Within the next decade there is likely to emerge a new kind of brain implant for healthy people who want to interact with and control machines by thought. One technology under development is the electrocorticographic (ECoG) implant, which is less invasive than other devices and capable of riding on top of the brain-blood barrier, sensing the activity of neuron populations and transmitting their communications to the outside world as software commands. Research to study the potential of ECoG implants is being funded by the U.S. Defense Department as part of a $6.3 million Army project to create devices for telepathic communication.
Carnegie Mellon University researchers are most eager to see a ‘two-way direct-brain interface’ that would revolutionize human experience. They took advantage of the implant to see if patients could control the actions in a video game called Galaga using only their thoughts. Patients flick the spaceship back and forth by imagining that they are moving their tongue. This creates a pulse in his brain that travels through the wires into a computer. Thus, a thought becomes a software command. An even less invasive brain-machine interface than the ECoG implant is being researched at Dartmouth College, where scientists are creating an iPhone linked to an electroencephalography headset.
More information:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/the-cyborg-in-us-all.html?_r=1
More information:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/the-cyborg-in-us-all.html?_r=1