NEWSLINE PAPER,- The first Neuralink brain implant in the human headly did not work smoothly, in which damage occurred to parts of the implant's ulto-thin electrode system.
The brain chip called "telepathy" implanted in the head of a 29-year-old man named Noland Arbaugh through surgery in early 2024 suffered damage. Damage occurred to part of the chip system.
This brain chip was created by Elon Musk's biotechnology company, Neuralink, with the aim of creating a brain-computer interface that allows humans to control a device with only a mind.
The implant consists of over 1,000 electrodes that are combined into 64 super-small, thinner-sized "strands" of human hair designed to channel signals from neurons. These flexible strands are mounted through robotic surgery into the motor cortex of the brain, the brain area involved in movement. This is the part that's in trouble.
"In the weeks following surgery, a number of strands were pulled from the brain, resulting in a decrease in the number of effective electrodes," Neuralink said in a blog post.
As a result, the task of controlling the computer's cursor with the mind is experiencing little trouble, especially in terms of speed and accuracy measured in bits per second. (BPS).
Although the Wall Street Journal that Neuralink is considering removing the implant, the fact is that the company now claims to have addressed the problem by making changes to the algorithms involved in recording the nerve signals, and how these signals are then translated into cursor movements.
According to Neuralink, these changes have successfully fixed the BPS so that Noland can control the device even better than when the implants were first installed.
As for the brain chip capabilities, they were first shown to the public in early March 2024 through a video upload on the social media X. The video uploaded to the Neuralink account shows how Noland, who is paralyzed from shoulder to shoulde, is able to control a computer cursor to play chess.
"I love playing chess, so this is one of the things that allows me to do it. I haven't been able to yield much fruit in the last few years, much less like this—chess game," said Noland. "I have to use my mouth—to control the rank—but now everything is done with my brain."
(Newsline Paper Teams)