'A number of threads retracted from the brain' of Neuralink's first implant patient, but they say they're still 'beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in'

Hardware’A number of threads retracted from the brain' of Neuralink’s first implant patient, but they say they’re still ‘beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Hardware’A number of threads retracted from the brain’ of Neuralink’s first implant patient, but they say they’re still ‘beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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AI concept. 3D render

Neuralink patient, Noland Arbaugh, has now been in possession of the first Link brain implant for just over 100 days, as the study into the practical application of the device continues—and while the results so far seem promising, it’s not been without its setbacks.

In aprogress updateon the Neuralink blog, the company has revealed that, in the weeks following the surgery to implant a computer interface directly into Arbaugh’s brain, several of the ultra-fine “threads” used to transmit signals had retracted, resulting in a decrease of the number of effective electrodes used to create a connection between the two.

Neuralink says that while this led to a reduction in BPS, or bits-per-second transmissions between the brain and the chip itself, some modification of the recording algorithm in regards to its sensitivity to neural signals meant that the performance of the device was actually improved over previous versions.

“I thought that the mouth stick was a lot better than BCI (brain-computer interface) a month ago, when we compared them I saw that BCI was just as good if not better and it’s still improving; the games I can play now are leaps and bounds better than previous ones. I’m beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in.”

His outlook seems to remain immensely positive, and while any sort of fringe technology—particularly one involving the surgical alteration of the human brain—should be expected to experience some setbacks, the potential benefit for those who have lost the use of their limbs appears to be life-changing.

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“I think it should give a lot of people a lot of hope for what this thing can do for them” says Arbaugh. “First and foremost their gaming experience, but then that’ll translate into so much more and I think that’s awesome.”

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