“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
Context
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
…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.
…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…
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?