'Elon Musk Put A Chip In My Brain - And Now I Can Use A Computer With My Mind'

An accident left Noland Arbaugh paralysed but after agreeing to become the first human recipient of a Neuralink implant, he can chat with friends and learn Japanese, all through the power of his mind. Zoé Beaty hears his life-changing story

- Zoé Beaty

Noland Arbaugh was face down, floating on the surface of the water when he realised he could no longer move. Up until that point, it had been a beautiful day. He and his friends had arrived at the lake, surrounded by the lush hills of northeastern Pennsylvania, hours before, ready to swim on a day off from working at a children’s summer camp.

The 22-year-old had already been in the water once but headed in with a couple of pals for a second time. At waist height, he pushed off and submerged himself into the water alongside the others, except he never surfaced. When he regained consciousness, he was already drowning. Arbaugh sensed he was paralysed, saying: “I thought, is there anything I can do? No. So what’s next? I held my breath for as long as I could, probably five or 10 seconds. Then I took a big drink of water, and that was that. I blacked out.”

He slipped in and out of consciousness while an air ambulance arrived, only fully waking up in the nearby hospital where he was rushed in for emergency surgery. Two vertebrae in his neck were dislocated and a nurse, on the phone to his mum, was instructed by Arbaugh not to tell her what had happened to him. “I just didn’t think it was worth her worrying,” he says.