Neuralink Reveals Results of First Human Trial!

Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink has revealed new results from their first ever human trials.

We know that Neuralink’s first human test subject has already accomplished something never seen before in the world of brain computer interface - but the company has also run into at least one unexpected problem that needs to be overcome… 

Regardless, Neuralink is maintaining an ambitious schedule for more human trials in 2024 and beyond.

Initial Success

It’s been just over 100 days since Noland Arbaugh became the first human being to be implanted with a Neuralink N1 brain chip. The surgical procedure was conducted at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix Arizona - which is the world’s largest treatment and research hospital for neurological disease.

In those 100 days, Noland has already accomplished some unprecedented feats. During his first ever research session with Neuralink, Noland was able to set a new world record for human BCI cursor control. That was day one.

During weekdays, Noland spends up to 8 hours a day contributing to Neuralink research sessions - on weekends, his personal and recreational use of the implant can exceed up to 10 hours per day - he’s been able to reach up to 69 hours per week of brain computer interface with the N1 chip.

The standard for measuring speed and accuracy of cursor control is bits-per-second, or BPS - and that’s what Neuralink is calculating during these grid tests where you see the cursor moving around and clicking on different boxes. On day one, Noland set a new world record of 4.6 BPS. Three months later, Noland is already achieving 8 BPS and is quickly approaching the same speed and accuracy of an able bodied person using a mouse with their hand - that’s 10 BPS - so he’s close.

The Neuralink Telepathy software is able to distinguish between left and right clocks - and allows for movement of the cursor that is precise enough to clock on the smallest icons and buttons of a laptop screen.

The real-world result of this technology is that Noland is able to use his thoughts alone to complete tasks that previously required his mouth stick - literally a stick that he holds in his mouth and uses to interact with a device. 

After 8 years of living with full body paralysis, Noland had become very proficient with using this physical control in his daily life, he even told Neuralink, quote, “I thought that the mouth stick was a lot better than BCI a month ago, when we compared them I saw that BCI was just as good if not better and it's still improving - the games I can play now are leaps and bounds better than previous ones. I’m beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in.”

Not only can Noland now play simple computer games like chess and Civilization 6 - he’s also been able to use his N1 to play Mario Kart on a Nintendo Switch Console - which is even more than I would have expected to be possible at this early stage in the game.

It’s important to remember here that the aim of the initial PRIME Study is not about setting world records or beating human capabilities - the primary goal is to demonstrate that the Link device is safe and useful in daily life. So a lot of the work that Neuralink is doing is just remotely monitoring the technical performance of the device to try and measure the benefit that it provides to Noland and his quality of life - which so far appears to be overwhelmingly positive.  

Noland told Neuralink, quote, “Y'all are giving me too much, it's like a luxury overload, I haven't been able to do these things in 8 years and now I don't know where to even start allocating my attention.”

Now, of course, this is a first-of-its-kind medical procedure - so it would be expected that some things will not work out as planned - and Neuralink is no exception here. There’s been at least one problem with the device that’s already cropped up in Noland’s testing.

BCI Problem

So, what we know is that in the weeks following the surgery, a number of the electrode threads that were implanted into Noland’s brain tissue started to retract - essentially cutting off some of the communication between the brain and the implant.

During the surgical procedure, Neuralink’s R1 robot was used to insert 64 threads into the outer layer of the brain - the cerebral cortex - and specifically, this is targeted into the motor cortex region of the brain - penetrating just a few millimeters deep into the tissue. 

Each thread is thinner than a human hair and carries 16 electrode sensors - giving the Link device a total of over one thousand connection points into the neural network of Noland’s brain. From here, the electrodes can detect bio-electric pulses created by neuron activation within the cortex layer - the Link device uses signals collected by the threads to create a digital representation of the brain activity that can then be transmitted via Bluetooth into a nearby computer device.

So when the threads retracted from the brain, that decreased the number of electrode interfaces between the Link implant and the motor cortex. So losing 1 thread would be a 1.5% reduction in electrode count - losing just 3 threads would be a nearly 5% reduction in brain connection.

We can see the effect of this in Neuralink’s own data charts - starting late in February, the performance of the BCI started to drop off - we can see that Noland goes from 8 BPS, down to 5, then 4 and as low as 3 BPS by mid-March.

But then the numbers recover again quickly, Noland bounces back to 6 BPS by around the same time period that Neuralink released the first live stream he was featured in on March 20th, where we saw Noland able to play chess on the stream with his mind.

Neuralink explains this by saying that they honed the algorithms to make better use of the limited data being collected from the brain - and we can see that Noland is quickly back to his original performance of 8 BPS.

This was acknowledged by Noland at a Neuralink company meeting that happened on March 1st - which he posted a recording of to X on March 22nd. Noland said, quote, “Sure we’re still working out the kinks and stuff. But once we get this figured out, there’s no reason for the implant not to be out there.”

So what happened? According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Neuralink believes that some air was trapped inside Noland’s skull after the surgery was performed - this is a condition called pneumocephalus.

I’m not going to pretend I’m a doctor here, but it appears like mild cases of pneumocephalus can be relatively harmless and are often resolved by the body reabsorbing the air. So this doesn’t appear to pose any risk to Noland’s safety - but it does impact the potential of his current Neuralink implant.

If the threads have extracted themselves from the brain tissue, then there’s no easy way to put them back in…

According to the WSJ report, Neuralink has already floated the possibility of removing Noland’s implant - but we have no reason to believe that this will actually happen any time soon. Though one of the upshots for the Link device is that it is intended to be removable and upgradable over time.

Unnamed sources within Neuralink have said that challenges like this were expected in the first test on a human patient - although they didn’t specify any reason why there would be a different result after doing the procedure on a human brain after dozens of test implants on monkey and pig brains.

The Neuralink sources say that the company remains optimistic that this problem can be resolved and that future implants will be able to capture more data and offer greater capabilities for human patients.

Neuralink has already reported to the Food and Drug Administration that it believes it has fixes for the problem that was encountered with Noland’s implant.

More Human Trials 

According to the same sources reported by Wall Street Journal, Neuralink already has plans for two more human implant procedures in the coming months - these will go forward once a safety review of Noland’s implant is completed.

Neuralink reportedly maintains a goal to implant 10 people this year with the device.

According to a potential roadmap from the company, That will increase to another 27 implants in 2025 and 79 in 2026.

In 2021, Neuralink performed a total of 155 surgeries on sheep, pigs and monkeys - in 2022, that number grew to 294 total surgeries.

It’s expected that the first human trial will take up to six years for Neuralink to complete and verify their findings.

The primary study period will take place over the first 18 months after the device has been implanted. Patients will check in with a medical team every two months to monitor progress and ensure the Neuralink device continues to work as intended.

In the meantime, make sure you follow Noland on X at ModdedQuad - he’s started doing livestream demonstrations of his Neuralink abilities and it’s pretty fascinating to watch this all progress in real time.