Elon Musk’s Neuralink implant suffers setback after wires pull out of patient’s brain

Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain technology startup, said Wednesday that a problem occurred with the company’s first human brain implant weeks after it was inserted into a patient.

The company revealed in a blog post that in the weeks following the patient’s January surgery, a number of the implant’s connective wires retracted from the brain, causing a reduction in signals that could be picked up by the implant. ‘device.

Neuralink provided few other details about the issue and did not reveal what might have caused the wires to come out.

The company, however, said it modified an algorithm “to be more sensitive to signals from the neuronal population,” meaning it was able to improve how the patient’s brain signals were detected and translated.

Neuralink’s first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, 29, lost all movement and feeling in his arms and legs after a diving accident in 2016.

Neuralink’s N1 device is about the size of a quarter and is designed to be implanted entirely on the skull. The device is connected to the brain’s motor cortex via 64 ultra-thin wires with tiny electrodes that pick up neural signals from the patient.

It’s unclear whether the retracted wires posed any safety concerns for Arbaugh at the time.

In March, the company hosted a livestream in which Arbaugh moved a cursor on a laptop screen and played chess online using only his thoughts. In other videos posted by the company, Arbaugh appeared to be playing the racing video game Mario Kart with the brain chip.

The latest update comes less than a week after Neuralink co-founder Dr. Benjamin Rapoport suggested in a May 3 episode of The Wall Street Journal’s “The Future of Everything” podcast that he had left the company for security reasons.

Rapoport, a neurosurgeon, co-founded Neuralink with Musk and other scientists in 2016, but later left to start a new company called Precision Neuroscience.

“I have dedicated virtually my entire professional life to bringing neural interfaces from the world of science to the world of medicine. But I felt that to move into the world of medicine and technology, safety is paramount,” he said on the podcast.

This is not the first time the company has faced controversy. Activist groups and internal staff complaints have alleged that Neuralink mistreated some of the animals used in the experiments. A federal investigation found no evidence of violations beyond a 2019 “adverse surgical event” reported by the company itself, according to Reuters.

Neuralink won approval from the Food and Drug Administration last year to conduct its first human clinical study. The company developed a brain implant that would allow people, including patients with severe paralysis, to control a computer, phone or other external device using their thoughts.