A mid-day drunk-dial from a friend has changed one man's life forever. Noland Arbaugh, 29, rose to fame after being revealed as Neuralink's first patient to receive its brain chip, but it all started when his friend called slurring his words in September. Arbaugh was paralyzed eight years ago during a diving accident. The friend called Arbaugh to tell him about Elon Musk opening up human trials and urged him to apply and even helped him fill out the form. Just five months after he was approved for the Neuralink trial, Arbaugh had a cutting edge brain chip embedded in his skull.

Elon Musk's brain-chip start-up, Neuralink, has livestreamed a patient appearing to play online chess using only his mind. In a video posted on the X social media platform on Wednesday, Neuralink introduced Noland Arbaugh, 29, as the first human patient to be implanted with its brain-computer interface technology. Arbaugh, who described becoming paralysed from the shoulders down in a diving accident, said that using Neuralink had become "intuitive" after practising imagining moving the cursor on the screen. "Basically, it was like using'the Force' on the cursor, and I could get it to move wherever I wanted. Just stare somewhere on the screen and it would move where I wanted it to, which was such a wild experience the first time it happened," Arbaugh said, referring to the superpowers possessed by the Jedi in the Star Wars films.

Elon Musk's brain-chip startup Neuralink livestreamed on Wednesday its first patient implanted with a chip using his mind to play online chess. Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralyzed below the shoulder after a diving accident, played chess on his laptop and moved the cursor using the Neuralink device. The implant seeks to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using only their thoughts. Arbaugh had received an implant from the company in January and could control a computer mouse using his thoughts, Musk said last month.

Elon Musk's brain-chip startup Neuralink live-streamed its first patient implanted with a chip playing online chess. Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralyzed below the shoulder after a diving accident, was playing chess on his laptop and moving the cursor using the Neuralink device. He had received an implant from the company in January and could control a computer mouse using his thoughts, Musk said last month. "The surgery was super easy," Arbaugh said in the video streamed on Musk's social media platform X, referring to the implant procedure. "I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments."