Neuralink’s first brain-chip patient uses it to play online chess

Patient Noland Arbaugh, who was paralysed below the shoulders after a diving accident, was seen in a nine-minute livestream on X using the cursor to play chess online.

"The surgery was super easy," Arbaugh said during the presentation, also revealing he used the brain implant to play the video game Civilization VI. Neuralink gave him "the ability to do that again and played for eight hours straight", he said.

Neuralink’s goal is to connect human brains to computers to help tackle complex neurological conditions. Through a device the size of a one pound coin, a patient has this inserted into their skull, and then using microscopic wires, which can read neuron activity, and beam back a wireless signal to a receiving unit. The company had previously run successful trials using their brain chip on pigs and claimed that monkeys can play a basic version of the video game Pong.

 Although this development in humans shows real promise and progression, Arbaugh had mentioned the new technology was not perfect and they "have run into some issues". Previous issues highlighted by the US FDA – like concerns over the device’s lithium battery, and the potential for the implant´s tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain, were dropped, however, leading to this first approved implant taking place.

Competitors of Musk’s Neuralink have also been making strides in the field of neural technology in bids to move it from prototype to commercial product. École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne in Switzerland successfully enabled a paralysed man walk just by him thinking about the movements involved.

Neural technology, like those of that of École’s and Musk rely on the electricity generated in the 86 billion neurons in the human brain, connected to one another by synapses, which generate and send a tiny electrical impulse one neuron to another.

Scientists have developed devices which can detect some of those signals - either using a non-invasive cap placed on the head or wires implanted into the brain itself.

The technology - known as a brain-computer interface - is where a lot of research  and investment is heading at the moment in a market known as Medtech, which could be worth as much as $748.20 billion by 2028.