Arbo, a 29-year-old Texan who was paralyzed after a diving accident eight years ago, initially had excellent results from the implant. With the help of a neurochip, he learned to control the cursor with the power of his thoughts and used this new ability to play video games such as Civilization VI and Mario Kart and communicate on social media.

Implant related problems

Complications arose when certain contact points of the implant placed in the motor cortex of the brain began to recede over time; Neuralink acknowledged that this could be due to air entering the skull during surgery.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Arbo shared the terrifying experience of losing his newly acquired abilities, including cursor control.

I started to lose control of the cursor. I thought they had made some changes and that was the reason. But then I was told that the contacts had been removed from my brain. This was very difficult to hear. I thought maybe I could use it for a month or so and then my journey would be over.

Despite the problem with connections, Neuralink claims that it has successfully adjusted the chip’s signal interpretation algorithm, resulting in increased data throughput. Arbo has since regained the ability to control the cursor on its computer to type text letter by letter, and the Neuralink software is slowly learning to recognize words to eventually interpret entire sentences at faster speeds.

Neuralink needs improvement

Arbo’s experience is key to the development of brain-computer interface technology. Neuralink aims to provide similar opportunities to other people facing the same challenges. However, for this, the company needs to solve the problems that arose in the first patient.

As for Arbo, it remains committed to experimentation. He agreed to keep the chip in his brain for at least a year to evaluate long-term human impact, effectiveness and safety.

Despite the initial hurdles, Arbaugh remains optimistic about future advances and expresses interest in moving to the next version of Neuralink.