Neuralink Patient Sends His First Message Straight From His Brain

FREMONT, Calif. — "I'm texting you from my brain right now." That was the first message Lee Marten sent his family after waking from Neuralink surgery, a few hours after a robot had stitched dozens of fine threads into his motor cortex.

Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant living with ALS, has become the 26th recipient of Neuralink's N1 brain-computer interface and the first Canadian with the disease to receive the implant. He shared his story in a detailed first-person account, offering a rare, personal look at what Elon Musk's neurotechnology can already do for people who have lost the ability to move and speak freely.

A New Way to Connect

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, gradually takes away a person's ability to walk, speak, and eventually breathe. For Marten, the Neuralink implant restored something he thought he was losing: the ability to communicate on his own terms.

After a roughly seven-month evaluation at Toronto Western Hospital, he was accepted into the clinical trial and underwent surgery this past spring. A robotic system placed 64 threads into his brain, and the companion app, Link, began translating his neural signals into cursor control. He was moving a computer cursor with his thoughts within hours of waking up. The advance builds on earlier Neuralink milestones, including patients steering wheelchairs with their thoughts.

Daily Life With the Implant

Marten describes a routine that already feels remarkably ordinary. He runs weekly "brain training" exercises, watches a real-time display of his own neural activity, and charges the implant through a beanie-mounted wireless charger. Through the Link app and a device he calls the "Magic Box," he emails, texts, posts on social media, and even games — connecting the implant to the other technology in his life.

That kind of independence is the entire point of the N1 system. For someone whose voluntary movement is fading, being able to reach the outside world directly through thought is transformative, restoring agency and connection that a progressive illness would otherwise erode.

Candid About Musk and the Mission

Marten is thoughtful about the man behind the technology, describing Musk as divisive but someone he found "easy to admire." His focus, though, is forward-looking. He has spoken about his hope that the data from his case will help future ALS patients, contributing to research that could one day change outcomes for others facing the same diagnosis.

That spirit of participation — volunteering to advance a technology that may benefit people he will never meet — captures why Neuralink's early recipients matter so much. Each implant teaches engineers and clinicians something new about how to make the system safer and more capable. The account was published by Teslarati, whose full write-up is available here.

Momentum for a Young Field

Neuralink's work sits at the frontier of brain-computer interfaces, and stories like Marten's show how quickly the technology is moving from laboratory promise to real-world help. From cursor control to communication to independent device use, each patient adds to a growing body of evidence that thought-driven computing can meaningfully improve lives.

As Neuralink expands its trials and refines the N1 implant, the throughline is a hopeful one: technology built to give people back their voice, their reach, and a measure of control that illness had threatened to take away.

If you or someone you know is affected by ALS, resources and support are available through organizations such as the ALS Association.