Posted on 03/31/2005 7:09:14 PM PST by mastercylinder
A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind.
Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001.
The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone.
The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher.
Mind over matter
He can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home.
Scientists have been working for some time to devise a way to enable paralysed people to control devices with the brain.
Studies have shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain.
It's quite remarkable Dr Richard Apps, neurophysiologist from Bristol University
Recently four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, were able to move a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes that pick up brain waves.
Mr Nagle's device, called BrainGate, consists of nearly 100 hair-thin electrodes implanted a millimetre deep into part of the motor cortex of his brain that controls movement.
Wires feed the information from the electrodes into a computer which analyses the brain signals.
The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternative way to control devices such as a computer with thought.
Motor control
Professor John Donoghue, an expert on neuroscience at Brown University, Rhode Island, is the scientist behind the device produced by Cyberkinetics.
He said: "The computer screen is basically a TV remote control panel, and in order to indicate a selection he merely has to pass the cursor over an icon, and that's equivalent to a click when he goes over that icon."
Mr Nagle has also been able to use thought to move a prosthetic hand and robotic arm to grab sweets from one person's hand and place them into another.
Professor Donoghue hopes that ultimately implants such as this will allow people with paralysis to regain the use of their limbs.
The long term aim is to design a package the size of a mobile phone that will run on batteries, and to electrically stimulate the patient's own muscles.
This will be difficult.
The simple movements we take for granted in fact involve complex electrical signals which will be hard to replicate, Dr Richard Apps, a neurophysiologist from Bristol University, the UK, told the BBC News website.
He said there were millions of neurones in the brain involved with movement. The brain chip taps into only a very small number of these.
But he said the work was extremely exciting.
"It's quite remarkable. They have taken research to the next stage to have a clear benefit for a patient that otherwise would not be able to move.
"It seems that they have cracked the crucial step and arguably the most challenging step to get hand movements.
"Just to be able to grasp an object is a major step forward."
He said it might be possible to hone this further to achieve finer movements of the hand.
The 'chip' reads brain signals
I put it in breaking news because i thought it could have been a good thing to throw at the Terri Schiavo Case
Wow, this is awesome!
Makes me wonder if Terri had lived another 15 years, maybe some scientist could have helped her recover.
Now, we'll never know.
...and the scumbag Michael could not allow this to be used for Terri? She would have been able to communicate what he did to her!
Safer to kill her and burn like a ....
Another Commie plot to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!
So what happens if he wants the tv on, but thinks about turning it off in a few minutes.
The military was testing some trainers that followed a pilot's eye movement, but it was very hard to tell when a pilot was looking around vs. which direction he wanted the plane to go.
Good stuff - technology is amazing.
I may post a thread later that says I fed my cat tonight. Someone will ask me if my cat is named Terri.
Amazing.
Hopefully, this technology won't be misused.
I'm thinking Christopher Walken , Natalie Wood in "Brainstorm"
My wife can smell beer over the telephone...
LOL
But no, this is
I remember years ago with mad scientists working on storing memory from the brain on devices and allowing it to be "downloaded". I also remember news allowing data transfer from electric pulse of body at 2MBPS. Are we going to have computers and artificial Operating Systems in our brains some day? Don't say it's MS Windows with full of glitches. I don't want to stall and reboot in front of the public, nor get hijacked by computer virus.
The scumbag Michael won't even allow the Schindlers to be at the burial.
So.....is your cat named Terri? =P
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