Elon Musk’s Neuralink has successfully implanted its chip in a second patient who has a spinal cord injury, similar to the first patient who received the brain-computer interface device earlier this year. The device gives paralysed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone. 

Musk provided an update about the second patient in a podcast saying they were paralysed in a diving accident and that 400 of the implant’s electrodes were already working.

According to the company, its implants are designed to record neural activity through 1,024 electrodes distributed across 64 flexible leads, or “threads,” each of which are thinner than a human hair and capable of being placed independently in the brain.

“I don’t want to jinx it but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant. There’s a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It’s working very well,” Musk told podcast host Lex Fridman. 

Musk added that Neuralink was planning to implant the device in eight more patients within the year as part of the clinical trials. 

Noland Arbaugh became the first man to receive the implant in January this year. Shortly after the implantation surgery, Arbaugh’s neural signals were detected and since then, he has used the brain-computer interface (BCI) for various applications, like playing online chess and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI.

Arbaugh said the technology had helped him ‘reconnect’ with the world. 

“[The Link] has helped me reconnect with the world, my friends, and my family. It’s given me the ability to do things on my own again without needing my family at all hours of the day and night,” he said, as quoted in the Neuralink blog post.

Prior to receiving the implant, Arbaugh used a computer by employing a stick in his mouth to tap the screen of a tablet device. However, now, he needs to only think about what he wants to happen on the computer screen. 

(With inputs from agencies)