Elon Musk shares progress of second Neuralink implant patient. He even plays Counter-Strike.

At the end of January, Elon Musk announced that Neuralink had successfully completed the installation of its first implant in the human brain. A few months later, we were able to learn about the progress of the first patient, Noland Arbo, who, as of early August, is no longer alone. There are currently two people with a Neuralink implant: Noland and Alex. The latter has only had the implant for a few weeks, and today we were finally able to learn his status.

Have a good recovery. Alex, who suffered a spinal cord injury similar to the first patient, was discharged the day after surgery and had a “quiet” recovery, Neuralink explained. He can now use 3D design programs and even play video games like Counter-Strike 2.

five minutes. That’s how long it took Alex to start controlling the cursor with his mind, according to Elon Musk’s company. “Within a few hours, he was able to surpass the maximum speed and accuracy he had achieved with any other assistive technology in completing our Webgrid challenge.” It’s a game where you tap blue squares to measure your cursor control accuracy.

Alex is a producer. Before the injury, the patient worked as an auto mechanic and knows how to use programs like Fusion 360. According to Neuralink, in just two days, Alex was able to use the program and design a custom holder for the implant’s charger, which was then printed and integrated.

This is an interesting use case, since 3D design requires a fairly wide range of tools and gestures that we typically do with a mouse and a few buttons. So, Neuralink is working to “improve your productivity with Link by assigning intended movements to different types of mouse clicks,” so Alex can do things like swipe, pinch, zoom, or drag.

Let’s talk about gamesThe patient was already able to play games like Counter-Strike 2 using a Quadstick (an adapted controller that is used with the mouth and lips by pressing, blowing and sucking). The problem is that this controller does not allow for basic actions in shooters, such as moving the cursor and the character at the same time. Thanks to the implant, Alex can combine the Quadstick with his mind to aim and move at the same time.

About the thread recall. Along with Neuralink’s first patient, the first connectivity issues emerged. Put simply, some of the 64 wires connecting the chip’s 1,024 electrodes to the cranial cortex had become disconnected due to an air pocket inside the skull, a condition known as pneumocephalus. This is usually asymptomatic but causes performance issues. However, the company claims that the wires have stabilized and performance has been restored.

In the case of the second implant, the team responsible for the surgery took a number of measures, “including reducing brain movement during surgery and reducing the gap between the implant and the brain surface.” The result was positive: “It is encouraging that we did not observe any thread retraction in our second participant,” the company says.

Next steps. As for the future, Neuralink says it is working on decoding multiple clicks and motion intents, such as typing (which should increase the speed of interaction). Additionally, they plan to make the implant so that the patient can interact with the physical world, thereby allowing “users to feed themselves and move more independently by controlling a robotic arm or wheelchair.”

Cover image | Neuralink

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