Musk states that despite problems with the first patient, the next Neuralink brain implant is anticipated soon

Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-tech business, plans to implant its technology in a second human patient in «the next week or so,» the company announced on Wednesday. The business is making adjustments to solve the hardware issues it ran into with its first participant, according to executives.

With the goal of assisting patients, Neuralink is developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that makes use of cutting-edge paralysis-control technologies. The initial technology developed by the business, named Telepathy, consists of 64 «threads» that are surgically implanted into the brain. According to the Neuralink website, the threads are finer than a human hair and capture neurological activity using 1,024 electrodes.

For many years, academics have been researching brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), and a number of different businesses, such as Synchron, Paradromics, and Precision Neuroscience, are creating their own systems. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not given any BCI firm permission to market its products.

Merely 15% of the channels in Arbaugh’s implant are operational, according to Musk and the Neuralink executives speaking on the webcast. He nevertheless spends up to 70 hours a week using the BCI to read, play video games like chess, and view films.

The business stated that it is attempting to reduce retraction and quantify it more precisely for future implantation. One strategy, according to DJ Seo, president of Neuralink, is to reduce the space beneath the implant by sculpting the surface of the skull.

According to the official webcast, Neuralink also intends to put certain threads further into the brain tissue and measure the amount of movement that takes place. Neuralink’s chief of neurosurgery, Dr. Matthew MacDougall, stated that the company will now place threads “at a variety of depths” because it is aware that retraction is a possibility.