Last Friday, Tesla (TSLA.US) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told host Lex Fridman on a podcast that a second trial patient had been implanted with a Neuralink brain-computer interface device. Musk confirmed that the second patient’s spinal cord injury was similar to the first patient, and that the 400 electrodes in the current implant were working. Neuralink said on its website that its implant had 1024 electrodes.
The first patient was Nolan Arbaugh, a 29-year-old accident victim who received the device as part of an FDA-approved study earlier this year, but had a few wires come loose from his brain implant a few weeks after the surgery.
In recent weeks, Neuralink executives said the first patient’s device had only 15 percent of its channels working due to a problem with the neural wires retracting. Despite that, the paralyzed recipient was able to use the device to read and play video games.
In recent comments about the second patient, Mr. Musk sounded more optimistic, saying the implant “seemed to go very well,” and that there were “lots of signals and electrodes, and it’s working well.” He said Neuralink could implant another eight patients this year.