The first human with a chip in his brain: Noland Arbaug

Did you know that this young man, who was left paralyzed after a severe accident, regained his health thanks to the Neuralink technology developed by Elon Musk? In 2016, Noland Arbaugh suffered a spinal cord injury as a result of an unfortunate diving accident in a lake, leaving him unable to move anything below his shoulders. For years, he lived with all four limbs paralyzed; although he was completely healthy mentally, he was physically dependent on others. Afterwards, his path crossed with Neuralink, developed by Elon Musk. Neuralink was a project established to create a human-to-machine interface by converting signals taken from the human brain into binary code, namely 0s and 1s. Within the scope of the project, after obtaining approval for human trials from the US Food and Drug Administration, Noland Arbaugh became the chosen candidate to have the first brain-computer interface device, called Prime, implanted. The surgery was performed using surgical robots. Following the surgery, Arbaugh began controlling the computer cursor using only the power of his thoughts; he played chess for hours, passed time with video games, and was able to write messages on social media. In his own words, this experience miraculously gave him back the independence he had lost. 100 days later, however, an unexpected biological obstacle emerged: a significant portion of the electrode threads, failing to keep pace with the brain tissue, shifted out of place and retracted. Actually, this was a biological rejection. Because the number of communicating sensors decreased, the data transfer rate and cursor control dropped severely. However, some technologies are open to improvement over time; instead of performing a second surgical intervention, engineers developed a new algorithm and filtering software that amplified the weak signals coming from the remaining electrodes. Thus, control precision reached an even more efficient level than before. Despite these ups and downs he experienced, Noland Arbaugh continues to use a computer all day long with the implant placed in his brain and to pioneer the development of human-machine interfaces. However, this is not enough; for these systems to function properly, nanoelectronic systems that will make biological tissue and electronic components work healthily need to be discovered. Do you hear it too? A wonderful sentence is whispering into my ears: All my hope is in the youth!