FDA has given the “green light” Elon Musk’s Neuralink to implant a brain chip in a second patient

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the green light to Elon Musk’s Neuralink to implant a brain chip in a second person, approving the company’s proposed solutions to the problem that arose in the first trial participant, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The news comes shortly after the announcement that Neuralink is looking for another patient to implant a brain chip. He will be the second person to undergo such an operation.

As you know, the first patient to be implanted with a Neuralink chip was Nolan Arbaugh. The operation took place in January, and soon it became known that Nolan could mentally control a computer mouse and even play chess with his mind.

However, it was recently revealed that the implanted chip had mechanical damage shortly after the surgery. Some of the 64 threads to the chip’s electrodes had become disconnected, so the device did not work properly.

“I was on such a high and then to be brought down that low. It was very, very hard,” Nolan Arbaugh shared his feelings after he noticed that the device started working differently. “I cried.”

According to him, Neuralink informed him of the situation. However, software changes made by the company helped the first patient regain many of the device’s capabilities.

Since such a device had never been implanted in a human before, Neuralink did not know how much the brain would move inside the skull. In reality, it turned out that the patient’s brain moved three times faster than the company expected.

To prevent the threads from disconnecting again, one of Neuralink’s proposed solutions, which was approved by the FDA, is to implant them eight millimeters deeper, compared to about 3-5 millimeters in Nolan Arbaugh’s case.