Neuralink’s Seventh Patient Is Now Driving His Wheelchair With His Mind

On the morning of November 1, 2026, Jake Schneider posted a 27-second video to X with a one-line caption: “Using only mind power to drive the wheelchair with my Neuralink N1 implant. 🧠⚡️” In the clip, a large power wheelchair rolls down a wide residential street at about walking pace, swings through a wide U-turn and comes back toward the camera. His hands rest in his lap and on the armrests the whole time. The joystick on the left armrest is never touched.

Schneider is the seventh person to receive Neuralink’s brain implant, and he has ALS. His X handle, @PairedWith_P7, refers to his participant number. Here is how he got to that street, what the implant lets him do now, and what the new video does and does not show.

Who Jake Schneider is

Schneider lives in Austin, Texas, and is the father of a young son. Before ALS, he told the Austin TV station KXAN, he worked as a sales representative for a surgical device company. He introduced himself on X on July 9, 2025: “My name is Jake, I have ALS, and I am the seventh recipient of the Neuralink brain implant. Follow me along on this journey and let’s redefine what is possible.”

He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2022. He marked the date on X in February 2026: “Four years ago today, I was diagnosed with ALS.” In an August 2025 thread he put his situation in three short lines: “I’m 34. My mind is sharp. My body is failing.”

ALS attacks motor neurons, the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary movement and breathing. As those cells die, muscles weaken and waste away, and there is no treatment that stops or reverses the disease, according to the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. In Schneider’s case it began in his upper body. “My ALS symptoms started in my shoulders,” he wrote in July 2025, adding: “Man in a barrel syndrome is what they call my presentation of ALS. My arms are essentially dead weight.” He can still speak, and KXAN reported that he uses an electric wheelchair at home.

Getting into the trial

Neuralink’s first human study, called PRIME, is an early feasibility study of the company’s N1 implant and the surgical robot that places it. It is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT06429735. The first participant, Noland Arbaugh, was implanted at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix in January 2024. Our Neuralink timeline covers the company’s longer road from animal demonstrations to human trials.

Schneider took the route open to anyone: “I filled out the patient registry form on the Neuralink website and their research team reached out to me to start the screening process.” He told KXAN, “I found myself kind of in the camp where I had nothing else to lose.” Neuralink later quoted him on what tipped the decision: “I owed it to myself. I owed it to my son to take a chance. And now he thinks I’m a superhero with a computer chip in his head.”

He received the implant in June 2025. A year later, on June 13, 2026, he wrote: “One year ago today, I received my @neuralink implant.” Asked about the operation, he replied: “Just under 3 hrs and the recovery was not bad at all!” Local reporting in December 2025 said he travels to Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix for regular follow-up visits, and the Neuralink tracker Neura Pod lists Barrow as the hospital where he was implanted.

How the implant works for him

Neuralink says its implant has more than 1,000 electrodes spread across more than 100 threads, each thinner than a human hair, which its surgical robot inserts into the motor cortex. The electrodes record neurons that fire when a participant intends to move, and a machine learning model turns that activity into movements of a cursor on a screen.

Schneider described it in his own words in August 2025: “My implant can detect the firing of neurons in my motor cortex. Each spike of activity is decoded in real time — turning my intent into cursor movement and text entry.” The motor cortex is laid out like a map of the body, a discovery that grew out of the surgical brain mapping of the early twentieth century.

Getting set up takes work. “The first step is to do a couple body mapping sessions so the model can learn your intended movements,” he explained. “After that model is built, you will go into calibration mode and do exercises that optimize the performance and smoothness of the BCI control.” Clicking is handled the same way: “you just think about where you want the cursor to travel to and your clicks are associated with different imagined finger presses.”

There is no plug. “It charges much like an Apple Watch where the disc just needs to be hovering over the implant. Nothing sticks out of my skull,” he wrote, and “It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to charge up and that usually lasts me all day!”

What he can do now

The short answer, in his own words from October 2026: “Anything you can do on an iPhone or computer , I can do with the Neuralink.” He started with the basics in the first weeks. “One of my favorite things to do is playing my son in Mario Kart,” he posted in July 2025, and he was playing Civilization too. KXAN reported that he plays Mario Kart on his son’s Nintendo Switch.

He has also pushed on speed. In August 2025 he wrote, “I set the world record for cursor control with a brain computer interface using my Neuralink brain implant!” and, a few days later, “I became the first person to surpass 10.0 bits per second using a Neuralink BCI.” Bits per second is the score on Neuralink’s target-clicking test, and the company says able-bodied people using a mouse average around 8 to 10. Those record claims are his own; in October 2026 Neuralink reported a newer record of 11.32 bits per second without naming who set it.

Typing has come furthest. Neuralink’s January 2026 update named him: after working with participants “such as Jake,” the team found it could pick up strong signals for both hands even though the implant sits on one side of the brain. It used that finding to build what it called “a ten finger keyboard for the mind,” and said participants had reached up to 40 words per minute. In December 2025 Schneider shared a video and wrote, “I typed every word in this video using only my thoughts.”

He has worked on physical devices as well. On the first anniversary of his surgery he wrote: “Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to help develop telepathic 10-finger typing, work on technology that could allow someone to control a wheelchair with their brain, and even help advance systems that allow a robotic arm to mimic physical movements through thought alone.” Neuralink’s robotic arm work runs through a companion study called CONVOY, which tests whether PRIME participants can control assistive devices and lists Barrow as its site; Neura Pod lists Schneider as a CONVOY participant.

What it means day to day is harder to measure. “I am connected to mine from the second I wake up to the second I go to sleep,” he wrote in October 2026. “It’s become an extension of my body and a lifeline that has made me feel more human. Neuralink has given me some of the independence back that ALS has stolen from me.”

Driving with his mind

Neuralink showed its wheelchair work on July 23, 2026. In a thread on X, the company said participants “see a live video feed from a wheelchair mounted camera. As they move the cursor with their thoughts, they can drive forward, reverse, steer, and even adjust seating positions.” Pushing the cursor further in a direction makes the chair go faster, and the company’s video describes the cursor returning to center as a safety feature. “We’re studying how participants can navigate real-world environments using this system,” Neuralink wrote.

Schneider quoted that post the next day: “Driving the chair with my mind was such an exhilarating feeling. The most hope I have felt since my ALS diagnosis.” A few days later he posted a short clip of his own with the line “No hands. No joystick. Just thought.”

The November 1 drive

The new video goes further. It is shot outdoors on a wide, paved residential street with parked cars along the edges and nothing in the chair’s path. Someone walks alongside briefly at the start, then steps aside. The chair moves smoothly in a straight line, and at about 18 seconds it makes a wide, continuous U-turn to the left and drives back toward the camera.

The joystick on the left armrest is never touched.

A dark laptop, which appears to be a MacBook, is mounted on an arm in front of him with the screen facing him, so the interface is not visible. At about 13 seconds an off-camera voice, not identified, asks: “Do we even know how to stop this thing, dude?” followed by a chuckle.

Using only mind power to drive the wheelchair with my Neuralink N1 implant. 🧠⚡️ pic.twitter.com/jjIFtgSd2Y

— Jake Schneider (@PairedWith_P7) November 1, 2026

Schneider answered that question for his followers. “Yes, I feel completely in control. It is easy to maneuver and can stop immediately,” he replied to one. To another: “Yes I can see around the screen when I am driving.”

What the clip cannot show is what is on that screen. Neuralink’s July thread is the only public description of how its system works, a camera feed plus a thought-controlled cursor, and the November video does not show enough to confirm the details of this drive. It is also a short run on an empty street. It is a striking demonstration, not a measure of how the system handles traffic, curbs or crowds.

A trial result, not a product

Everything here is research. Neuralink’s own wheelchair thread carries the line: “Neuralink devices are investigational and have not been approved by the FDA or other regulatory authorities.”

The numbers are still small. In January 2026 Neuralink said it had 21 participants enrolled in trials worldwide, and Reuters reported the same figure. Neuralink says it has had zero serious device-related adverse events, though it has also reported that performance still varies between participants, partly with the stage of their ALS. There is no peer-reviewed study of the wheelchair work yet. Researchers quoted in coverage of Schneider’s story have pointed out that the field still lacks years of safety data.

Brain implants are not new in medicine. Deep brain stimulation and cochlear implants have been used for decades, and speech implants are now helping some people with ALS talk again. What is new is a wireless implant that people use at home, all day, to run their own phones, games and now a wheelchair.

What comes next

For Schneider the stakes are personal. “I still have my voice — for now. But when ALS takes that too, Neuralink means I’ll still have mine in the digital world,” he wrote in August 2025. Neuralink’s January update said it aims to give nonverbal people with late-stage ALS faster ways to converse, including through a speech study called VOICE that targets 140 words per minute.

On October 31, the day before the street drive, he shared an explainer about the implant and added: “To think I was the 7th person in the world this was performed on is still mind blowing to me.” In a little over a year he has gone from moving a cursor to steering a chair down a street. The next step is for the research to show whether that can work reliably, outside a demonstration, for the many people with ALS and paralysis who are watching.

Further reading