Arbaugh sustained a spinal injury in 2016 that left him without sensation or movement below his shoulders. About a month before his public reveal he underwent a roughly two-hour operation at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, where a Neuralink robotic device implanted an experimental brain chip and connected threads with more than 1,000 electrodes to his neurons. The implant measures electrical activity, processes signals, and translates them into digital commands, enabling him to control a computer with his mind. He can play video games, operate his television, and control household devices. He is Participant 1 among approximately 80 recipients.
It was February 2024 when Noland Arbaugh, the first person to get Elon Musk's experimental brain chip, rolled across the stage in a wheelchair during a Neuralink "all hands" meeting, revealing his identity for the first time. The room, filled with Neuralink employees, erupted in applause as Arbaugh-who dislocated two of his vertebrae in a swimming accident in 2016 and has since lost sensation and movement below his shoulders-smiled ear-to-ear in his chair, a red Texas A&M hat planted on his head.
Arbaugh was anesthetized and, in a surgery that lasted just under two hours, a Neuralink-made robotic surgery device implanted the chip and connected tiny threads with more than 1,000 electrodes to the neurons in his brain. Now the device can measure electrical activity, process signals, then translate those signals into commands to a digital device. In layman's speak, the BCI , or brain-computer interface, allows Arbaugh to control a computer with his mind.
Collection
[
|
...
]