The first Neuralink implant in a human malfunctioned after several threads recording neural activity retracted from the brain, the Elon Musk-owned startup revealed Wednesday.
The threads retracted in the weeks following the surgery in late January that placed the Neuralink hardware in 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh’s brain, the company said in a blog post.
This reduced the number of effective electrodes and the ability of Arbaugh, a quadriplegic, to control a computer cursor with his brain.
“In response to this change, we modified the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to neural population signals, improved the techniques to translate these signals into cursor movements, and enhanced the user interface,” Neuralink said in the blog post.
The company said the adjustments resulted in a “rapid and sustained improvement” in bits-per-second, a measure of speed and accuracy of cursor control, surpassing Arbaugh’s initial performance.
While the problem doesn’t appear to pose a risk to Arbaugh’s safety, Neuralink reportedly floated the idea of removing his implant, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company has also told the Food and Drug Administration that it believes it has a solution for the issue that occurred with Arbaugh’s implant, the Journal reported.
The implant was placed just more than 100 days ago. In the blog post, the company touted Arbaugh’s ability to play online computer games, browse the internet, livestream and use other applications “all by controlling a cursor with his mind.”
I feel like they belong in separate categories though. Lawnmower man was regular bad, like it started as something that had value but effects and writing just weren’t up to where they should have been resulting in a hilarious, guilty pleasure mess.
Battlefield earth never stood a chance, everything about it was cursed start to finish and was a complete vanity project by a religious weirdo. There’s just plain guilt with it, no pleasure.
Calling him a religious weirdo gives too much credit to the cult/scam that scientology is. At best he’s a brainwashed cult member. I feel like 200 years from now people will be studying the rise and fall of scientology as it’s a fascinating case study of what happens when a scammer sets out to create a cult and actually succeeds. The fact he got away with it despite evidence that it was always intended as a scam is even more mind blowing.
The only thing remarkable about Scientology and Mormonism are that they were recent creations. That means we have fairly decent information about the founders. The other religions probably started similar ways but that has been obscured by time and poor documentation. The more people that get involved in steering them through the years, the more blurred it gets.