Background

Audrey Crews is the first woman to receive Neuralink’s brain-computer interface implant and the ninth participant in Neuralink’s PRIME (Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface) clinical trial. She sustained a C4/C5 spinal cord injury in a 2005 accident at age 16 that resulted in quadriplegia, leaving her without the ability to use her hands.

BCI experience

Crews received the Neuralink implant in 2025. The first time she used her Neuralink to write her name, “Audrey,” on a laptop screen with only her thoughts, the post showing her digital signature went viral with more than two million views, marking the first time in two decades that she had produced her own signature.

Since then, Crews has developed her use of the device into a creative practice. She has drawn hearts, geometric figures, and other artwork using neural signals alone, and has launched the NeuraArt Studio, an online presence where fans can purchase limited-edition prints of her artwork.

Strategic and cultural position

Crews’s public visibility through her viral signature, art creation, and continued public communication has made her one of the most visible Neuralink participants alongside Noland Arbaugh (Neuralink’s first PRIME participant). Her gender-representational role as the first woman to receive the implant has been editorially noted in BCI press given the historical demographic skew of early adopters in BCI clinical trials.

Trial context

Neuralink’s PRIME trial focuses on the company’s first-generation N1 implant in patients with quadriplegia, primarily from spinal cord injury or ALS. Crews’s participant number (9) reflects her place in the PRIME cohort specifically; total Neuralink implants across all trials (PRIME, CONVOY, and the UAE programme) had reached approximately twenty as of April 2026.