In an interview with the Journal, Neuralink's first patient, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, opened up about the roller-coaster experience. "I was on such a high and then to be brought down that low. It was very, very hard," Arbaugh said. "I cried." He initially asked if Neuralink would perform another surgery to fix or replace the implant, but the company declined, telling him it wanted to wait for more information.
Neuralink isn’t just treating humans like guinea pigs, they’re treating them like disposable guinea pigs.
Neuralink, owned by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, believes it can prevent thread movement in the next patient by simply implanting the fine wires deeper into brain tissue. The company is planning on—and the FDA has reportedly signed off on—implanting the threads 8 millimeters into the brain of the second trial participant rather than the 3 mm to 5 mm depth used in Arbaugh's implantation.
Yeah, "just shove it in deeper" sounds like a brilliant plan.
Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but if I was that second patient I wouldn't exactly be feeling super confident about their approach.
All hardware becomes legacy hardware in time. Even if we assume they're eventually able to deliver on all those great big shiny promises, I'd rather not have to schedule an outpatient surgery just to keep up on emails. Pocket touchscreens being practically mandatory is bad enough...
Let's wait until Elon puts a link into his own brain, then we can decide if that thing is good or bad. And you can be sure that he would get any and all follow up procedures he needs ...
I'm not sure wtf they expected to happen when they aren't addressing the core problem with neural interfaces. Fix scar tissue buildup around the electrodes or GTFO
Only 15 percent of the electrode-bearing threads implanted in the brain of Neuralink's first human brain-chip patient continue to work properly, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The adjustments were effective enough to regain and then exceed performance on at least one metric—the bits-per-second (BPS) rate used to measure how quickly and accurately a patient with an implant can control a computer cursor.
He initially asked if Neuralink would perform another surgery to fix or replace the implant, but the company declined, telling him it wanted to wait for more information.
The Journal's report adds more detail about the thread retraction as Neuralink gears up to surgically implant its chip into a second trial participant.
According to the report, the company hopes to perform the second surgery sometime in June and has gained a green light to do so from the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees clinical trials.
Neuralink, owned by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, believes it can prevent thread movement in the next patient by simply implanting the fine wires deeper into brain tissue.
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