Neuralink last month hoped to implant a chip in a second human patient with a brain implant made by an unrelated health problem. Now, the company is looking for a new subject that can stand the implant, and if one is found, they will perform the surgery next month at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.
Michael Lawton, Barrow’s CEO, then went on to stress that what was part of the selection process was deciding “who has to live without the device.” The second former patient, who is barred from getting the implant, suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, a killer that obscurely stops physical function. ALS3 is inexorably fatal, except for a few cases of long-term survival after diagnosis.
Elon Musk had said previously that Neuralink was looking for its second patient, more exactly, an individual without physical limb function. The first human patient with quadriplegia, Noland Arbaugh, had received an earlier Neuralink brain implant.
Arbaugh, thirty-five years old, pointed out that he had advanced significantly with the implant because, at that point, he was able to play games with his mind and, honestly, even went ahead to defeat his friends in playing games. He and other hopeful implant users hope that Neuralink’s technology will eventually cure paralysis and other disabilities.
The company deals with the treatment of neurological diseases through the implementation of brain chips, therefore offering hope for such patients. With continued human trials for Neuralink, several other significant medical technological breakthroughs are yet to be witnessed; hence improving the quality of life that the patients lead.
