second person will soon receive the tech company’s experimental brain implant. In a video update, one of the richest men on the planet said the surgery is planned to take place “in the next week or so.”

In a wide-ranging discussion, Musk described the device’s capabilities and future possibilities, such as repairing paralysis and memory loss. “A way to think about the Neuralink device is kind of like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch with tiny wires or electrodes,” Musk said in the livestream on his social media platform, X.

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 capture signals from the brain and translate those into actions.

‘Very stable’

A company executive said the tiny wires of Neuralink’s brain chip implant used in the first participant in a trial run by the company have become “more or less very stable”. The company had in May said that several tiny wires inside the brain of Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a 2016 diving accident, had pulled out of position.

“Once you do the brain surgery it takes some time for the tissues to come in and anchor the threads in place, and once that happens, everything has been stable,” said Neuralink executive Dongjin “D.J.” Seo. Till Now, Arbaugh, based in Arizona, was the only patient to have received the implant, but Musk said he hopes to have participants in the high single digits this year.

The company is now taking risk mitigation measures such as skull sculpting and reducing carbon dioxide concentration in the blood to normal level in patients. “In upcoming implants, our plan is to sculpt the surface of the skull very intentionally to minimize the gap under the implant… that will put it closer to the brain and eliminate some of the tension on the threads,” Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s head of neurosurgery, said.

‘Doesn’t harm brain’

During the live stream, Musk said that the device doesn’t harm the brain. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in initially considering the device years ago, had raised safety concerns but ultimately granted the company a green light last year to begin human trials.

So far, the device has allowed Arbaugh to play video games, browse the internet and move a cursor on his laptop by thinking alone, according to the company’s blog posts and videos. 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.

(With agency inputs)