REAL LIFE NEWS: TWO STORIES ABOUT THE MIND-COMPUTER LINK
by Hazed
I don't know, you wait ages for a story about how people can use their brains to power a computer, and then a whole load come along at once. Here's two of them:
Mind-controlling prosthetic limbs
US Scientists have developed a technique that could give amputees much better control over their prosthetic limbs. Targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) allows a motorized prosthetic to respond directly to the brain's signals. "The idea is that when you lose your arm, you lose the motors, the muscles, and the structural elements of the bones," says the research's leader, Dr Todd Kuiken from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Northestern University. "But the control information should still be there in the residual nerves."
Dr Kuiken took the residual nerves that used to be associated with a patient's arms, and hooked them up to the chest muscles. Some of the patients said that when researchers touched their chests, they could feel a sensation in the missing limbs - something like the phantom limbs some amputees experience. So when the patient thinks about moving the missing limb, the nerves (now reconnected to the chest muscle) are stimulated. This causes the chest muscle to contract, which sends an electrical impulse to the prosthesis.
So far, the patients have been able to get their new limb to make four fairly crude movements: open and close hand, and bend and straighten elbow - but it's a start! The researchers are now working with US servicemen who have lost limbs in the line of duty.
Mind-reading computer gives voice to paralysed man
Eric Ramsey was in a car accident that left him unable to move or speak, although he was aware of his surroundings. He's been paralyzed for eight years, and the only way he can communicate is through eye movements. To try to get some form of communication back, he volunteered to have some electrodes implanted in his brain. Why? The hope is that researchers would be able to read this mind.
The electrode was implanted six millimetres under the surface of his brain, where it monitors the signal from 41 neurons in the area of the brain that controls speech. The research team tracked the output of the electrode whenever they asked Ramsey to imagine speaking. So far, they have managed to correctly identify the signals associated with him saying three different syllables, "oh", "ee" and "oo" around 80% of the time. Ok, it's not conversation, but again it's a start!
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