Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip implant more or less stable in first patient

The tiny wires from Neuralink’s brain chip implant used in the first participant in a trial run by Elon Musk’s company have become “more or less very stable,” a company executive said on Wednesday.

The company had said in May that several small wires inside the brain of Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a 2016 diving accident, had moved out of position.

“After you have brain surgery, it takes some time for the tissues to come in and fix the wires in place, and when that happens, everything is stable,” said Dongjin “DJ” Seo, an executive at Neuralink.

So far, Arbaugh, who lives in Arizona, has been the only patient to receive the implant, but Musk said he expects to have participants in the single digits this year.

The company is now taking risk mitigation measures such as sculpting the skull and reducing blood carbon dioxide concentration to normal levels in patients, company executives said in a live broadcast on social media platform X.

“For the next few implants, our plan is to sculpt the surface of the skull very intentionally to minimize the gap under the implant…this will bring it closer to the brain and eliminate some of the tension on the wires,” Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s head of neurosurgery , he said.

Neuralink is testing its implant to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices to think for themselves. The device works by using tiny wires, thinner than a human hair, to capture signals from the brain and translate them into actions such as moving a mouse cursor on a computer screen.

Musk said during the live broadcast that the device does not harm the brain. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, when initially considering the device years ago, raised safety concerns but ultimately gave the company the green light last year to begin human trials.

So far, the device has allowed Arbaugh to play video games, browse the internet and move the cursor on his laptop while thinking alone, according to company blog posts and videos.

Neuralink is also working on a new device that it believes will require half the number of electrodes implanted in the brain to make it more efficient and powerful, executives said.

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