The first patient with a Neuralink brain implant in January 2024 was American Noland Arbough, who has been deprived of mobility in four limbs since 2016 due to a spinal cord injury. Now the sixth volunteer with a Neuralink brain implant is sharing his impressions of his new abilities only a week after surgery.
Rob Greiner, who received the brain implant just a week ago, says he has already learnt to control the cursor on the computer screen and mastered a few computer games, but expects to continue to make rapid progress in this area. Neuralink’s sixth brain implant patient lost mobility in four limbs in December 2022 in a road accident.
Greiner posted two videos on social media X of him playing games on his laptop “with his mind” and thanked the company’s team, doctors and loved ones for their support. He also noted that he does not use any “assistive technology” other than Neuralink.
As a reminder, among the six Neuralink patients who survived the brain implant surgery, one suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which effectively deprives him of the ability to speak, but with the help of the implant he was able to type on a smartphone and a computer, which he was then able to convert into a speech message with a neural network mimicking his voice.
In addition, Neuralink is already testing the BlindSight implant, which allows people who have lost their sight to regain it, but so far on a monkey, which recently, as the authors of the experiment suggest, was able to see a computer-synthesised object with it. Next year, Neuralink hopes to begin testing the implant on humans. It is noteworthy that one of the UAE clinics is ready to take part in the experiment.