Engineers soak implants in warm saline and other harsh conditions so that months in the lab stand in for years in the body.
These pulses, also called spikes, last about a millisecond and are the main signal a Neuralink implant records. The pattern of spikes across many neurons carries what a person intends to do.
Musk argues that people communicate at only about 100 bits per second while computers exchange trillions, and that a high-bandwidth BCI would help humans keep pace with AI (Neura Pod, September 2026).
Brad Smith, patient 3, was Neuralink's first participant with ALS and uses his implant to type and to speak through an AI copy of his voice. ALS participants also join the VOICE trial, where the implant reads speech directly, and Lee Marten became the first Canadian with ALS to receive an implant in May 2026.
In 2020 it showed Gertrude the pig with an implant reading signals from her snout, and in 2021 Pager the monkey played the video game Pong with his mind. The animal program has also drawn criticism, including FDA findings at Neuralink's animal lab reported by Reuters in 2024 (Fierce Biotech).
Telepathy only reads. Blindsight would write, by stimulating the visual cortex, and a future device that does both could let a person move a robotic hand and feel what it touches.
The brain reacts to foreign objects by forming scar tissue around them, which can block signals. Flexible threads and inert materials keep that reaction small.
A camera on a pair of glasses would send images wirelessly to an implant in the visual cortex, which would stimulate neurons to produce points of light called phosphenes. Because it skips the eyes and optic nerve, it could help people whose eyes no longer work. The FDA granted it Breakthrough Device Designation in September 2024 (Neuralink), and as of October 2026 Neuralink's trials page still asks people to join the registry to hear when US trials launch.
A BCI lets a person move a cursor, type, or steer a robotic arm by intending the movement, with no hands involved. Neuralink builds an implanted BCI, which records from electrodes placed inside the brain, while headsets and other noninvasive BCIs read weaker signals through the skull.
Neuralink added it to the conditions for its device-control trials, and GB-PRIME and UAE-PRIME list it in their eligibility (Neuralink).
The slow part, called local field potentials, reflects the combined activity of many neurons near an electrode, and it can add information that spikes alone miss.
Brain signals drift over time, so the decoder needs fresh examples. Neuralink said in October 2026 that participants averaged 55 minutes a week calibrating and that new models trained on 50,000 hours of data cut that time (Neuralink).
It runs at Toronto Western Hospital, part of University Health Network (NCT06700304), and was approved in November 2024. Two men with quadriplegia were implanted there in August and September 2025. In May 2026, Lee Marten, a Vancouver police sergeant with ALS, became the first person to receive threads inserted through the dura (Neura Pod, July 2026).
More channels give the decoder a clearer picture of what the person intends, which is what Elon Musk means by a higher-bandwidth BCI. The N1 has 1,024, Terence (Terry) Mandable's VOICE implant has 3,000, and Neuralink's 2025 roadmap aims for about 10,000 in 2027 and 25,000 in 2028 (Summer 2025 update).
Neuralink announced CONVOY in November 2024, and participants join from PRIME (NCT06710626). Alex Conley was the first to control the arm, and Nick Wray, who has ALS, used it to feed himself and scratch an itch, according to Neuralink. In September 2026 LeBrain James, patient 23, took his robotic arm to an Ohio State football game.
In a Neuralink surgery the neurosurgeon opens a coin-sized hole, the R1 robot inserts the threads, and the N1 implant fills the opening in place of the removed bone.
The chip amplifies the tiny brain signals, converts them to digital data, and detects spikes using very little power. In June 2026 the Korea Economic Daily reported that Samsung will make Neuralink's next-generation chip (KED).
Neuralink released it in June 2025 (Neuralink). It lets engineers browse brain recordings, images, and test logs stored in different formats from one place.
Two implants could record from more of the brain or add a second function. In November 2025 Elon Musk shared a report that Noland Arbaugh hopes to receive a second implant below his spinal injury to help restore leg movement (IBTimes).
Surgeons normally cut through it to reach the brain. Neuralink called it "the brain's armor" when it announced its first insertion through the dura in 2026 (Neuralink).
PRIME is one, which is why it enrolls a few participants at a time and follows each for years. The PRIME brochure describes an 18-month primary study followed by 5 years of long-term follow-up.
PEDOT is a conductive plastic that lowers impedance for recording, and iridium oxide carries more charge for safe stimulation. Neuralink's 2019 white paper tested both on its threads.
Lower impedance lets faint signals through with less noise. Engineers measure it during and after surgery to check that each electrode made good contact.
The N1 has 1,024 electrodes spread across its threads (PRIME study brochure). The size and shape of each contact decide how clearly it hears individual neurons, and coatings lower the electrical resistance at the contact so faint signals come through.
Neuralink's 2019 white paper describes threads made of polyimide, a flexible plastic, only 4 to 6 micrometers thick, far thinner than a human hair. Because they bend with the brain as it moves, they do less damage than the rigid needle arrays used in older BCIs. The surgical robot places each thread at a planned depth in the cortex, the brain's outer layer.
Neuralink received an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE), the FDA permission to test an unapproved device in a trial, in May 2023 and opened PRIME recruitment that September (Neura Pod). An IDE is different from approval for sale, which no Neuralink device has yet. Internal projections reported by Bloomberg in July 2025 aimed for Telepathy approval in 2029.
It runs at University College London Hospitals and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals (NCT07127172). The first UK participant, Paul, controlled a computer within hours of his surgery in October 2025, and seven people had been implanted in London by the end of that year. Jon Noble, patient 18, is the fifth UK participant.
Moisture would corrode the chip, so the seal has to last for years. A Neuralink patent published in June 2026 describes an enclosure made of PCTFE, a tough plastic pressed around the threads with heat to seal them in (Neura Pod).
Neuralink's trials are medical, and it has announced no date for a device for healthy users. Musk has said enhancement is a long-term aim.
A charging coil held near the head creates a magnetic field that the implant turns back into electricity, the same principle as a wireless phone charger.
They are CAN-PRIME in Toronto, GB-PRIME in London and Newcastle, and UAE-PRIME in Abu Dhabi. Each needs approval from its own country's regulator, and the trial sites list shows which hospitals have reported implants.
The needle engages the loop, carries the thread to its planned depth, then pulls back and leaves the thread in the brain, as shown in Neuralink's 2019 white paper.
Telepathy implants go into the part of the motor cortex that controls the hand and arm. After a spinal cord injury the motor cortex still fires when a person tries to move, so the implant can read the intention even though the message never reaches the muscles.
The N1 fills a small opening cut in the skull and connects to flexible threads that reach into the brain. Early implants carried 1,024 electrodes on 64 threads, according to the PRIME study brochure, and later ones use 128 thinner threads. It runs on a battery charged wirelessly and sends its data over Bluetooth to a phone or computer.
In September 2026, Neuralink said the implant in VOICE participant Terence (Terry) Mandable has 3,000 channels, the first time it has reported that many in a person (Neura Pod, September 2026).
Neuralink's privacy policy says data from clinical trials is governed by the trial protocol, each participant's informed consent, and, where applicable, HIPAA authorization forms. It has not published technical details of how the implant's wireless link is secured.
Decoders are machine learning models trained on each participant's own brain data. They run in real time, so a delay of even a fraction of a second would make the cursor feel sluggish.
In October 2026 Neuralink reported pretraining on more than 50,000 hours of unlabeled brain data streamed by its participants (Neuralink). The same approach powers chatbots, which learn general patterns first and specific tasks second.
The idea comes from Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, and Elon Musk used it around 2016 to describe the device he wanted to build, which became Neuralink.
Neuralink reported 21 Neuralnauts enrolled worldwide on January 28, 2026 (Neuralink). Many post about their implants on X, and Neura Pod tracks them on the patient table.
He was paralyzed from the shoulders down in a 2016 accident and was implanted on January 28, 2024, at Barrow Neurological Institute. He has since returned to college to study neuroscience, according to Neuralink, and by October 2026 he had used his implant for more than 9,000 hours (Neuralink). Read his profile.
Neuralink's long-term goal is an implant surgery as quick and routine as LASIK eye surgery. Faster robots such as Rev10 and insertion through the dura are steps toward that goal.
Anyone can apply at neuralink.com/patient-registry. Neuralink lists quadriplegia from spinal cord injury, ALS, or brain stem stroke for its device-control trials, and it keeps a separate list for its future vision trials. Joining is a first step for screening and does not guarantee a place in a study.
Blindsight would build images out of phosphenes. Elon Musk has said the first images will look like early Atari graphics and should sharpen as the implants gain electrodes.
The US study (NCT06429735) enrolls adults aged 22 to 75 with quadriplegia from spinal cord injury or ALS. Noland Arbaugh received the first implant on January 28, 2024, at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. Sister studies run as CAN-PRIME in Canada, GB-PRIME in the UK, and UAE-PRIME in the United Arab Emirates, and Neura Pod's patient table lists 27+ people implanted across Neuralink's trials as of October 2026.
It usually comes from a spinal cord injury in the neck, ALS, or a brain stem stroke, the three conditions Neuralink lists for its device-control trials (Neuralink).
A needle thinner than a hair hooks each thread, pushes it into the cortex at a planned depth, and pulls back out while cameras track the brain's surface to steer around blood vessels. A neurosurgeon opens the skull and oversees the procedure, and the robot handles the thread insertion that is too fine for human hands. Its newest version is called Rev10.
Neuralink has said Rev10 inserts a thread in about 1.5 seconds, down from about 17 seconds on the earlier robot (36Kr). It was built to place threads straight through the dura, the tough membrane around the brain, which Neuralink did for the first time in May 2026. Elon Musk has compared the goal to LASIK eye surgery, a fast procedure run mostly by a machine (Neura Pod, January 2026).
Implanted electrodes can get close enough to separate one neuron from its neighbors, which skull-surface and headset BCIs cannot do.
VOICE implants go here. When a participant attempts a sentence, the neurons still fire even if the muscles no longer respond, and the decoder turns that activity into words (Neura Pod, September 2026).
The N1's chip detects spikes on board and sends only those events, instead of the full raw recording, which saves power and wireless bandwidth (2019 white paper). The detection threshold can be tuned for each electrode.
One electrode can hear several neighboring neurons, and sorting separates them by the shape of their pulses.
Higher yield means more usable channels for the decoder, so it is one way engineers judge how well an implant and its surgery worked.
An injury in the neck can cause quadriplegia. Most Neuralink participants have a spinal cord injury, and the implant reads the brain's movement commands above the injury and sends them to a computer instead.
Neuralink filed for Telepathy, Telekinesis, and Blindsight in March 2025 (MobiHealthNews). The CONVOY robotic arm work is the closest current example.
Participants start by attempting to move their hand, and within minutes many stop thinking about the hand and simply move the cursor, according to Neuralink. They use it to browse, study, game, make art, design in CAD software, and type at up to 40 words per minute. Neuralink filed to trademark the name in March 2025.
In January 2026, Neuralink said it was "exploring mechanical features to improve thread retention" so that signals hold steady over the years (Neuralink). It has not yet published the design.
It happened to many of Noland Arbaugh's threads in early 2024, and software changes restored his control. After surgical changes, Neuralink reported higher signal quality in 18 of the next 20 participants and said it is still improving how threads stay in place (Neuralink).
Neuralink did it for the first time on May 20, 2026, in Lee Marten's surgery at Toronto Western Hospital with neurosurgeon Andres Lozano (Neuralink). Leaving the dura intact makes the surgery less invasive and faster, and dye and cameras keep blood vessels in view while the threads go in.
Brain implants are often discussed as part of it, and the idea raises questions about fairness, consent, and who gets access first.
Neuralink announced it in May 2025 with Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi as the site (NCT06992596). It is listed as recruiting, and as of October 2026 Neura Pod has seen no public report of an implant there.
The R1 uses cameras and software to map surface vessels and choose insertion points between them, as described in Neuralink's 2019 white paper. Avoiding vessels lowers the risk of bleeding.
The study runs at UT Southwestern in Dallas (NCT07224256) and enrolls adults with severe speech loss from ALS, stroke, or similar conditions. The implant goes into the speech motor cortex, and Neuralink's stated goal is 140 words per minute, close to normal conversation (Neuralink). In September 2026 the third participant, Terence (Terry) Mandable, spoke to his wife in a voice rebuilt from recordings made before ALS (Neuralink video).
A grid of squares lights up one target at a time, and the player clicks it as fast and accurately as possible. Anyone can play it at neuralink.com/webgrid and compare their score with Neuralink participants.
The implant uses Bluetooth Low Energy, the same low-power radio as earbuds and fitness trackers, to reach a phone or computer. Nothing passes through the skin, which lowers infection risk and lets participants use it in bed or in a wheelchair.
Neuralink participants have typed at up to 40 words per minute by imagining moving their 10 fingers, and the VOICE trial aims for 140, the pace of conversation (Neuralink).