One of the first people in Britain to use Elon Musk’s brain chip believes it could transform the lives of those with severe paralysis, and says it has already made a difference in his life, reports Sky News.
Sebastian Gomez-Pena, a volunteer in the first UK trial of the device developed by Musk's company Neuralink, had just completed his first term at medical school when an accident left him paralysed from the neck down.
He’s one of seven people fitted with the chip in the trial that is designed to assess the safety and reliability of the device.
“This kind of technology kind of gives you a new piece of hope,” he said.
The chip, which is linked to 1 024 electrodes implanted in his brain, was fitted in a five-hour operation at University College London Hospital (UCLH).
While British surgeons and engineers from Neuralink were involved, the device itself was implanted by Neuralink’s R1 robot, developed to insert the microscopic electrodes into fragile brain tissue.
The electrodes were inserted about 4mm into the surface of his brain, in the region that controls hand movements. Nerve signals are carried via threads, around 10 times thinner than a human hair, to the chip, which is fitted into a circular hole in his skull.
Data from the chip is sent wirelessly to a computer in which AI software “learns” to interpret his brain’s electrical signals.
So when Gomez-Pena “thinks” about moving his hand or tapping his finger, it appears on his screen as cursor movement or the “click” of a mouse, effectively restoring the hand control destroyed in his accident.
“Everyone in my position tries to move some bit of their body to see if there is any form of recovery, but now when I think about moving my hand, it’s cool to see that… something actually happens,” he said.
His cursor flies around his laptop screen, turning the pages of a research paper he’s studying for his medical school exams. He highlights text, opens and closes windows as fast or faster than someone using a mouse or touchpad.
His medical team describes his progress as “mindblowing”. “You can see the level of control the has,” said Harith Akram, a neurosurgeon at UCLH and lead investigator of the UK trial.
It is still early days, however.
It’s taken Neuralink nearly 20 years to develop the chip and electrode technology, surgical robot and AI tools needed to satisfy regulators it’s in a position to test a device in humans.
The first device was implanted in an American volunteer two years ago; now 21 people in the US, Canada, UK and the UAE have one.
All have severe paralysis, either due to spinal injury, stroke, or neurodegenerative conditions like ALS.
Results from the trials have yet to be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or submitted to regulators. Neuralink agreed to give Sky News access to the trial but declined to be interviewed.
However, in Akram’s opinion, the early results are promising.
“This technology is going to be a game-changer for patients with severe neurological disability,” he said.
“Those patients have very little really to improve their independence. Especially now that we live in a world where we are so dependent on technology.”
Neuralink says its mission is to “restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs and unlock new dimensions of human potential”.
Already some users have mastered the technology enough to type on a virtual keyboard by "thinking" about pressing keys with their fingers. Others have used the device to feed themselves with a robotic arm.
Alongside this trial targeting areas of the brain controlling movement, another is targeting brain regions involved in speech in the hope it can be restored in people who’ve lost the ability to talk after a stroke or other brain injury.
Users could ‘inhabit’ a robot: Musk
The company also has plans to investigate reversing blindness by sending data from a camera, via the chip, into the brain’s vision-processing centres.
Accessing other brain areas involves implanting electrodes deeper into the brain safely and reliably, a challenge the company admits it has yet to overcome.
Yet Musk has greater hopes for the technology.
At an event last year, he floated the idea of users connecting their device to an Optimus robot made by his other company, Tesla.
“You should actually be able to have full body control and sensors from an Optimus robot. So you could basically inhabit an Optimus robot. It’s not just the hand. It’s the whole thing,” he said.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Neuralink’s first human patient controls computer mouse via thought
FDA green-lights Musk’s brain implant for human study