June 7, 2024
Source: Scientific American
Photo Source: Unsplash,
Arbaugh says he was able to move a digital cursor within a week after the implant surgery. He does so in two ways. There’s what he describes as “attempted movement”—or simply willing a paralyzed limb to do what it no longer can. By instigating movement of the muscles in his hand (which he says can still produce slight wiggles) and going through the mental motions of using a mouse with that hand, he can move a cursor around a screen with little effort. “It’s very intuitive,” Arbaugh says.
He's also found that looking at the cursor and picturing the path he’d like it to take enables him to navigate a screen. He calls this “imagined movement.” He uses both methods, often in conjunction with each other. The first is a bit more physically taxing, while the second requires some extra mental focus. But both allow multitasking: Arbaugh can talk or eat at the same time as he operates his computer.
Before the implant, if Arbaugh wanted to use a computer, he did so by voice command or moving a mouth stick across a touch screen (which required someone to help him get into position). But with his BCI, Arbaugh says he’s able to do more—faster, independently and more comfortably. Using the best BCIs “should feel as natural as able-bodied, voluntary movement,” says Leigh Hochberg, a neurointensive care physician and neuroscientist at Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the VA Providence Healthcare System. Hochberg has conducted multiple BCI human trials and studies, sharing what he’s learned with Neuralink and other companies.* Hochberg says he sometimes gauges how well a device works by how little a subject can describe the user experience. “If our participants can’t tell us exactly how they just did something,” he says, “we know we’re on the right track.”
Neuralink claims that Arbaugh has broken records for BCI cursor control and has reached eight bits per second, a measure that incorporates both speed and accuracy. (Neuralink has released its cursor control benchmark, a square-clicking task, if you’d like to compare your ability to Arbaugh’s.) Arbaugh says he uses his device for hours at a time to browse the Web, send text messages, scroll social media, navigate apps and—perhaps most importantly—play video games. Online chess and the world-building strategy game Civilization VI have been his favorites.
The device has one unavoidable drawback, he says: it needs to be regularly charged, interrupting his gaming sessions. To power up his implant, Arbaugh dons a hat with an embedded wireless charger—a big change from the plug-in BCIs still used in many research settings. Otherwise, using the Link has been mostly seamless, he says—except for when, in February, it nearly stopped working.
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