Think And Click

cecil36 writes: "Yahoo! has reported that scientists have discovered neural technology that allowed a monkey to control a mouse cursor using the brain. ... Further reading states that this technology can be used with the paralyzed or those with Lou Gehrig's Disease to allow them to use their computers."

Comments

nothing new

[Syre]

This is really nothing new.

The Cyberlink Interface: Hands Free Brain-Body Actuated Control for Augmentation and Enhancement of Human Computer Interaction(produced in 1999), and their website

And an article from last year about a similar device.

Further Reading

[Yurian]

There's quite a bit of this stuff going on - Just last week I was talking to the guy in the Engineering department here that has a project doing something similar. I can't seem to find his site at the moment, but the ABI project is another similar effort with a nice, informative site at about the same level of development.

The actual reseacrh described in the Yahoo article using implanted electrodes seems a bit strange - though the claim to have identified a few individual neurons is interesting.

Most of the other groups are working with stick-on electrodes. At the moment all they can do is move a mosue around a screen and click, but progress seems to be good - Correct recognition is around 70% after 5 one-hour sessions, which sounds impressive to me. The big obstacle to getting this into service for real people with disabilities is that the hardware is currently a bit chunky, especially the EEG machine. But we all know what happens to hardware, very, very quickly.

Oh - and, yes, the guy i talked to says the thing that secretlty drives him is eventually using it to play Quake. (Wonderful thing, altrusim)

Now wouldn't that be cool.(Unfortuantely you have to shave your head, I think!)