“I've accidentally fallen asleep with the device on a few times and woken up to a million things open on my computer, clicking around. Because even if you're sleeping, those signals are still firing.”
Now You Know Podcasts · September 2026
Arbaugh, the first person to receive a Neuralink implant, was describing what it is like to move a cursor by thought — including the moment about ten days in when he switched from trying to physically move his hand to simply imagining the movement. The flip side is that his brain keeps firing while he sleeps. He says he is now careful about using the device late at night.
Transcript
Yeah. I mean, um, this is something that uh was sort of the goal, uh, especially at the beginning. I was the only person for like six months. They had been working with monkeys for so long that having someone be able to actually give them feedback was huge. When you set a task to a monkey using a device, you don't know if they are actually attempting to do whatever task that you've set them at any point in time. They might be distracted, they might just not want to. Like, who knows? Uh, did they mean to do what they just did sort of thing? When I joined the study, it was sort of like a godsend for them. They were finally able to maybe understand some of the issues, and it was my pleasure to again do that and be able to participate in the process. So, yeah, we've definitely learned a lot.
Now, when you're using it, does it ever feel kind of I don't want to, I don't want to say like uncomfortable, but like if I take my hand and I try and do something kind of weird with my hand, I probably am getting a lot of signals back from my hand saying, like, ow, you know, stop trying to bend your thumb all the way back. That hurts. You don't get that, but is there anything built into the brain that you go like, I'm moving my thumb too far?
If something is going wrong with my body below my level of injury, which is below my shoulders, my C4C5, like I'm paralyzed and can't feel, don't have any sensation below my shoulders. Something's going wrong with my body in any sort of way down there. I, you know, my hand is getting crushed or my toes are bent the wrong way. Anything like that, your body has sort of an automatic response. It's called your autonomic nervous system. And they call it autonomic dysrophlexia, where your body will start kind of flashing warning signs at you in a different way. I will get a headache. My blood pressure will spike. I might start sweating, like a bunch, like different things that will show. But for me, like using the device, just trying to like move my hand and do those things, sending those signals to the chip, nothing like moving your thumb too far or anything like that is even a problem. Even if I wanted to, like, say, bend my, keep bending my thumb back farther and farther and farther until I couldn't anymore. And then going past that, first off, it's not moving, so it's not possible to even do it. But secondly, it wouldn't change the signals in any sort of way. It's all just sort of a, again, non-starter. It's not even possible. It was a big step for me, like maybe 10 days in when I went from what they call like attempted movement to imagined movement, where instead of like moving, trying to physically move my hand, I just think like I want the cursor to go right, left, up, down, and it moves. That's more of the sci-fi bit of it. It's incredible. And that's also where I guess that second part of the question with do I ever move it unconsciously comes in? Because yeah, I've accidentally fallen asleep with a device on a few times and have woken up to a million things open on my computer and woken up to it clicking around. Because even if you're sleeping, those signals are still firing. It's not like the brain sort of shuts off when you fall asleep. I also don't need to like look at the computer at all to move it. If I'm maybe like looking away, having a conversation, the cursor might drift a little. They call that cursor drift or cursor bias, even with how the cursor will just move on its own. It's an interesting problem to solve, honestly, because if you want the cursor to stay still, but your brain's always firing, how do you do that? And they've gotten creative over time with it, which is fun. They're such bright people. But yeah, the cursor is, I don't want to say it has a mind of its own, but it almost can feel that way sometimes. And there have been times when I've fallen asleep with it on. And I have made sure since that has happened to be very careful using the device late at night because you have Amazon trucks
delivering stuff to your door. Yeah.
I'm going to end up calling someone and they're going to watch me sleep. Like, I don't know. Who knows what's going on there? But yeah, it was interesting when that first happened.
It's been really fun following you on X and people you can follow. Nolan on X will put his address right here. You've been traveling. Can you talk about that at all? What that's been like?