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[Ripclawe]

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.

 

[gofreak]

I guess if they can tap into the *thought* of movement, they could tap into actual movement much more easily. Which would be good for VR..i.e. move my head one way, my "view" (in glasses/goggles) moves in the same direction etc. I know it's been done without any such invasive procedure (with gyroscopes?), but still interesting to think about future human/machine interfaces and their relation to games..this has got to be the cutting edge.

 

[Gek54]

The Matrix

 

[gofreak]

I wonder if one day we'll be able to tap into the "images" in our brain...the things we see when we close our eyes. You could get a computer to record your dreams and stuff like that..

Kinda doubt it'll ever happen

 

[Gek54]

I wonder if one day we'll be able to tap into the "images" in our brain...the things we see when we close our eyes. You could get a computer to record your dreams and stuff like that..

Kinda doubt it'll ever happen

Its just a matter of correctly interpreting the fireing of snapses.

 

[mr2mike]

I'd be less interested with recording the brain's images as opposed to transmitting images (and any other kind of things one would want to have in their heads) to the brain.

 

[whytemyke]

this is some awesome, awesome stuff.

 

[Gahiggidy]

That shit's nothing!

EAD did those things back in '88. Nintendo's way ahead of those guys.

 

[Gek54]

Its been around for a long time. On the discovery channel they had pilots controling a flight simulator with brain waves as the only input. It was only up, down, left, right, but this was back in the 90s when I saw this.

Edit: Oh and they just had a headband to read the brainwaves.

 

[Ghost]

Those monkeys were playing PGR, i remember the story.

My only problem with this is that it doesnt really change anything (gaming wise) you'd still have to be thinking "press b" rather than "jump", otherwise every game would require its own complicated thought recognition process, and an hour long tutorial teaching you what to think. So it'll end up being no more intuitive than a controller.


I guess it'd help with the crippling RSI gaming causes..thats about it though.

 

[Gek54]

Its not too different from learning to press R1 to jump. Im sure it will be like voicerecognision technology where the accuracy is terrible in the beginning.

 

[Duck of Death]

That shit's nothing!

EAD did those things back in '88. Nintendo's way ahead of those guys.

No, that was different. They were implanting chips into the brains of you, olimario, and the other Nintendo drones to defend the hive at all costs.

With my army of prepubescent dorks, I will RULE THE WORLD!

Not this time, you grizzled fuck! Slaves of Nintendo, gaze into the disc and be liberated!

 

[Drek]

A professor at the University of Virgina beat them to the punch by about 5 or 6 years. He hotwired a computer to a quadrapalegic man said to only have a month left to live, giving the man complete control of the computer's type functions and mouse cursor through a brain/electrode conection in the back of his skull. It plugged in like one of them wide headphone jacks if I recall. The same professor also wired a prosthetic arm to work the same way, though he's said he wants to be able to wire prosthetics into the spinal nerve network instead of the brain, since it'd get more natural results. He also claims that within 10-15 years he'll be able to rewire damaged verve systems with electrodes instead, beating out the stem cell research proponent's few realistic projections of 20-30 years significantly in the race to cure paralysis.

Cyborgs = wave of the future.