The first person to receive a Neuralink brain implant has apparently recovered and can now control a computer mouse using their thoughts, according to Elon Musk, the company's cofounder. "Progress is good and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of," Musk said on February 19 in a Spaces audio conversation on X, in response to a question about the participant's condition. "[The] patient is able to move a mouse around the screen just by thinking." The neuroscience firm, based in Fremont, California, has been tight-lipped about the testing and development of its brain implant, with updates coming from brief social media posts by the company or Musk himself. Making bold claims in fewer than 280 characters is Musk's usual style, but some scientists WIRED spoke with say the billionaire could stand to be more transparent about his brain implant venture.

From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. It's usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally published October 25th, 2015. We hope you enjoy it!

It does not take an infinite number of monkeys to type a passage of Shakespeare. Instead, it takes a single monkey equipped with brain-sensing technology - and a cheat sheet. That technology, developed by Stanford Bio-X scientists Krishna Shenoy, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, and postdoctoral fellow Paul Nuyujukian, directly reads brain signals to drive a cursor moving over a keyboard. In an experiment conducted with monkeys, the animals were able to transcribe passages from the New York Times and Hamlet at a rate of up to 12 words per minute. Earlier versions of the technology have already been tested successfully in people with paralysis, but the typing was slow and imprecise. This latest work tests improvements to the speed and accuracy of the technology that interprets brain signals and drives the cursor.

"To be or not to be. That is also the text that Monkey J typed out using a brain implant to control a computer cursor. To be clear, the monkey didn't know it was copying Shakespeare, and it had no deep thoughts about Hamlet's famous monologue. Monkey J and its colleague, Monkey L, were both trained to use their neural implants to move a cursor over a computer screen, hitting circles as they turned green. Stanford University researchers placed letters on those targets to simulate the typing task. So to tap out the line from Hamlet, first the "T" circle was illuminated, then the "O," and so on. What was the point of this exercise? Was it simply an excuse to let journalists trot out the "infinite monkey theorem"? Because here we go: This probability theorem states that if you give a monkey a typewriter and infinite time, its random keystrokes will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. No, the bioengineers had a more practical motivation.

You don't need an infinite number of monkeys to type out the complete works of William Shakespeare. What you need, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University, is one monkey equipped with a brain implant that allows it to interface with a computer. In a new experiment described in the journal IEEE, researchers were able to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to enable thought-controlled typing at a rate of up to 12 words a minute -- the highest brain-based typing rate ever achieved. In the experiment conducted on two rhesus macaques, the animals were able to transcribe passages from Hamlet and the New York Times. "Our results demonstrate that this interface may have great promise for use in people. "It enables a typing rate sufficient for a meaningful conversation."

It is often said that, given an infinite amount of time, monkeys hitting random keys on a typewriter will eventually type the works of Shakespeare. While it may seem far fetched, an unusual experiment has achieved the fabled task. To illustrate how paralysed people can type using a device called a'brain-computer interface', scientists used monkeys to show how it can be done. Two rhesus macaque monkeys (stock picture left) had electrodes implanted in part of the brain that controls hand movement. As a result, they were able to type a passage from William Shakespeare's Hamlet The technology uses a multi-electrode array implanted in the brain to directly read signals from a region that directs hand and arm movements used to move a computer mouse.

That was the year she learned to control a Nexus tablet with her brain waves, and literally took her life quality from 1980s DOS to modern era Android OS. A brunette lady in her early 50s, patient T6 suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), which causes progressive motor neuron damage. Mostly paralyzed from the neck down, T6 retains her sharp wit, love for red lipstick and miraculous green thumb. What she didn't have, until recently, was the ability to communicate with the outside world. Like T6, millions of people worldwide have severe paralysis from spinal cord injury, stroke or neurodegenerative diseases, which precludes their ability to speak, write or otherwise communicate their thoughts and intentions to their loved ones.