Neurotechnology company Neuralink and its co-founder Musk revealed yesterday (11) that the company will conduct a second human trial next week and continue to improve and solve the "implant line retraction" faced by the first human trial patient Noland Arbaugh. hardware issues.
What is Neuralink?
As a neurotech startup focused on creating brain-computer interfaces (BCI), Neuralink aims to use this breakthrough technology to help patients with paralysis and disability.
According to the website, its first product is called "Telepathy". It consists of 64 extremely thin and flexible lines and 1,024 electrodes. It is implanted in the brain area that controls movement and serves as a recording and transmission device to record the patient's thoughts. Translated into digital motion.
Last May, the company announced it had received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct a first-in-human clinical study.
(Neuralink, a neurotechnology company, has been approved by the FDA to conduct its first human clinical study, and Musk will personally implant it in the future)
Neuralink to conduct second human trial
Musk said in a live broadcast with Neuralink executives yesterday that chip implant surgeries will be performed on more patients this year, but did not disclose the specific time and number of patients.
At the same time, Neuralink executives also stated that they are correcting the "hardware problem" of the first subject Noland Arbaugh, including adjusting the skull surface to reduce the gap under the implant:
Only about 15 percent of Noland's implant is functioning properly, but he still uses the BCI to watch movies, read, and play other video games, sometimes up to 70 hours a week.
Matthew MacDougall, director of neurosurgery at Neuralink, said that future implant trials will strive to reduce retraction and more closely track the operation of the implant:
Now that it's known that implants can retract, we'll insert the wires at "various depths."
Interestingly, some users even asked Neuralink under the message if it could help Biden, who is currently a bit slow to react due to his age:
Will Neuralink help Biden? Or has he gone too far?
What happened to the first human trial patient?
In January of this year, marking an important milestone in the field of neurotechnology, Neuralink's brain-computer interface was successfully implanted in the first human body.
The company even held a live broadcast in March with Noland Arbaugh, a 39-year-old subject, claiming that the patient could use the thoughts and ideas of the brain to control the mouse cursor to play simple computer games.
(The first Musk Neuralink chip implanter has a human-machine integration screen exposed: playing chess with his mind)
However, Neuralink revealed in a blog post in May that Noland’s implants encountered problems with implant line retraction after surgery, which significantly reduced the company’s timeliness and accuracy in monitoring Noland.
The company also issued a guarantee at the time, emphasizing that it would not affect the life safety of the subjects:
Although there are hardware problems with the implant, this does not directly endanger the health and safety of the patient.
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