Neuralink shows a video of a patient chess player involving a brain implant

Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink broadcast live video on Wednesday showing a patient using the company’s brain implant to move a mouse and play chess on a computer.

Noland Arbaugh, 29, is the first human patient ever to have the Neuralink device implanted. The company is developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that aims to help severely paralyzed patients control external technology using only neural signals. Neuralink’s first product is called Telepathy, Musk said in post on his social media site X in January.

In Wednesday’s video, which aired on X, Arbaugh said he became a quadriplegic after a diving accident about eight years ago. He said the surgery to place the Neuralink implant, which requires patients to remove part of their skull to insert electrodes into brain tissue, was “super easy”. He was released from the hospital the next day, he said.

“It’s not perfect, I would say we ran into some issues,” Arbaugh said. “I don’t want people to think this is the end of the journey, there’s still a lot of work to do, but it’s already changed my life.”

A BCI is a system that deciphers brain signals and translates them into commands for external technology. If the system functions properly, patients with severe degenerative diseases like ALS could eventually send text messages or scroll through social media with their minds.

Several companies such as Paradromics, Synchron, Blackrock Neurotech, and Precision Neuroscience have developed BCI systems with these capabilities, and many have also implanted devices in human patients. Neuralink is particularly well-known in the field due to the high profile of Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

In many ways, the capabilities Neuralink demonstrated in its video Wednesday aren’t new. Dr. Nader Pouratian, chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center, said researchers have been developing and studying BCI technology for years.

“There are things that we’ve been able to do for decades, like controlling a cursor in two dimensions, that actually for those of us in the field are extremely easy to do as soon as you can get some brain signal” , he told CNBC in an interview earlier this month.

He said there is a lot of excitement around BCI, but acknowledged there are numerous practical challenges to be solved, such as how to interpret and analyze brain signals and make them useful. Pouratian said he thinks transparency from both academia and the broader BCI industry about progress will be key to moving forward.

Neuralink began recruiting patients for its first human clinical trial in the fall after receiving approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct the study in May 2023, according to a blog post. In January, Musk said the company had implanted its device in a human for the first time and that the patient, now revealed to be Arbaugh, was “recovering well,” according to an X post.

Aside from Musk’s posts, Neuralink has shared very few details about the scope or nature of its trial. As of Wednesday, the trial was not listed on the Clinicaltrials.gov website, where most medical device companies are located share information for their research to help inform the public and other health professionals about their ambitions.

It is not clear how many patients are participating in the Neuralink trial or what the trial is trying to demonstrate. The company will have to go through several rounds of safety and efficacy testing before it gets the FDA’s final stamp of approval and goes on the market.

Neuralink did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

There’s reason to be hopeful about Neuralink’s technology, said Dr. Marco Baptista, chief scientific officer of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, which provides resources to people who have been paralyzed. He told CNBC in early March that BCI technology could have a significant impact on patients, but like all emerging devices, Neuralink’s system should be viewed with skepticism.

He said he would like to see more traditional scientific reports from Neuralink to learn more about its technology, for example. Neuralink is listed as the author of one 2019 white paper, according to PubMed.

“My hope is that this information will start to come out through these mechanisms that are necessary in science, and that is through peer-reviewed publications,” Baptista said. “That hasn’t happened yet. Other companies are doing it.”