Musk company reports problem with implanted brain chip

Neuralink, Tesla owner Elon Musk’s company that is developing a chip for the brain, reports technical problems with its first test subject.

In January, Neuralink implanted its brain chip in Noland Arbaugh, a man who was paralyzed in a diving accident. The chip, the first to be tested by Neuralink on a human, allowed the man to use his brain to perform certain activities, such as playing a digital game of chess or moving the cursor on his computer screen. The ultimate goal is to use the chip to control all kinds of devices in the physical world, such as robot arms and wheelchairs.

The company says it was able to compensate for the reduced performance with software updates, which it says resulted in a “rapid and lasting improvement that exceeds Noland’s original performance.”

According to independent experts, the complications may arise from the fact that our brains can move within the shell of the skull. ‘Many engineers and scientists do not realize how much the brain moves in the skull. A simple nod of your head or an abrupt movement can cause deviations of a few millimeters,” says Eric Leuthardt, a neurosurgeon at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Existing brain stimulation techniques place brain implants directly on brain tissue, where they “move like a boat on water,” says Matt Angle, the CEO of Paradromics, a Neuralink competitor. According to him, wires coming loose is ‘not common for a brain implant’.

Neuralink had previously tested its chip extensively on animals. The fact that the problem did not occur there may be due to the fact that animal brains are smaller and the electrodes therefore shift less than in humans, says Leuthardt.

The problems could lead to delays in the approval process by the American pharmaceutical watchdog FDA to try out the technique on even more people.