ALBAWABA – The very first person to receive the Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, has appeared in a new demo video shared on X (formerly Twitter) showing him able to play Mario Kart with his mind by simply thinking.
Noland Arbaugh is a quadriplegic, meaning he became paralyzed in all four limbs after a swimming accident that injured his spine from below the neck. He became the first patient to receive Neuralink’s brain implant late January, with recent updates from the company showing what the chip is allowing him to do.
Neuralink shared a gameplay video of Donkey Kong and Bowser racing in Mario Kart on a split screen at the company's meeting with Arbaugh as an honored guest. Another footage of Arbaugh and his father enjoying Mario Kart within their house was later shown, with Arbaugh commenting happily “I am so happy to be part of it.”
Arbaugh added how his experience with the “lifechanging” technology being “a wild ride,” saying that “This is going to change the world.” Earlier last week, Neuralink’s page on X live streamed a video of Arbaugh showing him being able to not only move a mouse cursor on a computer screen with his mind, but playing Chess on it with no hurdles.
Neuralink receives FDA approval for first human clinical study, marking a significant milestone"It was like using the force," said the 29-year-old, adding " it's all being done with my brain. You can see the cursor moving around the screen, that's all me," regarding the chess pieces moving, noting how the chip enables him to easily move the mouse cursor to any desired location while just staring somewhere on the display.
In his original announcement of human trials, Nerualink’s founder Elon Musk stated that the first Neuralink brain chip will be labeled “Telepathy”, initially targeted towards disabled patients suffering from loss of limbs to help them control external devices, drawing parallels in his Tweet to Stephen Hawking’s Speech Generation Device.
