Elon Musk reveals clip of his first human patient implanted with Neuralink brain chip and uses ‘telepathy’ to play chess on computer just by thinking

Elon Musk has shared stunning footage of the first person to use the Neuralink brain chip to control a computer cursor and play video games just by thinking.

The groundbreaking patient, paralyzed man Noland Arbaugh, 29, was seen in a video shared with X using only his mind to play a game of chess.

‘Do you see that cursor on the screen? That’s all me… it’s all brainpower,” he said from his wheelchair. He said in the video that he had a “freak diving accident” eight years ago that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down.

His successful use of the technology marks a breathtaking development and reinforces experts’ belief that it could revolutionize care for the disabled.

The disabled man, who says he suffered a freak diving accident eight years ago that left him in a wheelchair, successfully played chess online using only his mind

Elon Musk has hailed the technology as a breathtaking step forward

Arbaugh beamed with happiness throughout the segment, showing the mouse moving back and forth across the online chessboard.

Musk announced a month ago that the first person had had the chip implanted, saying at the time that Arbaugh could “move a mouse across the screen just by thinking.”

He still seemed baffled by how the groundbreaking technology actually worked and compared moving the mouse across the screen to using ‘The Force’ from Star Wars.

“Progress is good and the patient appears to have made a full recovery, with neural effects that we are aware of,” Musk said in a Spaces event on X.

Neuralink’s technology uses a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface implant into a part of the brain that controls the intention to move.

The system consists of a computer chip attached to small flexible wires that are stitched into the brain by a ‘sewing machine-like’ robot.

In the operation, the ‘sewing robot’ removes a small piece of the skull, connects the thread-like electrodes to certain parts of the brain, sutures the hole closed and all that is visible is a scar left from the incision

Musk said the fitting procedure takes just 30 minutes, requires no general anesthesia and allows patients to return home the same day.

Arbaugh suffered his debilitating injury while working at a children’s camp in Texas in 2016, and said he had “absolutely no feeling” below his shoulders for years.

He added that he “loved to play chess” before his injury, continuing, “This is one of the things that you all have enabled me to do… I haven’t really been able to do much in the last few years. .’

In a GoFundMe as of 11 months after his accident, Arbaugh was said to be struggling with his “lack of mobility.”

‘Noland is bound to a large electric wheelchair that he has to take everywhere. The wheelchair, coupled with his condition, makes traveling anywhere an ordeal,” the fundraiser said.

Noland Arbaugh was paralyzed from the shoulders down eight years ago, and a fundraiser at the time said he struggled with his ‘lack of mobility’

Musk has described the procedure as “like replacing a piece of the skull with a smartwatch.” Pictured: A visual image of what the electrodes will look like when implanted in the brain

In the operation, a ‘sewing robot’ removes a small piece of the skull, connects the thread-like electrodes to certain parts of the brain, sutures the hole closed and all that is visible is a scar left from the incision

Arbaugh was assisted in the segment by a Neuralink engineer, who at one point asked the patient to explain how he was able to move a computer mouse telepathically.

“So we started trying a few different things,” he said. “We actually went from what we would call ‘imagined movement’ versus ‘attempted movement’, and we started with an attempt to move.”

This involved thinking about moving his right hand left and right, and “from there it just became intuitive to me,” he said.

Comparing the technology to using “The Force” from Star Wars, Arbaugh said he was taught to move the cursor around the screen by “staring somewhere on the screen.”

Describing the first time it worked, he said, “It just went to where I wanted it to go, it was such a wild experience… it’s crazy, it’s crazy.”