Neuralink implants its brain chip in second patient, Elon Musk says it is working very well

• Neuralink has implanted another volunteer with its brain chip.
• Elon Musk says everything went extremely well.
• Neuralink impanted its first chip in January this year.

The idea of being able to control things using your mind has been widely explored in Sci-Fi movies as well as TV shows and web series for a long time. Be it the likes of X Men and Fantastic Four or Stranger Things and I Am Not Okay With This, the concept of telekinesis is something that always intrigues people. And Elon Musk’s Neuralink recently made this Sci-Fi concept a reality. Well, almost. Even though people can’t lift objects 10 times heavier than their own weight by the power of their mind, it is possible to move mouse cursors, play video games and post on social media using just the mind. And that’s a start.

In January this year, Neuralink implanted its brain chip in a 29-year-old man, Noland Arbaugh, who has been paralysed from below shoulders since 2016. Now, the company has implanted the chip in its second patient. Neuralink boss Elon Musk says that the procedure went “extremely well.”

Elon Musk on Neuralink's second patient

Musk spoke about the implant during a recent podcast with Lex Fridman. The tech mogul said that he doesn’t want to “jinx” anything but the procedure went “extremely well” this time. He added, “There’s a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It’s working very well.”

In the podcast released late Friday that lasted over eight hours, Musk said that the second patient too had an injured spinal cord, similar to the first patient. The billionaire didn’t reveal the exact time and date of the surgery but said that 400 of the implant’s electrodes are functioning in the second patient’s brain. According to Neuralink’s website, their implant uses a total of 1,024 electrodes.

In addition to this, Musk also mentioned Neuralink’s plans to implant the brain chip in eight more patients this year as part of its clinical trials.

In May this year, Musk had announced that Neuralink was looking for the second participant who wants to get the brain chip implanted.

"Neuralink is accepting applications for the second participant. This is our Telepathy cybernetic brain implant that allows you to control your phone and computer just by thinking. No one better than Noland (@ModdedQuad) himself to tell you about the first," Musk wrote in a tweet back then.

About Neuralink’s brain chip and its first patient

As mentioned already, at the end of January this year, Neuralink announced its first successful brain chip implant in a human. Arbaugh, who was paralyzed from the shoulders down after an accident, received the implant on January 28. Just two days after surgery, he was reported to be recovering well.

After 100 days of the implant, Neuralink talked about Arbaugh's progress in a blog post. Before the implant, Arbaugh used a mouth-held tablet stylus to interact with digital devices which was cumbersome. After the implant, he could control his laptop and other devices more easily, even while lying down. Not just that, he could even play games using just his mind.

However, some issues also arose with the implant, as a few threads began retracting from his brain. It was never mentioned just how many threads had retracted. Neuralink, in the blog post, said that researchers adapted their techniques, leading to improved control and performance of the implant.

"In the weeks following the surgery, a number of threads retracted from the brain, resulting in a net decrease in the number of effective electrodes. This led to a reduction in BPS. 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. These refinements produced a rapid and sustained improvement in BPS, that has now superseded Noland’s initial performance," the blog post read.

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