Next Neuralink Brain Implant Coming Soon, Says Musk

Elon Musk has indicated that Neuralink will soon make a brain implant in a second patient, despite an implant malfunction with the first patient.

During a livestream on Wednesday, Elon Musk said that Neuralink is hoping to implant its second human patient within “the next week or so.”

Neuralink had been handed the official go-ahead in September 2023 to begin recruitment for a human subject, and in January 2024 it had implanted a test device in its first patient.

Implant malfunction

In February 2024 the firm revealed its first implant patient could control a computer mouse with his thoughts.

Then in March the patient was revealed to be Noland Arbaugh, aged 29, who is a quadriplegic after he was paralysed below the shoulders after a diving accident in 2016.

Neuralink livestreamed a video of Arbaugh using his mind to play online chess. The implant has also allowed Arbaugh to play video games, use the internet, as well as allowing him to move a computer cursor with his thoughts.

But in May Neuralink revealed that Arbaugh’s implant had in the weeks following its first in-human procedure developed a malfunction, but was still working.

Neuralink said that a number of threads had retracted from Arbaugh’s brain. This meant there were fewer effective electrodes, which inhibited the company’s ability to measure the Link’s speed and accuracy.

In response to this change, Neuralink modified the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to neural population signals to enable the device to keep working.

The company had considered removing the implant, but the problem hasn’t posed a direct risk to the patient’s health and safety, so the decision was to made not to operate.

Later in May Neuralink said it was seeking three patients for trials of a device designed to allow paralysed people to control digital devices through their thoughts.

Second patient

Now Elon Musk during a livestream event has indicated a second implant is expected shortly.

He said that Neuralink hopes to implant its system in a second human patient within “the next week or so.”

Neuralink’s first system, called Telepathy, involves 64 “threads” that are inserted directly into the brain. The threads are thinner than a human hair and record neural signals through 1,024 electrodes, according to Neuralink’s website.

And in an update about the implant in Noland Arbaugh’s brain, executives said Wednesday that only around 15 percent of the implant’s channels are working.

Implant changes

Executives also said the company is making changes to address the hardware problems it encountered with Noland Arbaugh’s implant.

For upcoming implants, the company said it is working to mitigate retraction and measure it more closely. Neuralink president DJ Seo said one way it plans to make changes is by sculpting the surface of the skull to minimise the gap under the implant.

Neuralink also plans to insert some threads deeper into the brain tissue and track how much movement occurs, according to the company livestream.

During the livestream, Musk also said the company is hoping to implant its device in the “high single digits” of patients this year, although he didn’t expand on this.

Playing catch up

Neuralink is competing with Synchron (backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos), which had received US regulatory clearance for human trials back in 2021 and had already completed studies in four people in Australia.

That company’s device has also allowed paralysed people to text and type by thinking alone.

In September 2023 it was revealed that Synchron brain-computer interface had been implanted in first six US patients.