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'Electronic Skin' Grafts Gadgets To Body
sciencehabit writes "Researchers have developed ultrathin electronics that can be placed on the skin as easily as a temporary tattoo (abstract). The scientists hope the new devices will pave the way for sensors that monitor heart and brain activity without bulky equipment, or perhaps computers that operate via the subtlest voice commands or body movement. The devices can even be hidden under actual temporary tattoos to keep the electronics concealed, giving them potential applications for espionage."
It might be an improvement over the present in terms of the skin-contact portion of the apparatus; but doing a computer-brain interface without drilling holes in the skull and getting direct contact imposes some fairly annoying constraints:
The electrical activity of the brain is certainly externally detectable; but it isn't terribly strong, and you have to deal with EMI and scalp muscle activity and such. Only gives you a comparatively rough, aggregate sense of what the brain is up to, and the further from the brain surface you go, the harder it becomes.
If you don't want to stick to 'read-only', things get harder. The brain is somewhat conductive, so a sufficiently powerful transcranial magnetic field will indeed affect it; but "sufficiently powerful" means "probably doesn't run on batteries". Also, you still suffer from comparatively coarse resolution.