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If you reconnect Optimus Robotic arms or legs, perhaps science fiction movies will soon become reality.

Musk, really doing something to change other people’s “lives”.

Now, Neuralink's second trial patient can play games and draw with CAD.

The patient, named Alex, is an auto technician who suffered a spinal cord injury due to an accident. He received a Neuralink implant last month. The operation went very smoothly and he was discharged from the hospital the next day. His recovery process after discharge was also smooth.

Alex playing Counter-Strike 2

Alex uses CAD software to turn his design ideas into reality

In the time since his Neuralink treatment, Alex has been improving his ability to play video games and has begun learning how to use computer-aided design (CAD) software to design 3D objects.

After the second patient did well after the operation, Musk said: "If all goes well, hundreds of people will be using Neuralinks in a few years, tens of thousands in five years, and millions in 10 years..."

Control the cursor with your mind and play games

Can also draw CAD

From the moment Alex connected Link to his computer, it took him less than 5 minutes to start controlling the cursor with his mind. In just a few hours, Alex achieved the highest speed and accuracy in this task than any previous assistive technology. Similar to Noland, the first participant of Neuralink, Alex broke the record of 100% accuracy on the first day of using Link.Brain-computer interface (BCI) world record for cursor control. Then Alex tried to play Counter-Strike 2.

Alex uses Link to play a grid game

Alex loves to build things. Prior to his spinal cord injury, he repaired and tinkered with all types of vehicles and large machinery. Since then, he has always wanted to learn how to design 3D objects using computer-aided design (CAD) software. However, the level of control provided by assistive technology after his injury made this challenging.

On his second day with Link, Alex used the CAD software Fusion 360 for the first time and successfully designed a custom holder for his Neuralink charger, which was then 3D printed and integrated into the setup.

Neuralink is working with Alex to make him more productive with Link by mapping intended movements to different types of mouse clicks (e.g. left, right, middle), thereby expanding the number of controls he has and enabling him to quickly switch between various modes in CAD software (e.g. zoom, scroll, pan, click and drag).

Alex used his Link to design a custom stand for the Neuralink charger. On the right side of the screen is a mode switcher.

On the right side of Alex's laptop is the charger stand he designed using Link. This stand is made by 3D printing. Alex likes to play first-person shooter games. This requires the use of a handle. The two joysticks on the handle - one for aiming at the enemy, the other for controlling the character's movement, and a row of buttons for performing different actions. Before Link was implanted, Alex used an auxiliary device called Quadstick to play these games. Quadstick is a joystick operated by the mouth, equipped with a pressure sensor that can sense inhalation and exhalation, and a lip position sensor that acts as a mouse. However, Quadstick only has one joystick, which limits Alex from aiming while moving. Now, with Link installed, Alex no longer has to be a "live target" standing still, opening up a new realm of playing games.

“It’s really cool that I can now just look left and right and have my character run around instead of having to use the Quadstick to move left and right… It just points wherever I look. It’s amazing.” — Alex

From the video, we can see that although Alex is not very skilled in using the mouse, his operation is not much different from that of a player with healthy limbs. When an enemy suddenly appears in front of him, his reaction speed can be said to be very agile. However, some netizens pointed out: "Dude, you still need to practice how to aim." What is certain is that for a "novice" who has just implanted a brain-computer interface, this is already a huge leap.

Image source: https://twitter.com/ajtourville/status/1826370825139687779

Improvements to the Neuron Monitoring Line

Noland, the first recipient of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface, had a problem with the neuron monitoring line falling off, which caused the performance of his brain-computer interface to decline. According to Noland, he felt that using his mind to control the computer cursor to move was not so smooth. At that time, Noland thought that Neuralink was going to remove the device, and he shed tears during an interview with the media. He said: They will only collect some data, and then plan to focus all their energy on the next recipient.

Currently, the wires in Noland's brain have stabilized and the performance of the Link implanted in his brain has been restored. Now, his ability to control the movement of a computer mouse with a brain-computer interface exceeds the previous world record by more than twice. In order to reduce the probability of wire retraction in the second implantee, Neuralink has taken a number of mitigation measures, including reducing brain activity during surgery and reducing the gap between the implant and the brain surface. So far, Alex has not encountered the problem of neural electrode wires falling off.

This reminds us of the vision that Musk mentioned in a live broadcast before. The ultimate goal of brain-computer interface is to allow AI Integration with humans, Musk once mentioned that "if someone loses an arm or a leg, they can actually connect the Optimus robot's arm or leg during the Neuralink implant process, so that the commands of their brain will be transmitted to their robotic arm or leg."

After Neuralink successfully completed its second experiment, Musk said that when the number of patients reaches single digits, Neuralink will launch a product to help the blind restore their vision.

In addition to Musk's high hopes for brain-computer interfaces, the technology has also been implanted in people in China. Not long ago, The Paper reported that "Brain-computer interfaces allow programmers with cerebral hemorrhage to return to work," which sparked a wave of discussion online. Mr. Chen, 38, was an IT engineer. He was hospitalized for a sudden cerebral hemorrhage in May last year. When he was sent to the hospital, he was already slurred and had severe hemiplegia. At that time, many hospitals judged that there was little hope for recovery, and his family was almost on the verge of collapse.

A month later, Mr. Chen began to use the brain-computer interface diagnosis and treatment system. The EEG cap worn on his head can extract the patient's motor consciousness, and then transmit the motor consciousness to the external device. The exoskeleton drives the limbs to move, and the feedback signal is transmitted to the brain through the peripheral nerves. After 42 training sessions, his limbs were gradually able to resume movement. When he was discharged from the hospital, his strength was close to normal, and he was able to return to normal life and his previous job.

However, compared with Musk’s narrative of “mechanical ascension”, Mr. Chen’s story seems to have caused more anxiety among “working people”.

Putting aside the voices of controversy, the application of brain-computer interfaces in medicine is indeed making the stories in "science fiction movies" come true. Prior to this, many domestic brain-computer interface research teams have achieved technological breakthroughs. For example, in June this year, the Haihe Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interaction and Human-Computer Integration of Tianjin University and teams from the Southern University of Science and Technology jointly developed the world's first open source "brain-computer interface on a chip" intelligent interaction system MetaBOC. The "brain-computer interface on a chip" aims to cultivate the brain in vitro through stem cell technology to achieve "mind control." This team has achieved the goal of allowing an artificial "brain" to control a robot to perform tasks such as obstacle avoidance, tracking, and grasping.

Related research results were accepted by Brain magazine

In April this year, the Zhejiang University Brain-Computer Interface Team achieved for the first time that a patient with high paraplegia could control theRobotic ArmAlthough writing Chinese characters has been achieved before, writing English letters is more difficult than English. If a horizontal line is not written correctly, it may become another word. This requires a more precise connection between the machine and the brain.

Watching the brain-computer interface designed by the Zhejiang University team help an elderly man with high paraplegia drink Coke smoothly, and Alex, who had received Neuralink treatment, using CAD software to design 3D objects, perhaps science fiction movies are about to become reality.

^{Reference link: https://neuralink.com/blog/prime-study-progress-update-second-participant/}