Elon Musk’s implant company Neuralink has surgically implanted its N1 brain chip into its second patient, according to the executive.”I don’t want to jinx it but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant,” Musk said during a very long episode of the Lex Fridman podcast. “There’s a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It’s working very well.”Musk shared that Neuralink’s second patient has a similar spinal cord injury to the company’s first human patient. 400, or less than half of the implant’s 1,042 electrodes, are operational in the second patient’s brain post-surgery. Neuralink had been planning to conduct its second human surgery on a different patient over a month ago, but the implant procedure was called off for that patient due to a medical issue.Musk shared that Neuralink’s first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, only has about “roughly 10, 15% of the electrodes working” in his implant since receiving it back in January. Despite this, Arbaugh is still able to control a computer mouse’s cursor and beat his friends at video games using only his mind.During the podcast, Neuralink Head Neurosurgeon Matthew MacDougall called the N1 implant surgery “one of the most basic neurosurgery procedures imaginable.” MacDougall expressed a great deal of optimism for the future of robots like Neuralink’s surgical robot, which connects the chip’s tiny threads to the human patient’s brain.”We are at the dawn of a new era with AI of the parameters for robot responsiveness to be dramatically broadened,” MacDougall said, acknowledging that Neuralink’s current surgical robot isn’t currently able to adapt to changing situations as well as a human surgeon.
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While Neuralink may eventually expand its scope of patients, the company is first focused on helping human patients with disabilities like paraplegia or quadriplegia. Musk confirmed that Neuralink’s next focus will be to “cure” blindness via the brain implant, which is about the size of a US quarter and contains a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. In the future, he hopes Neuralink will also be able to address other illnesses like schizophrenia and seizures. Musk added that eight more human patients may receive the Neuralink implant this year.
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