Neuralink brain chip helps first paralysed patient play chess using ‘telepathy’

A paralysed man played online chess using “telepathy” after being fitted with a brain chip built by Elon Musk’s neurotech startup Neuralink.

It is the first public demonstration of how the technology is being used in humans after trials began last year.

Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralysed below the shoulder after a diving accident, played chess on his laptop and moved the cursor using the Neuralink device. The implant seeks to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using only their thoughts

Mr Arbaugh had received an implant from the company in January and could control a computer mouse using his thoughts, Musk said last month

“The surgery was super easy,” Mr Arbaugh said in the video streamed on Musk’s social media platform X, referring to the implant procedure. “I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments.”

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

“It is still in the very early days post-implantation, and there is a lot of learning on both the Neuralink side and the subject’s side to maximise the amount of information for control that can be achieved,” he said.

Even so, Mr Ludwig said it was a positive development for the patient that they have been able to interface with a computer in a way they were not able to before the implant. “It’s certainly a good starting point,” he said

Last month, Reuters reported that the US Food and Drug Administration inspectors found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Elon Musk’s Neuralink, less than a month after the startup said it was cleared to test its brain implants in humans. Neuralink did not respond then to questions about the FDA’s inspection.

Beyond online chess, Mr Arbaugh said he uses the brain-computer interface to play video games, read and learn languages.

“It’s not perfect,” he said. “We have run into some issues. I don’t want people to think like this is the end of the journey, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“But it has already changed my life and I think that people who are thinking about applying for the human trials, or are thinking about finding some way to help out with this, to do your part. That’s the reason I got into it, because I just wanted to help. I wanted to be a part of something that I feel like is going to change the world.”

Additional reporting from agencies