Brain Interface Lets Monkeys Control Prosthetic Limbs

himicos was one of many readers to point out one recent success of scientists working to develop working brain-machine interfaces, writing "A team at the university of Pittsburgh has finally advanced a 2002 technology enough for use in prosthetic limbs, the targeted application all along. Training computer models to the firing patterns of the neurons in the parts of the brain that control motion, they are able to project the intentions of a monkey to a robotic arm, which follows the will of the animal. The sad thing about the articles is that the beauty of the mathematics used to create and train the models is totally ignored." Reader phpmysqldev adds a link to coverage at the BBC, and writes "This of course brings significant hope to amputees and other other people with physical disabilities." (Note that this research has been going on for quite some time.)

Comments

Re:Forget Replacement Limbs...

[crymeph0]

But in this case, the monkey was trained to use the robotic arm not as a replacement for a missing arm, but as an entirely new arm. That is, even though the apparatus was similar to an existing limb, the brain still had to learn to control a brand new limb independently from the old ones. If nothing else, this means we can give ourselves at least a third arm, and probably more. The brain is fairly malleable, and I bet with training, we could adapt ourselves to a wide variety of "appendage upgrades".

Of course, because of the "abomination before God" factor, nobody in the medical establishment will ask this question officially for years, if ever. But I'm sure some geek amputee will start playing around with modding his new arm/leg/ear, and if he doesn't turn into a bloodthirsty cyborg, or get lynched by fundamentalists, he'll become very rich and famous by enabling us to reach way beyond what we thought our full potential was.