Man, 67, with ALS becomes the 10th person in the world to receive a brain chip that allows him to control computers with his MIND – as Elon Musk’s Neuralink just implanted the first human last month

A man with Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as ALS, has become the tenth person to receive a brain chip that allows him to take control of his life using only his mind.

Mark, 67, was diagnosed in 2020 and has slowly lost his physical abilities, such as accessing his phone or feeding himself, but that will soon change after he received the Synchron brain-computer interface (BCI) last August.

ALS is a disease that causes nerve cells to deteriorate and results in muscle weakness and reduced dexterity until the person eventually becomes paralyzed. The entire process can take two to five years, and there is no cure.

Mark can now send health alerts or pain reports to his healthcare provider simply by having the BIC read his brain waves and translate them into actions performed on a computer.

Soon he will be able to use his thoughts for more exciting tasks such as switching on Netflix and texting family and friends.

Mark went into the process feeling like it was a no-brainer for him.

“I thought I had two choices: I could wallow in self-pity, or I could take myself by the hand and do what I could to help,” he said. CNN.

Stentrode is known as the least invasive brain chip on the market, competing with Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip, which was approved by the FDA last May and just implanted the first human in January.

Synchron received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct human trials of the permanently implantable device in 2021.

Mark, who has two daughters and one granddaughter, works as a florist He plans to retire soon and continued lifting buckets of water and boxes of flowers until his muscles began to weaken and it became too difficult to continue.

Two years after his diagnosis, driving became too challenging and he eventually moved in with his brother and his brother’s family, mourning the loss of his independence.

“It was a tough pill to swallow,” Mark said. ‘I still consider myself young.’

He continued, “I lived alone for thirteen years, so I was used to doing everything on my own.”

Although Mark has lost many of his dexterities, such as picking up a pencil or scrolling through a phone, he can still talk, but that may change over time.

In addition to sending health-related notes, he can play a ping-pong type video game, in which he must concentrate intently to move the bar and relax his mind to prevent it from moving.

In 2021, Musk released a video shows a monkey implanted with a Neuralink chip doing the same thing.

The brain chip, about the size of a paperclip, is implanted in the motor cortex of the brain, which generates signals to control the body’s movement.

Implantation requires a “minimally invasive” procedure that involves making a small “keyhole” incision in the neck, similar to inserting stents into the heart.

Once in place, it expands and presses the electrodes against the vessel wall close to the brain, where it can record neural signals.

A separate transmitter, similar to a pacemaker, is surgically placed in the chest cavity and receives signals from the BCI when it recognizes an intended movement, such as clicking somewhere on a computer screen.

The person must be connected to the computer to pick up the signal, but researchers hope that the device could eventually be connected via a wireless signal.

It took Mark two months to recover from the chip implant before the Synchron team could turn him on, but it took another month for the device to work.

“There were some cheers,” Mark told CNN. “We had tried and tried, but it didn’t work very well, and then it finally worked.”

The BCI cannot work at full capacity right away, but must become acquainted with the Mark’s specific brain waves that control their mobility.

Brain waves are connected to every physical function you have, whether it’s shaking a hand, taking a step or reading a book: there is an electrical signature that connects thought and action.

The Stentrode works by identifying what each electrical signature is and acts as a dictionary to decipher the person’s intent so they can perform the function.

Mark told CNN that part of being a test subject means having patience, adding, “Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way we want.”

But “part of our involvement in an investigation is that we are here to learn, we are here to advance the technology,” he continued.

Mark’s ongoing journey with Synchron accompanies the growing list of people testing brain chip implants to help them overcome crippling diseases.

Researchers at Stanford University conducted a study on ALS victim Pat Bennett, who had lost her ability to speak eight years earlier.

The study, published by Nature, did not specify which brain chip Bennett tested, but said she could communicate at a speed of 62 words per minute, three times faster than previous records, with an accuracy of 75 percent.

But according to a 2021 Pew Research Center report, not everyone is excited about the idea of ​​having a chip implanted in their brain. questionnaire asking Americans if they supported the devices and would allow people to “process information faster and more accurately.”

Although more than half of American adults surveyed said it would be bad for society if such a device existed, an overwhelming majority (77 percent) said they would support brain chips if they helped people who are paralyzed.

“Neurotechnology is advancing at warp speed,” António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, said at a conference. international conference on the ethics of neurotechnology in July.

“This progress is a cause for celebration – and a reason for caution. We must safeguard ethical standards and ensure the full protection of human rights.”

The UN meeting came on the heels of Musk’s Neuralink chip gaining FDA approval to replace a piece of the skull with the brain chip, a much more invasive method than Synchron’s Stentrode.

The first human received a Neuralink chip implant last month, and Musk reported that early results showed a promising spike in neuron detection.

Musk said the patient was able to move a mouse across the screen using only his thoughts and hopes the device will expand to eventually allow people to control a computer by thinking.

Experts believed that it would be a good thing to have numerous companies working on improving BCI technology, citing the need for different brain chips to support different functions.

“They’re all a little different,” Oxley told CNN, eventually adding, “competition is good.”

As a result of the arms race to create better BCIs, he said we’ll likely see many “different types of technologies emerging for different use cases.”