Quote:
Originally posted by BentNotTwisted
Lunatic, I have to assume you mean two way communication between a human brain and a computer. Research has already been done showing the capability of a mouse to move an electronic cursor on a computer screen. How long can it be before humans are able to use their brains as input devices for a computer? I realize humans won't turn the brain into a computer output device for centuries, if ever, but just being able to enter this reply by thinking about it would be an amazing acheivement.
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More recently, they have connected a robot (third) arm to a monkey's brain.
It can control it, close the hands, and use it to pick up things. (The arm is not physically grafted to the monkey or anything like that).
At a glance this seems incredible...don't get me wrong, it
is an amazing achievement, but it is important to realise how it was done. It was not a case of "wire this IO line to this neuron...this line to that neuron, etc." That would require a VERY accurate understanding of how the brain works (which needless to say we are no where near).
The monkey was first taught to use the robotic arm, using a standard joy stick. It was engaged in playing various games. All the while its brains patterns were being scanned and being recorded, as were the movements of the joystick. After enough data was collected, it was crunched, trying to find correlations...e.g. the following brain patterns occur everytime he wants to bend the arm this way...a catalogue of these various patterns-actions was made, and then they disconnected the joystick, and connected the robot arm, not to the joystick, but to the computer recieving the brain scans,
You can obviously see how this is a fundamentally different process to brain-computer interfacing as is oft portrayed in science fiction.