29-year-old quadriplegic plays chess online using a Brain Computer Interface

by Shahid Ahmed
3/22/2024 – 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh became the first user of Neuralink. He mentioned in the livestream that about eight years ago he had a freak diving accident. It dislocated his C4 and C5 vertebrae, which made him quadriplegic. He is paralysed and has no sensation of movement below the shoulders. Noland controlled a computer cursor with his brain using Brain Computer Interface. Check out this fascinating piece of technology. | Photo: Neuralink
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Brain Computer Interface

Bliss, an engineer at Neuralink, asks 29-year-old quadriplegic, Noland Arbaugh to explain how he is able to control the cursor using his brain.

We started trying out with a few different things. We basically went from what we call kind of differentiating like imagine movement versus attempted movement. So, a lot of what we started out was with attempting to move. I would attempt to move say my right hand, left right forward back... from there I think it just became intuitive for me to start imagining the cursor moving, basically it was like using the force on a 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.

Arbaugh also commented:

I love playing chess, and so this is one of the things that you all have enabled me to do. Something that I wasn't able to do much, the last few years.

Check out the entire livestream on YouTube.

In this course, we will learn how to identify passively placed pieces in any given situation and how to improve their health by bringing them into active squares.

Shahid Ahmed is the senior coordinator and editor of ChessBase India. He enjoys covering chess tournaments and also likes to play in chess events from time to time.
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