The first Neuralink implant in a human malfunctioned after several threads recording neural activity retracted from the brain, the Elon Musk-owned startup revealed Wednesday.
The threads retracted in the weeks following the surgery in late January that placed the Neuralink hardware in 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh’s brain, the company said in a blog post.
This reduced the number of effective electrodes and the ability of Arbaugh, a quadriplegic, to control a computer cursor with his brain.
“In response to this change, we modified the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to neural population signals, improved the techniques to translate these signals into cursor movements, and enhanced the user interface,” Neuralink said in the blog post.
The company said the adjustments resulted in a “rapid and sustained improvement” in bits-per-second, a measure of speed and accuracy of cursor control, surpassing Arbaugh’s initial performance.
While the problem doesn’t appear to pose a risk to Arbaugh’s safety, Neuralink reportedly floated the idea of removing his implant, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company has also told the Food and Drug Administration that it believes it has a solution for the issue that occurred with Arbaugh’s implant, the Journal reported.
The implant was placed just more than 100 days ago. In the blog post, the company touted Arbaugh’s ability to play online computer games, browse the internet, livestream and use other applications “all by controlling a cursor with his mind.”
When did they work? Prior to getting approved in humans they were killing animals at a high rate. To the point where animals were smashing their heads against shit to get the chip out.
Additional veterinary reports show the condition of a female monkey called “Animal 15” during the months leading up to her death in March 2019. Days after her implant surgery, she began to press her head against the floor for no apparent reason; a symptom of pain or infection, the records say. Staff observed that though she was uncomfortable, picking and pulling at her implant until it bled, she would often lie at the foot of her cage and spend time holding hands with her roommate.
I understand testing on animals is tough but this was straight cruelty.
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/
When I was in college working in a lab, we were worried about accidentally killing frogs with our equipment because we didn’t have anything filed with the IRB about frogs.
Everything with Elon bewilders me. I thought this is why we had regulatory agencies.
This is also why regulatory agencies have been systematically crippled over the last 40 years or so. Damn near every sector has had their regulatory agencies crippled by some combination of reducing authority, underfunding, and understaffing. When the agencies work, the message is “see, we don’t need those regulations anymore because we’re taking care of things fine on our own,” and when they stop working, the message is “we shouldn’t be spending money on these agencies! They don’t do anything anyway!”
It was working for a while for the guy. He was paralyzed from the neck down and he was able to use it to play some lame game like LoL or something.
Yeah I seen a money kinda play pong on it. It was cool and all but not ripping at your skull cool.
It sucks bc there are real companies developing the tech for an amazing cause. Elon is a dip shit that has no clue on how to run a company and he is actually hurting the research.
You don’t even need to be inserting probes to be able to do that…
OCZ had this ‘toy’ out in 2008.
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16826100006
one of the reviews…
Ultra-sensitive, excellent response time. Partial hands free gaming. Cool looking blue LED glow from interface box. This is the future of computer user interface. While designed primarily for FPS games, works exceptionally well with MMOs. Makes Crysis WARHEAD and FarCry 2 a joy to play. As a disabled person, this unit has allowed me to game with all the “normal” folks on the same level.
I’m not defending this, but at least a human electively chooses this procedure and understands why they have a device attached to their head. The monkeys must have had no idea what was going on and just wanted to remove the foreign object.
Very valid point.
I could argue that the person was mislead, thinking it was successful in animal trials when it wasn’t. Plus the mental manipulation on a person that is a paraplegic, having hope this will improve their life is sad. Musk falsely claimed it was safe and no monkeys died due to the implant.
This was to be expected and they handled it well imo. I’m not gonna get one though.
Agreed. I was flippant after reading the headline, since I don’t like Musk, but once I read the story I was like "oh yeah this tech does have big potential for the differently abled. "
A quadriplegic being able to control a cursor on a screen with the implant for 100 days seems like a legit first attempt.
Could be great for the accessibility movement in the long run. But I could be naive or too optimistic.
A quadriplegic being able to control a cursor on a screen with the implant for 100 days seems like a legit first attempt.
Why, when we already have non-surgical solutions that allow the same thing but don’t come with the risk of killing you?
differently abled
Please dude I promise you this is near universally hated by disabled people 😭
I agree with not liking ‘differently-abled’ as a term. To me it reads along the same lines as ‘disabled people are built different’. Pretty awkward.
Not that I have a horse in this race. Or a neuralink, as the case may be.
I get that there are better choices now, but let’s not pretend like a straw you blow into is the technological stopping point for limb-free computer control (sorry if that’s not actually the best option, it’s just the one I’m familiar with). There are plenty of things to trash talk Neuralink about without pretending this technology (or it’s future form) is meritless.
Why
Why not? Nothing wrong with research and development as long as everyone participating in the test is an informed, consenting adult IMO. The advancements could make current accessibility tech even better. For one reason or another, a quadriplegic person decided they were willing to take the risk, so maybe they consider current accessibility tech for quadriplegics to be insufficient and wanted to try for something better?
Please dude I promise you this is near universally hated by disabled people 😭
Well damn, I didn’t know.
There are some politically correct terms that are not well liked by the people they describe:
- Differently abled
- Houseless
- Latinx
I cannot speak to any of these, however, I learned that that you should just ask. If you can’t ask, put the “human” first such as people with disabilities or people who are deaf, blind, etc. Latine is another term I’ve heard, but in the community, there are those that like it and those that don’t.
I will never not post this. This is what anyone who gets one of these is destined for :
Of course it is. The what neuralink is touting is the exact same situation that company was in. What happened there was they were creating an application for types of rare retinal blindness with the hopes that some other research would magically come along that makes it apply to other types of blindness and give them a market they could properly scale in. Surprise Surprise, no such deus ex machina occurred and the company could not see a path to profitability.
Neuralink is the exact same, cervical vertebra paralysis has less invasive adaptive mechanisms that are cheaper to implement, so there’s no way this will ever be a profitable approach with that alone. They’re hoping that this will magic into some brain machine interface without any actual hope that is going to happen.
The basic research just isn’t there to be doing this shit, but the investor dollars need to be put somewhere.
That’s weird. Did he try subscribing to Twitter Blue?
Neuralink reportedly floated the idea of removing his implant
This immediately sank when someone pointed out that it would be a PR nightmare, which naturally was more important than patient safety.
The implant failing when the subject’s connected tissue died has always been the best possible outcome from this, tbh.
