http://www.jsonline.com/alive/news/dec04/281287.asp?format=print
With electrodes implanted directly on their brains, two Madison patients were able to control a computer cursor and play a basic video game just by thinking about it.
The accomplishment highlights an amazing new technology that in the last year has created the distinct possibility that severely disabled people may soon be able to communicate and even regain movement by tapping directly into the brain and training it to bypass damaged nerve cells.
"It's as if the first flight at Kitty Hawk has gone a few hundred feet," said Joseph Pancrazio, program director of neural engineering at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health, which has funded the University of Wisconsin-Madison research and other projects.
The latest advance involves UW doctors who last month and in June removed a portion of the skulls of two patients and implanted electrodes on the surfaces of their brains.
Wires from the electrodes were plugged into a computer and the patients spent nearly two weeks trying to master their ability to control the cursor with their thoughts.
"It was like a battle between the computer and my inner computer," said Chandra Malmquist, 36, of Stoughton, one of two patients. "There were times when we were done for the day and I said, 'No, I want to keep doing this.' "
Over the course of the 10 days she was in the hospital, Malmquist said, she became fairly adept at moving the cursor across the screen and hitting a bar target, similar to the video game Pong.
She said she tried a variety of ways to control the cursor, such as imagining sounds or making faces.
"The most effective way was for me to scrunch my body really tight and (think) about yelling," she said. "Each day I got better."
The UW researchers join a small fraternity of cutting-edge neuroscientists whose technological feats of tapping the brain might have been considered the stuff of science fiction only a few years ago.
In the last two years there have been several experiments in which electrodes were implanted into the brains of monkeys, which were able to manipulate robotic arms and play video games. Then, researchers began implanting electrodes in people.
Last month, researchers at Brown University reported on the technology's success in a 25-year-old quadriplegic from Massachusetts.
After electrodes were implanted in his brain, the man was able to read e-mail, play video games, turn on lights, and change channels or adjust the volume on a TV.