Mind game! Musk’s brain chip helps paralysed man play chess
ELON MUSK’S brain implant company claims a chip has allowed a paralysed patient to play chess on a computer using only his mind.
Neuralink, owned by the Tesla billionaire, shared a video of one of its first patients playing the board game ‘telepathically’.
Musk claims the technology could one day enable the brain to communicate with paralysed parts of the body.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he wrote: ‘Long term, it is possible to shunt the signals from the brain motor cortex past the damaged part of the spine to enable people to walk again and use their arms normally.’
In a nine-minute live stream on X, Noland Arbaugh was shown using the Neuralink chip by moving the cursor on his laptop to play. Arbaugh, 29, who was paralysed from the neck down in a diving accident eight years ago, interacted with the program by imagining moving his arms. He received the chip implant in January.
Likening it to using ‘The Force’ from Star Wars, he said: ‘See that cursor on the screen? That’s all me... It’s all brain power.’
The chip works by embedding 64 threadlike electrodes that are able to record brain activity and transmit it to a computer.
Patients must have a small chunk of their skull removed so that a ‘sewing-machinelike’ robot surgeon can implant each thread. Afterwards, the robot surgeon stitches up the hole, leaving only a small scar.
Musk claims that patients do not need to go under general anaesthetic for the 30-minute operation and should be able to return home the same day.
Arbaugh said the surgery was ‘super easy’ and that there was ‘nothing to be afraid of’.