Neuralink Says Its First Brain Chip Implant Has Encountered A Problem

The problem with Neuralink's brain implant was reported by Noland Arbaugh, who received it in January this year.

Elon Musk's startup Neuralink has said that the chip it implanted in the brain of its first human patient had some issues a few weeks after the surgery. The chip was implanted in Noland Arbaugh, a quadriplegic man, who was able to play video games and online games using his mind. Neuralink's implant allows a patient to use their thoughts to control a computer. But in a blog post on Wednesday, the company said the amount of data it was receiving from the device has reduced.

Some data was lost because a number of the implant's threads retracted. Neuralink's system, called the Link, records neural signals using 1,024 electrodes across 64 threads that are "thinner than the human hair".

But after some of the threads retracted, the company's ability to measure the Link's speed and accuracy was severely impacted. Neuralink, however, did not disclose how many threads retracted from the tissue.