The Chris Cuomo Project - Noland Arbaugh’s Journey From Trauma to Technological Triumph with Neuralink

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Chris Cuomo interviews Noland Arbaugh, the first patient to receive Elon Musk’s Neuralink implant. Arbaugh, who was left quadriplegic following a severe spinal cord injury at a summer camp, shares his extraordinary journey of being selected for this groundbreaking project. They delve into the revolutionary potential of brain-computer interfaces, Arbaugh’s path from injury to innovation, and the future possibilities for those with spinal cord injuries. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is possible with science and our bodies? How far can we go? What can we really do to augment, to substitute, to enhance? Nolan Arbaugh. Do you know that name? This kid is at the cutting edge of the answer to these questions. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. If I seem excited, it's

because I am. Not only do I really like who you're gonna get to meet today, but I am totally fascinated with why you're gonna meet him. Nolan Arbaugh is like a lot of people who had a traumatic injury that left him as a quadriplegic. Okay, literally he can only after a couple of years of recovery flex one bicep a little bit. I think it's a great one, but it doesn't matter. He then gets introduced to Elon Musk's Neuralink and his whole life has changed and maybe hours as well. I have never met anybody who is participating in and showing what Nolan Arbaugh is. In a weird way, what ended

his normal life began a usefulness to humanity which may exceed anything that he had ever dreamed of. This is somebody who allowed Elon Musk to put a device in their head and turns out it was the least crazy thing he could have ever done. Welcome to my friend, Nolan Arbaugh, and his amazing story from before, after, Elon and UFOs. Support for The Chris Pullmo Project comes from ReadyWise. We've all seen that one event can really change your reality. Hurricanes, 100-year storms that happen like every three years, power outage, who knows about civil strife. You never know what's going to happen these days. It's crucial to be prepared.

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It is good to see you again my friend. You too, you too. Thanks for having me on. Um before I want to start at the beginning and I want to dig in for everybody. But the geek factor is just so high. This is so cool. So before we start at the beginning, I just want to jump in for a second and say, how has life changed for you with all the media attention and fascination about Neuralink and what it has done for you, could do for you, and can do for others? Yeah, it's definitely opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me, just as far as what I'm able to do on a day to day basis and what I feel like is going to be possible in the years to come.

The media attention has been fun. It hasn't affected me too much. I would say the really one of the main things that it's done for me is just wear me out a little bit, run me down a bit, because I've been doing so much. But I don't feel like I gain a lot from that. I am really happy to spread the news, share my story, hopefully reach out to people and give them some hope for the future. And I think that that's the most important thing. Share my faith, obviously, and just show people what kind of person I am. But my life is fairly similar still in a lot of different ways.

I mean, I'm still a quadriplegic. I still have to do everything that I do on a day-to-day basis to make sure that I stay healthy and that I'm well taken care of. I may have to make sure that, you know, my family's taken care of sure that I stay healthy and that I'm well taken care of. I may have to make sure that you know, my family's taken care of that I'm not asking too much of them and You know, it's just it was weird going into this I thought there would be this massive change in my life as far as I don't know just

Just how things looked day to day, but it's not really the case. Um, obviously I do stuff with Neuralink every day and I do media and that's way different, but like I said, I still have to, still have to take care of myself as a quadriplegic. And so it's so it's hard to get caught up in all the media and get caught up in all of the attention stuff when I have to do all of that still. But it definitely gives me a lot of hope for the future. And I think that's what keeps me going always is just knowing that what I'm doing now will directly affect people in like to come and hopefully make their lives better and hopefully I pray that they

through this work they won't have to go through the things that I've had to go through. What do you think is possible in terms of changing the reality for people who sustain injuries like you? I mean my vision, I think it's a hundred percent possible, is that someone will get a spinal cord injury and go into the hospital, get the Neuralink implant, maybe something like it. It doesn't necessarily have to be Neuralink. I know that because of this, a lot of other technologies will come out and things just in the field will get better. So, I know... Sorry. So, what I was saying is someone could get

a sustained spinal cord injury, go into the hospital, get surgery, and walk out a few hours later, a day later. I think that it's very possible. I think that people that have been living with spinal cord injuries could have that completely cured. I don't see why it's not possible. I don't know the exact implementation yet. I have a general idea. You put an implant in the brain, maybe two implants to cover the motor cortex on both sides and then you put one in the spinal cord below the level of injury and it sends signals and bypasses the spinal cord injury. And that just it makes sense. I've seen studies like this outside of Neuralink where they're doing similar

things. I think there are already people in the world who have something along those lines. I think it's not as high tech as Neuralink, but I have a lot of hope for the future. Going from the beginning. Okay. Who was Nolan? What was life for Nolan before all of this? Yeah, I mean, I was a super active guy.

I grew up in Yuma, Arizona. Uh, it's not a whole lot of opportunity here. Um, we live in the middle of the desert. Like right now, I think outside it's probably close to like 115 degrees. It's like 117 yesterday, the dry heat. So it's a bit better, but, um, I grew up being outdoors all the time, doing everything. I played every sport. I hunted. I fished.

I played just about everything in high school. Every season, I tried something new. I quit playing football after my sophomore year just so I could try a different sport in the fall. I picked up golf just to try it out. Did like the chess team. I did academic decathlon, all sorts of stuff. And,

you know, just just really wanted to get my hands on anything I could. I was incredibly active in my church. I was like a student leader in my church. I did that since I was a little kid. I don't know. I was just always the one getting my friends together, getting us out and doing things and trying to have us enjoy our lives as much as possible. And I think we did. I think I had a great life growing up. And then I went to college at Texas A&M, wanted to get out of the heat. And then I went to college at Texas A&M,

wanted to get out of the heat. And so I decided to go to Texas, which makes no sense. But I don't know. I'm just not that bright, I guess. But Texas A&M, I went and visited the campus with my best friend and my girlfriend at the time, just for them more. And I fell in love

with it I I didn't want to be anywhere else and so I set my mind on going there and I made it I was a terrible student I partied a lot and I didn't focus on school enough but I studied abroad I bartended in college I still did a lot worked at a summer camp over the summers I mean I just did like I said as much as I could get my hands on and then right after my senior year of college I had my accident at that summer camp. What did you want to do with your life before your accident? So much everything I mean immediately before my accident my plan was to just go be a traveling like hobo basically go do like odd jobs for

different seasons. I think immediately after my summer camp I was gonna go work at like a ski resort up in Canada or something and then I wanted to try to find my way to Europe and work some odd jobs around Europe before coming back to camp. But I had thrown a lot of things around joining the military at Texas A&M. I was in military school, so I could have done that. I was used to the world. My biological father was in the Marine Corps, so it kind of made sense to me. My older brother is in the Army, so it all kind of fit. Uh, I thought about teaching, becoming like a professor. Um, there was just a lot. I knew that I could put, knew that I could do anything I put my mind to.

So it was just a lot of finding my way and finding what, you know, drove me at that particular time, but nothing, nothing really stood out to me as a singular objective, it was just, I wanted to me as a singular objective. It was just I wanted to try as much as possible. How long on are you now from the injury? Yeah, it was eight years about a week ago. So you still mark time from the injury. How have you have you made peace?

Do you not like to think about it? Do you think about it all the time? I wouldn't say I think about it all the time, but it's definitely like my life. So it's hard for it not to just be on my mind all the time. You know, at the beginning, for the first three, four, five years, even maybe I had this internal monologue with myself. Um, there's a lady, a very famous spinal cord injury advocate, um advocate who used to say that she was, she found like happiness

in her situation essentially is what it boils down to. And I used to argue that with myself that it's impossible for anyone with a spinal cord injury to ever be truly happy. I don't think, I didn't think it was possible because at any given point, if you ask someone if they would rather not be paralyzed, then they would say, obviously not, make me better, heal me. I don't want to be paralyzed anymore. And so I thought, what kind of happiness? Because you possibly find in a life where you're always settling for something you don't, like a situation you don't want to be in.

So it was really hard to get over that mental barrier. It was really hard to convince myself of the good that was around me and how blessed I was in a lot of different ways and to find peace with my situation and to be happy in my situation. I still mark time every year. And on June 30th, I think it just hits me harder than I ever think it will. Maybe because I just don't feel that I've accomplished a whole lot. I feel like I can do more and I feel like I want to do more.

And every year that goes by is another year that I realize that maybe I didn't do as much as I wanted to and how much the injury is holding me back. So it's hard. I would say I'm at peace, but it's really not something that ever, I don't know that I'm ever going to be able to fully conquer. I feel like I do some days, I think that it's all my past,

but then, you know, June 30th rolls around and I'm just kind of hit by a truck again. I don't know, it's hard. Stepping sideways as an older brother, you know, or you need't know, it's hard. Stepping sideways as an older brother, you know or you need to know, all that matters is the desire for more and better. As long as you have the drive for more and better, the rest you're gonna figure out.

What you need to fear in life is indifference. What you need to fear in life is a lack of ambition, a lack of drive, I'm useless, all those kinds of things which may be easier to arrive at as a quadriplegic or a paraplegic or somebody with a significant injury, but it's a human condition as well. And that's why the combination of your injury and your faith has always been very interesting to me. People go one of two ways, right?

Either their faith becomes integral to their existence and their understanding of their existence post-trauma, or they don't have any use for it and they do not want to hear about it and they give you that look like you're not going to talk to me about how God is good, right? You're not going to do that to me. You're not arrogant enough to do that with me, right? So you obviously have invested in your faith. Why? Why? Yeah. Um, so like I said, I, I grew up in the church and I, I've had this conversation with God since I was young. Basically, I always knew in my heart, I told God no matter what I do, no matter the mistakes I make, no matter if I am angry at you, if I yell at you, if I feel like I hate you in that

moment, if I run from you as fast and as far as I can, I always knew that I would come back to God because in my heart, in like my core, I knew that he is the truth and there's nothing, there's no other way. And I always knew that. And that was very, very foundational to the core of my person. I didn't live that way. I definitely thought when I went to college that, you know, I definitely thought when I went to college that, you know, when I was in high school, all of my youth leaders would say, you know, don't make the mistakes I've made. Don't do this, don't do that. And my only thought was how hypocritical of you to go and do all of these things and then tell us not to do them.

I think it's our place to go out and experience them and learn those mistakes for ourselves. Obviously, that's just a young person wanting to go out and do whatever they want to do. I think it would have been a whole lot more impressive if I could take that and say, you know, that's a good advice. I see that it affected you Maybe I should do that to you, but I wasn't wise enough then but I got to college and I just lived my life The way that I wanted to live it and I knew that at some point at some point I would come back around in my mind I had I had it all worked out. I said, okay, I'll go to college I'll spend like my 20s falling around do whatever do whatever I want. And then around like 30, I'll settle down and I'll come back to God because he's always going to be there.

Now he's always going to be there for me. And I know that I can, I can find my way back at any point and have a nice fulfilling life with God and start a family and stuff. Um, and my injury happened and I, you know, it just, it made sense to me that my injury would happen when it did. It just, everything sort of fell in line in my mind. Like I could see the outline of my life. I can see what God was doing with me and how arrogant I had been. And I knew that he was always my only way out of this world. And especially after my accident, he was the only way that I was going to make it through this. And he blessed me

with an amazing family and friends to help me get through it all. But I don't know, just the deeper you search into God, into his word, you study, the more profound this love and acceptance and salvation becomes. And it's something that you can't you can't turn away from it's even in my situation in my as a quadriplegic I know that I would much rather be healed but I don't think I've ever been as at peace as I was even going into that surgery for Neuralink I I've never been at peace like that. And that was as a quadriplegic going into brain surgery. And I was just so full of joy and that's all God.

And I've seen the things that he's done for me, the things that happen around my accident, you can see God's fingerprints in all of it. Me getting into Neuralink, you can see God's fingerprints in all of it. Me getting into Neuralink, you can see God's fingerprints in all of it. I mean, there's just so much, there's so much, and I can go on and on and on, but he is the only reason I'm here. I don't know.

So you weren't punished. This is the path. Yeah. And it takes a very adventurous soul to allow people to take the last thing they have control over and let them dig into it and stick something in it where they kind of know what's gonna happen once they do.

That is a ballsy person who allows that to happen. And by all estimates, that is a ballsy person who allows that to happen. And by all estimates, that's you. So you have your injury. Yes. You're just like everybody else who winds up a quadriplegic from a traumatic injury. How long and what was it like before Neuralink? Yeah. And what was it like before? Neuralink yeah, it was over seven years

For the first cheese five six years I Was getting by I was never very depressed That was one thing that you know, I just assumed would happen but it didn't really come on like I expected or maybe even at all. There were bad days here and there where I didn't want to do anything, especially around the time of June 30th when a year rolled around. Two years was really hard because after two years they say, that's basically it.

Your body has done all of the healing that it's probably going to do. So after two years when I was left with what I'm left with, it was really really hard. Had you regained anything? I regained a bit of like bicep strength and that's about it. My right bicep. I can like flex my right bicep and move my like right arm just a tiny bit like anti-gravity. It's not much, which is part of the reason why I was accepted in Neuralink because they needed someone who didn't have much, um, control in their limbs, uh, didn't have much strength

in their limbs. Why? I, I just think it had, it was one of the requirements, one of the things that they had laid out that they wanted to, the criteria that they had laid out for the first participant. I don't know exactly why. I think maybe it has something to do with wanting someone to be able, wanting someone with less control to really show the functionality of the Neuralink.

Um, if it's someone with more hand control, uh, with stronger like hands and more like kind of quadriplegic sometimes can have a lot varying on levels of like control of their, uh, limbs and stuff. So some are a lot more capable, um, we'll say with their hands and stuff. Um, I think they wanted to show more that it was all mind power. That's my only guess. I've never really asked. How did you learn about Neuralink and what did you think when you first did?

Yeah, I learned about it literally the day that I applied. My buddy called me and was like, do you want a chip in your brain? I was like, sure, why not? And so then he walked me through what Neuralink was and I was like, yeah, I guess I'll apply. Didn't think I would get it. It's super high profile. Elon Musk's name is attached to it.

Um, how did he know the friend? Uh, he just kind of followed the Elon Musk sphere a lot. He said he was actually Googling something about like SpaceX that day. And, uh, it just happened to pop happen to be the day that Neuralink could open up their human trials and so it happened to pop up and so he instantly thought of me because he's been a huge part of my life since this since my accident and um so yeah I didn't didn't know anything about it and applied for the day they open up the trials and, uh,

you know, rest is history. Why did you apply for it? I mean, first and foremost, I didn't think I was going to get it. I like joked around a lot on my application, but then I also thought it would be great to be able to be more independent if it worked. I had visions of what it would be capable of doing and I thought that sounds amazing. And I knew that being a part of studies like this will only help the field grow and help people like me down the road. I had applied for like a huge database of studies a few years prior and never heard back from anyone,

which is why I never thought I would get anything like this. But I always had that drive to help. I always had that drive to be a part of something, to put my body on the line in some way in order to progress the field and help people. How long before you heard and what did you think when you did? So I heard back from them within a day or two for interviews, and then it was a month later when I had my first big full body scans, blood tests, everything at the hospital. And then a month after that, I think is when they told me I was going to be one of the candidates.

They didn't tell me I was the first candidate because they were still looking for other people. One of the candidates they didn't tell me I was the first candidate because they were still looking for other people They were looking for better options or more options. I guess Just a way Like me against someone else, but that ended up not happening. So within G September October November December three and a half months Not even maybe just a little over three months They had told me I was the first candidate and the They had told me I was the first candidate. And the day they told me I was the first candidate, I think within three weeks I was having surgery. And it was cool. I was really excited. I was really happy that they had chosen me.

It was, you know, pros and cons. Like you said, I'm letting someone root around in the last part of me that I feel like I have that I have control over So that was a bit daunting um, but I knew I always wanted to help and I was just I don't know. I was excited to be a part of something so Um historic, I mean Who wouldn't right? Did well, I know people who would like your parents, you know

And the people who care about you who were like, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, we almost lost you once. And, you know, whatever, who knows what they think about Elon Musk and this is an experiment, that's all you need to know. And they're going to root around in your head, not your arms.

It'd be one thing if they wanted to like, hey, do you mind if we put this on your spine? Because it's like, well, what are they going to root around in your head, not your arms. It'd be one thing if they wanted to like, hey, do you mind if we put this on your spine? Cause it's like, well, what are they going to do to me? You know? Exactly. So did anybody try to put the brakes on? Yeah, not my parents. My parents asked a lot of questions

and I answered them to the best of my ability. We had lots and lots of long talks about that, but they were always really supportive because they always knew that whatever I wanted to do, they would support me. They know that I think through everything that I do, at least everything of this caliber, I would think through and really do my due diligence. Some of my friends were not as supportive. A few of my friends were excited for me, but a few of them gave me a lot of pushback.

I don't know that any of my friends really like Elon Musk. A lot of my buddies do from college, but my friends that I grew up with in high school, I don't think any of them really like him. And so, you know, like one of them sent me all of like the negative Press that had been coming out about like the monkeys study the whole monkey report about all the terrible things that they did the monkeys and You know like other people talking about like Elon Musk saying that all of the monkeys were terminal

And then someone came out and said, that's not true at all. Like, you aren't just using terminal monkeys for this study. There are a lot of things that they were sending me like, hey, don't do this. One of my friends said exactly what you were saying. We just don't want to lose you and we don't think that it's like you need to do something like this. We love you as you are. You don't need to go and try to do do something like this in order to like better yourself

or anything like we like to make it better for. I don't know. They were. I can, I can see, I can see where they were coming from. It's hard to just count that and like brush it off. So I listened and I read through everything they sent me. I had long talks with all of them. I had, with one of my friends specifically,

I had probably a few phone calls and a few hours of us kind of going back and forth about why he thought I shouldn't do it and why I thought I should. And at the end of the day, even right leading up to my surgery, he said, I support you, but I really don't think you should do this

But I you know, I love you and you have my full support in this You know, I just hope like everything goes well basically. So there were people who weren't excited about it for sure Do you remember when they were like hey by the way? We believe all this is gonna go just fine, but there is a chance that when you go in, you don't come out. And what pushed you past that? Yeah, so in the consent forms that I had to sign through the FDA, through borrows, through the study, there were two sections that kind of made me chuckle. One was that it says, what benefits will you receive from this study?

And basically in big bold, it says, none. You'll receive no benefits from this study. And it's basically to tell you, we can't promise you anything good is going to come from this. If we give you any sort of promises and that doesn't come true, then we're going to be on the hook for that. Like we can't do that. So you have to understand that this might not work and you can't come into this expecting anything.

So I was like, all right, that's fair. But then the risks, it was like a laundry list. It was like two pages of risks. And it just made me laugh. There are everything. I mean, it was everything from the surgery, the implant, all the way down from like traumatic brain injuries to death and things. And it's something that they have to do to cover all their bases. And they also want to be as informative as possible as the medical field, which I obviously

appreciate. I think that's how it should be. It wasn't that hard to get over that hump, honestly. I think my faith helped a lot, but at the end of the day, what really motivated me and what kept me pushing through was this idea that whatever I did with this study, good or bad, was going to help someone. If it was good and everything went well, like it is now, then all of the data I'm collecting,

everything I'm doing, all of the media I'm doing, all the people I'm talking to, all the research I'm doing, it's all going to help the field tremendously. If something went terribly wrong in surgery, say, and I died or right after surgery and I came out with a traumatic brain injury or something like malfunction in the implant down the road and something really bad happened, I always knew that that would prevent it from ever happening in anyone else ever again. And it's something that, it's just this mindset that I've always had that since my accident, like I would have rather something terrible happen to me than anyone else I know. I was glad that like I was paralyzed instead of any of my

friends. I would hate for this to happen to anyone I know, any of my friends, anyone in my family. And thinking about passing up the opportunity to be the first because I was afraid or I wanted to see if it was safe for someone else to go. And if something had happened to them, I would never be able to forgive myself. So I just knew that everything I did would help, whether it was good or bad.

And that motivated me a lot. So what do you remember from when you come out of the surgery and realized this shit works? Yeah, first out of the surgery, I played a prank on my mom. I pretended I didn't know her and that was pretty mean, but I still got to chuck a lot of that. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was not something she is super fond of not one of her Fondest memories, but I just wanted to show her I was a ballsy thing to do especially when you can't defend yourself That's a really good point, that's a really good point Yeah, and then once it once it started working like they brought in a little iPad and put it in front of me and

They're like these are your neuron spikes, like in real time. So wait, what did they show you? They showed you that the device was operating in concert with your brain activity. Yeah, so they came in and they woke up my implant. And when I woke up for the first time, everyone was super excited. They were all freaking out. They're like, this is amazing. And then they connected to like a little user interface

that they had created. And it was eight boxes on a screen. And each box had a little almost like, I don't know what they call like a heartbeat signal sort of so like you have that line and there's like all those little like spikes in it and stuff just like much more noisy with your brain because the neurons are firing much faster all the time and so there are eight boxes of my neurons firing so there's like eight channels so each channel is an electrode

in my brain and there were there are 1024 electrodes so they had a 1024 to choose from so they chose like eight that were firing the strongest I would imagine at that point and they held it in front of me and they're like this is your brain real time This is like what's going on up there? And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool And just like instinctively my my first thought was maybe I can make something happen. Like maybe I can control these brain waves. And so I started like wiggling my fingers.

And I noticed that like in one of the boxes, every time I moved my index finger, say on my right hand, then one of the spikes would like jump up. There was like a huge spike in yellow. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. And they were almost like, what? What? I was like, oh, that's pretty cool And they were almost like what what I was like, oh well when I move my index finger here If you look over on this third box on the top You'll see like this is me moving my index finger and it kept spiking and it was really cool And then they all clap for me, which was super super weird

it was I'll never get used to that. I don't think it's necessary at all. But I don't know. It was super cool. It was just cool to see it working. It was really cool to see all the people, like their work coming to fruition. I was just really happy for them. And what is the For Dummies version of what Neuralink does? Yeah, so it's planted in the... So the Neuralink is attached to my skull.

There are 64 threads with 16 electrodes on each thread that are implanted into my motor cortex and my brain on the left side of my brain. So it is in the part that controls my right hand in the motor cortex on the left side of my brain. And what it does is every time I have some sort of intended movement, I try to move my right hand. I have neuron spikes in that part of my brain and the electrodes on each thread,

any that are close by whatever I'm trying to move, those neurons that are activating when I try to move, will pick up that neuron spike. Think of just like a giant megaphone that is like receiving lots of noise basically. And then it'll send that via Bluetooth to an app that they have uploaded on this computer that I'm using right now.

And real time I'll be able to control say a computer because it takes my intention and it learns a way to translate that into cursor control. There's different ways to go about it. I basically go through different tasks to train it. It's a big like AI thing like a machine learning process gets a bit more complicated, but it basically just gives me the ability to control different devices. What was the first thing you did? What was the first thing I did?

Well, they had me do a lot of what they call body mapping, which was just like, you know, follow the action on the screen. Here's a hand on the screen, like move your index finger down and like press like you're pressing a key on the screen. Here's a hand on the screen. Move your index finger down and press. You're pressing a key on a piano. Press down there, hold for five seconds, then release. Do that a million times with each finger and then it'll train the algorithm to understand what you're doing. Can you move your fingers physically or no? No, I can't. You would be looking at your hand and being like, all right I'm focusing on my index finger my second finger and

I'm saying push down. That's what you were doing. Yeah, I don't need to look at it. It's It's hard to explain Almost like someone trying to explain what like phantom limbs or phantom pain is I can feel like my fingers are there and still moving. When I move them, it feels like they're moving. It feels like they should be moving. And then when I look at them and they're not, there's like a disconnect there. I mean, my all the everything's still working in my brain. Like my motor cortex still works.

All those signals are still being sent. So I know it's still alive. It's just that there's a disconnect in my spinal cord that's not letting the signal get down Wow, I've never heard it described that way before Alright, so they map it so it learns and then what has been the progress you've seen in Terms of what you've been able to do. Yeah at the very beginning it was it was slow going Well, I say that but it progressed pretty quickly for a couple weeks.

They gave me cursor control and then I started moving the cursor and following different targets boxes, just trying to get better and better. It was pretty slow at first. It was hard to get it to do exactly what I wanted it to do. There was a lot of work on their end being done. They just wanted me to do tasks over and over again, repetitively, as much as I could. So that way they could look at the data and see what is our algorithm, what is the software trying to do? Like what is it understanding and not understanding? And so at the beginning, it was just, you was just a lot of that.

Pretty quickly it ramped up. Within the first few weeks it went from, you know, I broke the record for how they measure how good a BCI is on a game called WebGrid. I broke that record on the first day and then broke it every day, twice a day for about two weeks straight. What does that mean? What's the BCI and what is WebGrid? Treat me like an old man.

Okay, so BCI are brain-computer interfaces. So the Neuralink is a brain-computer interface. It's not the first. They've been around for a few decades. I think one of the first was the Utah Array. Basically what they are are ways for your brain and a computer to interact with each other. So, generally, it's something implanted in the brain or near the brain which picks up

signals and then you can translate that into doing something around a computer. And then how they started measuring that a few years ago, I'm not sure when exactly, maybe in the last 10 or 15 years. They started measuring it with this game called Web Grid. Web Grid is just sort of what it sounds like. It is a grid of however many boxes. Let's say a 25 by 25 grid of boxes and one of those boxes will light up and all you have to do is go either hover over that box or go click that box in order to get a score you have to click the hover is more for like just it's for other reasons but so

what so you go you go over this box and you click and you get a score depending on how big the grid is. So if it's a 25 by 25, you get say like 17 points per click and then at a 30 by 30, you might get 18 points per click. And so you keep doing that. You keep clicking these boxes and your score adds up and that's how they measure how good brain computer interfaces depending on how high your score adds up and that's how they measure how good brain-computer interfaces depending on how high your score was. The original record I think for years before Neuralink was 4.5 or 4.6 and my first full day with full control I broke that just barely but I broke it and then every day after that I

beat my record at least two times for two weeks. And now I'm over twice as high as what it was, which is just incredible. So you are able to use your mind, open tabs, open applications, and basically do what the rest of us are doing on our devices. Yeah, right now it's a lot of, like,

it's still just cursor control. So people might get this, have this misconception that I'm just looking at my computer and I think open tab, open this, open that, and it does that. It's not how it works. I'm still just using a cursor. But that being said, I don't want to, I don't want to say that's not possible.

What I've found while using this is the Neuralink learns very well. I have been surprised at a couple of things that it's able to learn, such as there are these things called attempted versus imagined movements where I will say push my hand in one direction, even though it's not physically moving, I can still do it. Like I said, the signals are still being sent in my brain. I push my hand in one direction and the Neuralink learns my intention and then it'll translate that. But at some point, I don't need to attempt to do that anymore.

It just understands what I want to do and it'll do it when I think it instead. And I found that it's able to do that with a couple different things with movements and with things like click. So instead of actually physically trying to click wherever I'm hovering, I can just think I want you to click now, like think click, think the action that I would do in order to click and it does it for me. That I think will translate farther on down the road to things like what you're talking about, where it's, you know,

I know what I need to do in order to go open a tab or I know what I'm wanting to do. And so I would just need to think it and it'll do it. I don't think that's too far off. So it's not just direction, it's intentionality. It's a lot of intention. That's a huge part of it is intention. Wow. What's next? How long does the device last? Is there a new device? Would you be a candidate for that device? Would you want that device? What's what's next? I mean, I'm open to whatever they want to do with me, honestly

Elon Musk has floated the idea of putting another one in the other side of my skull so I can have like multi Like hand functionality because you know right now it's implanted in my motor cortex on the left side of my brain So it controls like my right hand I can still get some light crossover so I can still do some things with my left But it's just not as strong. So like implant one on the right side of my brain so that way I have like left hand control and can use both my hands. But they should have a new participant soon, I would imagine. And then that will, it'll help this grow. What I would imagine is like exponentially all of the data we're collecting, it'll just

keep ramping up and we'll keep learning more and more and more. And the study itself is a year long for the initial part of the study and then sort of a five year follow up if I want to continue using it and continue sending data, which I'm sure I'll do. I'm not sure why I wouldn't want to keep keep it in and keep doing that So I imagine I'll be in this for at least another like five and a half years If they want to upgrade me at any point, I would like that I would like to have the better versions as they come out

I know that you know, probably within days or weeks after my surgery. They already had a or weeks after my surgery, they already had a somewhat better version of the Neuralink. They're constantly iterating this, so they're constantly making just certain things better here and there. I'm not sure how many iterations have been from my implant to the next one that's going to go in someone, but I'm okay with most of what I imagine that they want to do with me. I don't know, I'd have to walk through whatever they're planning, but I just wanna keep doing whatever I can to help out. How much interaction have you had with Musk on this?

Just a bit. I, like I said, I mentioned in a couple interviews, I like FaceTime with him before the surgery, I met him for a couple minutes after surgery, and then I was just in Austin a few weeks back, and I sat down with him just for a quick chat, like 15, 16 minutes, something like that, at the Gigafactory. And we talked just about, you know, random things. We talked about this, Neuralink, how it's going. That's

where he mentioned like putting one in the like other side of my skull. And I was like, yeah, like, I don't see why not. Floated that around, had talked to me about their vision. I said that I think we have a lot in common with our vision of wanting to help humanity and stuff. I talked to him about SpaceX a bit and just chatted. Outside of that, not much, which is what I'd expect. I didn't think that I would be kind of like super good budget

them or anything just from doing this. Um, I'm just, I'm happy that someone is taking an interest in someone of his caliber is taking interest in something that affects my life so profoundly. Did you talk to him about UAPs? No. So like the thing is like, he's been very open about saying, like out of like all the space stuff he's done he hasn't seen any

evidence of it. And I don't know it just he doesn't seem like a believer so it'd probably just be something like like oh man yeah I haven't seen anything I haven't seen anything like that and I'm like the leading expert in space so probably doesn't exist. That'd just be a huge lockdown. First of all for the for the guys who are watching and listening right now, Nolan is a big UAP, UFO, extraterrestrial advocate and interest person. Elon has been very outspoken that he believes the government has information that it hasn't made available. And I don't even have to ascribe that to Elon

because that's just true. We know it's true. I don't know that they have a little green body in a lab or anything like that, but they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars ascertaining, collecting, studying. So the idea that they know nothing doesn't make any sense because then what did they spend all the money and time on?

So what do you believe about UAPs? And has it changed because of what you now understand about the use of technology in your own head. Yeah, you know, I'm a strong believer that they're here. I don't know that I'm 100% sold on if they were always here, if they've come from somewhere else. If, you know, there's a lot of different theories about out there about, like, are we just some sort of race of things that they created or that they've enslaved or are they just visiting us from afar? There's so much out there.

I believe they're here. I believe that there are too many stories out there about sightings and interactions with aliens in different ways, like UFOs, UAP sightings and things. I think a big argument people have these days is it's all just technology that the government has. And it just, it really doesn't make sense to me that the government would have this level of technology. But I know that the government hides stuff from us like all the time about these things and so like I'm about to get into like a little I'm gonna be like flagged for a lot of things that I'm saying I'm sure I know that the government

hides a lot of stuff from us and I know that There's a lot of like reason for it. They always say that it's to prevent mass panic and stuff I know that people have come out, really powerful people have come out. I think Trump came out and said something about it. If you knew what I knew, you'd be scared. You'd be worried basically. All sorts of stuff like that. I think they're here. There are a few specific cases where I'm like, oh yeah, it's got to be true. There are a few specific cases where I'm like, oh yeah, it's got to be true. I don't see how you can fake something like that. There's too much out there, I think, at this point.

What worries me is that it's become so mainstream that it is something that the government has released intentionally for some reason. I don't know. It's something I love thinking about. If you ever get the chance man You should look up like crop circles crop circles are one of the things that really really like Changed my mind on this whole debate if you look up like how crop circles are formed and the things that they found like at sites at crop circle sites and then the things that like the

at sites, at crop circle sites, and then the things that the English government has done to create this whole misinformation campaign around it and to discredit the leading people trying to study this thing, it is so sketchy. There's no technology that we have, at least that they've shown that we have, that can create crop circles like that. People have come out and claimed it and then they've asked them to recreate it. And it's just, it's, it's a, it's laughable. I don't know, man. There's just, there's so much I'm, I know they're here.

I know they are. Why they're here. I'm not sure. I know they're out there though. Is God an alien? Ooh, uh, no. Oh my God. This is one thing that like, I don't know exactly how to

You know justify the two I have my I have a very strong foundation my faith in God I've heard people say that like UFOs ui peas things like that. It's all like spiritual stuff. It's all like angels Demons, you know like spiritual warfare going on just on a different plane. And for some reason, like we can see them from time to time. I don't know if that's true. It's possible. I can see like some pros and cons to the argument. I don't think God is an alien. I mean, maybe alien to us. I don't know how you would define that. Are we the aliens that like God has created?

I'm not sure. I don't know, man. I don't know. There's, it's just exciting. It's so much fun to think about. I have been, you know, so I got a lot of shit about engaging in this at News Nation, but I've always been very clear about it. And News Nation has been very aggressive in this.

And I know that you knew about News Nation because of our coverage with Grush and others. But here's my thing. I don't know, okay? Now I feel the same way about my faith. I don't spend a lot of time talking about, I never hide from the fact that I have faith in God, but I don't talk about it a lot for several reasons. One, it's not my place. Two, I don't put it on anybody. It is a

tool and an aspect and an energy that I need to deal with the fact that I am just pathetic by my own reckoning of how I live my life and I am desperate for any ability and help in getting better. So my faith works for me. It does not make me better than anyone else. If anything, it's evidence of my being less than other people who don't need that. So I don't put it on people. I certainly don't see it as anything that defines me in a positive way. But also because you lose the argument all the time.

Whenever you speak to an agnostic or an atheist, you're going to lose anything that's about any kind of logical argument or fact-based argument. So I've always felt like the same thing about this. I don't know. I believe there's something extremely arrogant about the suggestion that we're the only life in this huge universe. The only thing we know about the universe is every time we find a way to measure it, it's bigger than we thought it was. And yet we're the only ones. So there's something arrogant about that that I think would play to the side of reasonable suspicion that you're open to it Um, and the other thing is that I have chosen to believe in something that I can't prove to people

So why would I not apply that to other things? Um, and certainly there's been a lot more stuff that's happened that we can't explain around uaps and there is around god Uh, you know, you look at like maasegoria or something like that, and you know, miracles of what people have been completely fine with in justifying their faith. And they're certainly less sophisticated than what we've seen with UAPs. For me, the coverage is, you don't know, I don't know, but there are people who know more than we do.

There are people who know more than we do. And I'm not saying little green men. I'm not saying they have communication. I feel the same way I do when my wife talks to me about spiritual communication and mediums and stuff like that, which is if they're so sophisticated, if this is so real, why is the communication so screwed up? Why do they need crop circles?

Why do you need to ask me 15 questions about someone who begins with an A? Why can't they just talk to us? Why can't they just communicate? So I'm suspicious also, but my coverage is coming from the place of transparency from government that I don't need you to keep me from being afraid. I don't need that from a government.

Government makes me afraid, doesn't keep me from being afraid. So I am very open to it and we will keep covering it because there just hasn't been the disclosure yet. I feel the same way, Nolan, about your journey. Not only are you just a beautiful young person with a great heart and a great head who's really daring. I mean, you're really daring and I respect it

and I'm here for it. So every time something happens in your life that you think is worthy of update, I am a click away and I'm happy to be part of your journey and I really appreciate you teaching us about it. And I'm happy to swap stories of your journey. And I really appreciate you teaching us about it. And I'm happy to swap stories about UAPs whenever you want. Cool, man. I really appreciate it.

I really appreciate you having me on, giving me a platform. The more I can talk about all of this, the better. And yeah, I'll be sure to keep you updated as things come out. I think that it's only gonna keep growing. I mean, I'm six months in. And so five and a half more years, I'm sure there'll be's only going to keep growing. I mean, I'm six months in, and so five and a half more years, I'm sure there'll be a lot more to talk about. So thanks for everything, man.

How amazing that after years of waiting, now just months, and he's already shown so much more adaptability just with the power of his mind and technology. What'll be next? I don't know but I'm here for it and I hope you are as well. Thank you very much for being with me Chris Cuomo and the Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for subscribing and following. Appreciate you. Thank you for checking me out on News Nation, 8P, 11P, every weekday night. Now, if you're interested in getting the podcast ad free and or interested in long COVID research

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