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Device Reads Messages From Surface of the Brain

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-want-to-know-what-you're-thinking dept.

Al writes "Technology Review has a story about a start-up company that has developed a more-accurate and less-invasive way to read a patient's thoughts. Neurolutions, based in St Louis, has developed a small implanted device that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands. The device, which is less invasive than implants and more accurate than scalp electrodes, uses a grid of electrodes placed directly on the surface of the brain to monitor electrical activity. This technology is currently used to find the origin of seizures in patients with uncontrolled epilepsy before surgery. But the company says it could also help paralyzed patients control a computer and perhaps prosthetic limbs using their thoughts. Tests involving more than 20 patients have shown that people can quickly learn to move a cursor on a computer screen using their brain activity."

2 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. "More-accurate and less-invasive"? Not so much... by DragonWriter · · Score: 5, Informative

    Technology Review has a story about a start-up company that has developed a more-accurate and less-invasive way to read a patients thoughts.

    "More-accurate and less-invasive" is misleading, since the thing that it is "more accurate" than is not the same thing it is "less invasive" than. It is more accurate than the minimally-invasive electrodes-on-the-scalp method, and less-invasive than the more accurate electrodes-implanted-into-the-brain method.

    It is, likewise, less accurate than the electrodes-in-the-brain method, and more invasive than the electrodes-on-the-scalp method, so it would be as accurate (and as hyperbolic, in the opposite direction) as TFS to call it a "less-accurate and more-invasive" method as it was to call it a "more-accurate and less-invasive" method (simply switching which existing method it was compared to for accuracy and which it was compared to for invasiveness.)

    It would be most accurate (and not at all hyperbolic) to call it a method which is intermediate between two existing methods in terms of both accuracy and invasiveness.

  2. Groundbreaking news! by feepness · · Score: 5, Funny

    Neurolutions, based in St Louis has developed a small implanted device that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands. The device, which is less invasive than implants and more accurate that scalp electrodes, uses a grid of electrodes placed directly on the surface of the brain to monitor electrical activity

    Awesome! They developed an implant which is less invasive than implants!

    Next up, a duck that quacks louder than a duck!