<p>Last Wednesday, <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/tags/neuralink">Neuralink</a>, <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/tags/elon-musk">Elon Musk</a>'s brain-chip startup, livestreamed its first successful demonstration of a patient using a chip implanted in his brain to <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/technology/musks-neuralink-shows-first-brain-chip-patient-playing-online-chess-2945976">play online chess using only his mind</a>.</p><p>The patient, Noland Arbaugh, aged 29, had been paralysed below the shoulder due to a diving accident. He controlled the cursor on his laptop by using the Neuralink device.</p><p>Today, Arbaugh made history by posting a tweet on X (formerly Twitter) "just by thinking".</p><p>"Twitter banned me because they thought I was a bot, @X and @elonmusk reinstated me because I am," Arbaugh joked.</p>. <p>Elon Musk also shared Arbaugh's tweet, celebrating it as the "First ever post made just by thinking, using the Neuralink Telepathy device!"</p>. <p>Arbaugh had received an implant from the company in January and could control a computer mouse using his thoughts, Musk said last month.</p><p>"The surgery was super easy," Arbaugh said in the video streamed on X, referring to the implant procedure. "I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments."</p>. <p>"I had basically given up playing that game," Arbaugh said, referring to the game Civilization VI, "You all (Neuralink) gave me the ability to do that again and played for 8 hours straight."</p><p>Elaborating on his experience with the new technology, Arbaugh said that it is "not perfect" and they "have run into some issues."</p><p>"I don't want people to think that this is the end of the journey, there's still a lot of work to be done, but it has already changed my life," he added.</p><p>Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the US National Institutes of Health, said what Neuralink showed was not a "breakthrough."</p><p>"It is still in the very early days post-implantation, and there is a lot of learning on both the Neuralink side and the subject's side to maximize the amount of information for control that can be achieved," he added.</p><p>Even so, Ludwig said it was a positive development for the patient that they have been able to interface with a computer in a way they were not able to before the implant. "It's certainly a good starting point," he said.</p><p>Last month, <em>Reuters</em> reported that the US Food and Drug Administration inspectors found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Elon Musk's Neuralink, less than a month after the startup said it was cleared to test its brain implants in humans. Neuralink did not respond then to questions about the FDA's inspection.</p><p><em>(With Reuters inputs)</em></p>
<p>Last Wednesday, <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/tags/neuralink">Neuralink</a>, <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/tags/elon-musk">Elon Musk</a>'s brain-chip startup, livestreamed its first successful demonstration of a patient using a chip implanted in his brain to <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/technology/musks-neuralink-shows-first-brain-chip-patient-playing-online-chess-2945976">play online chess using only his mind</a>.</p><p>The patient, Noland Arbaugh, aged 29, had been paralysed below the shoulder due to a diving accident. He controlled the cursor on his laptop by using the Neuralink device.</p><p>Today, Arbaugh made history by posting a tweet on X (formerly Twitter) "just by thinking".</p><p>"Twitter banned me because they thought I was a bot, @X and @elonmusk reinstated me because I am," Arbaugh joked.</p>. <p>Elon Musk also shared Arbaugh's tweet, celebrating it as the "First ever post made just by thinking, using the Neuralink Telepathy device!"</p>. <p>Arbaugh had received an implant from the company in January and could control a computer mouse using his thoughts, Musk said last month.</p><p>"The surgery was super easy," Arbaugh said in the video streamed on X, referring to the implant procedure. "I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments."</p>. <p>"I had basically given up playing that game," Arbaugh said, referring to the game Civilization VI, "You all (Neuralink) gave me the ability to do that again and played for 8 hours straight."</p><p>Elaborating on his experience with the new technology, Arbaugh said that it is "not perfect" and they "have run into some issues."</p><p>"I don't want people to think that this is the end of the journey, there's still a lot of work to be done, but it has already changed my life," he added.</p><p>Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the US National Institutes of Health, said what Neuralink showed was not a "breakthrough."</p><p>"It is still in the very early days post-implantation, and there is a lot of learning on both the Neuralink side and the subject's side to maximize the amount of information for control that can be achieved," he added.</p><p>Even so, Ludwig said it was a positive development for the patient that they have been able to interface with a computer in a way they were not able to before the implant. "It's certainly a good starting point," he said.</p><p>Last month, <em>Reuters</em> reported that the US Food and Drug Administration inspectors found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Elon Musk's Neuralink, less than a month after the startup said it was cleared to test its brain implants in humans. Neuralink did not respond then to questions about the FDA's inspection.</p><p><em>(With Reuters inputs)</em></p>