Human Thoughts To Control Computers

Developed by a team at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, a new wireless brain implant that can help people control a computer, or even a wheelchair through their thoughts, is now possible.

According to a report in the Journal of Neural Engineering by the team behind this brain implant breakthrough, their fully implantable brain sensor can record the activity of dozens of neurons in freely moving subjects. The team also showed in a test using pigs and macaques that the device continuously works after more than a year.

However, the brain implant remains to be tested to people. As it promises, the said implant can possibly help paralyzed people regain some mobility.

A neuroscientist at Brown University, John Donoghue said, “We are trying to develop devices to connect the brain back again to the outside world or to the body. Currently, this is set up with a plug in the head through a hole in the skin.” Donoghue led one of the projects involving quadriplegics but was not involved with the new work.

Donoghue further adds that this [wireless brain implant] is complicated and introduces the risk of infection. Also, it requires a technician to hook the patient up to the external equipment. If these kinds of systems are to become available to paralyzed people in their homes, then a fully implanted, wireless device will be needed.

With the new device tested on animals, diminishing electrodes were detected in over a year that it is implanted on such animals (this outcome is consistent with the previous reports on the longevity of the recording devices.) The researches, however, could not detect any electronic leakage from the titanium case.

Brown University Electrical and neuroengineer, Arto Nurmikko said, “The strategy here is to have the subject or future patient a few meters away from the electronics that contain the receivers and means of decoding the full language of the brain circuitry that you are monitoring.”

This new devices will have to undergo safety testing and earn regulatory approval both for its electrical elements and for the material that touch the body. Nurmikko adds, “This opens up a very interesting way to naturalistically study brain circuits that has not been available before.”

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