In a major development, the first patient with the brain chip implant manufactured by billionaire investor and businessman Elon Musk's startup Neuralink on Thursday was seen playing online chess and video games just by his moving his mind.
The widely circulated video showed the 29-year-old patient introducing himself as Noland Arbaugh who has been paralysed below the shoulder after a diving accident.
Can't Describe How Cool It Is: The First Patient's Account
In the viral video, the patient could be seen playing chess on his laptop and moving the cursor using the Neuralink device.
"If you all can see the cursor moving around the screen, that's all me," he said during the livestream as he moved a digital chess piece.
"It's pretty cool, huh? I just can't even describe how cool it is to be able to do this", he added.
While playing the game online, Arbaugh was also seen explaining the process of using the brain-computer interface.
"I would attempt to move, say, my right hand, left, right, forward, back, and from there I think it just became intuitive for me to start imagining the cursor moving," he said.
About the Neuralink brain chip
In the ambitious brain-chip study, a brain-computer interface (BCI) implant is surgically placed by a robot in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, according to the manufacturer Neuralink.
The primary objective of the brain chip is to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone. The "ultra-fine" threads of the implants are expected to help transmit signals in participants' brains.
The patient’s response is evaluated through the ‘spikes’ that denote the activity by neurons, which by using electrical and chemical signals, send information around the brain and to the body.
