Brain implant
Electrodes came off: Elon Musk’s Neuralink admits problem with first brain chip
Elon Musk apparently has trouble not only with Tesla, but also with his medical company Neuralink
© Kirsty Wigglesworth / DPA
Elon Musk’s medical technology company Neuralink inserted its brain chip into a human for the first time in January. It is only now becoming known that complications arose shortly afterwards.
Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink has struggled with a problem with its first patient. In the weeks after the operation in January, some of the electrodes detached from the man’s brain, Neuralink admitted in a statement Blog entry on Wednesday. However, this was compensated for by adapting the software. Neuralink only made the problem public after the Wall Street Journal found out about it and asked the company.
Neuralink is intended to help people with spinal cord injury
Neuralink’s implant is intended to make it possible to operate a smartphone – and other technology – using your thoughts. The company received permission in May 2023 to use the flat and round implant on people in a clinical study. The technology had previously been tested on monkeys. The implant has 1,024 electrodes that a robot connects to the brain using an extremely fine needle. For the clinical trial, Neuralink looked for patients with quadriplegia – a paraplegia that affects the legs and arms.
When people start to move, a certain area of the brain becomes active. The electrodes pick up these signals. It should be enough to imagine a movement in order to operate a cursor on the computer. According to the company, the first patient with the Neuralink implant will be able to surf the Internet, play chess and the video game “Mario Kart,” among other things.
Because of the detached electrodes, the precision and speed of cursor operation initially decreased, Neuralink stated. In response, the algorithm for detecting brain activity has been made more sensitive and the technology that translates it into cursor movements has been improved. After the software adjustment, the accuracy values were higher than before, it said in the blog entry.
Elon Musk’s medical company is under regulatory supervision
Neuralink did not provide any information about the reasons for the electrodes being removed. According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the company’s theories was that air may have remained in the skull after the operation. The study is being overseen by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Research into similar types of brain-computer interfaces has been going on for years and some people have already had various implants inserted. Neuralink also has several competitors who also want to use the technology commercially.