Paralyzed patient with implanted brain chip plays chess online

(Patria) - Elon Musk's brain chip startup Neuralink yesterday broadcast live its first patient who implanted the chip using their mind to play chess online.

Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old patient paralyzed from the shoulders down after a diving accident, played chess on his laptop, moving the cursor using the Neuralink device.

The implant aims to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using only their thoughts.

Arbaugh received the implant from the company in January and was able to control a computer mouse using his thoughts, Musk said last month, Reuters reports.

"The surgery was super easy," Arbaugh said in a video posted on Musk's X network, referring to the implantation procedure. "I was literally released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments," he added.

"I basically gave up playing that game," Arbaugh said, referring to the game Civilization VI, "you all (Neuralink) gave me the ability to do it again and I played for eight hours straight."

Elaborating on his experience with the new technology, Arbaugh said it "isn't perfect" and that they "ran into some issues".

"I don't want people to think this is the end of the road, there's a lot of work to be done, but it has already changed my life," he added.

Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the US National Institutes of Health, said that what Neuralink showed was not a "breakthrough".

"It's still early days after implantation and there's a lot of learning on both the Neuralink side and the subject's side to maximize the amount of control information that can be achieved," he added.

Regardless, Ludwig said it was a positive development for the patient that they were able to interact with a computer in a way they couldn't before the implant. "It's certainly a good starting point," he said.