Neuralink trial patient plays Nintendo Switch and sets brain implant control record as he beats friends at gaming

The first Neuralink human trial has given a thorough news update on what its quadriplegic participant has been able to achieve with Elon Musk's brain-computer interface (BCI) implant.

Starting with the important things first, the first Neuralink patient has been able to play Mario on a Nintendo Switch console, a gaming experience he hasn't had since his diving accident.

"Y'all are giving me too much, it's like a luxury overload, I haven't been able to do these things in 8 years and now I don't know where to even start allocating my attention," says Noland Arbaugh, the Neuralink PRIME Study participant.

Previous solutions like controlling a tablet cursor with his mouth were less than ergonomic and even led to sores and muscle spasms as he had to be sitting for a prolonged period.

At 8 bits-per-second (BPS), Noland has now set an absolute record of controlling a cursor with his mind only, all while lying comfortably. He is now aiming to beat the 10 BPS pace that Neuralink engineers are able to achieve with a regular mouse.

"The Link is able to distinguish left and right clicks and allows cursor control sufficiently precise to select targets similar in size to the smallest icons and buttons on a laptop screen," says the team, explaining how Noland is able to do things on his MacBook just by thinking about them.

After the laptop control and gameplay achievements, the researchers are now looking to move to text entry and leveling up the cursor movements to the speed and precision of regular mouse users.

Perhaps the most remarkable piece of Neuralink news in the new human trial status update, however, is that the PRIME study team was able to achieve all this with fewer electrodes than originally placed.

Some of the 1024 implanted electrodes retracted from the brain while the Neuralink device surgery was healing, and Noland's BPS score went down.

"In response to this change, we modified the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to neural population signals, improved the techniques to translate these signals into cursor movements, and enhanced the user interface," say the researchers, leading to the current record high brain-computer interface BPS cursor control speed.

"I’m beating my friends in games that as a quadriplegic I should not be beating them in," added Noland.

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