Soon paralyzed people will be able to live unrestricted lives thanks to neurotechnological advances. According to a CNN article, "A team of neuroscientists have successfully implanted a chip into the brain of a quadriplegic man, allowing him to control a computer."
Such a technological accomplishment is the result of many years of hard work and study of neuroscientists, and biomedical and electrical engineers. The article states that the tiny BrainGate chip was inserted into a 25 year old man's brain back in June which has sense allowed the quadriplegic to check email and play computer games simply using thoughts. Not only can he check his mail and play games, but he also has the ability to turn the lights off and on and control a TV while talking and moving his head. The experiment is one of the first to test such technology in humans. Donoghur, professor off neuroscience at Brown and cofounder of Cyberkinetics in 2001, said "Our ultimate goal is to develop the BrainGate System so that it can be linked to many useful devices." We at AI presume that the United States military is also pursuing and funding similar technologies.
The BrainGate chip is implanted on the surface of the brain's motor cortex. It is 4 millimeters squared in size (less than the size of a penny) and contains 100 electrodes to detect neural electrical activity. The electric pulse is then amplified and the signal is sent to a computer device mounted on the person's skull. The BrainGate chip is yet ready for commercial production and testing will continue. Surgeon Gerhard Friehs, associate professor of clinical neurosciences at Brown Medical School, who has performed the implantation of the BrainGate hopes "that the trial will continue as successfully as it has started."
