TORONTO - It's a concept that one would expect to see only in the pages of science fiction or perhaps an episode of Star Trek: the ability to move objects by thought alone. researchers have turned that fantasy of the future into today's reality with a brain implant that is allowing a few people with paralysis to perform simple computer tasks using the power of the mind. Known as the BrainGate Neural Interface System, the tiny device is surgically implanted in the area of the brain responsible for voluntary movement, where it picks up signals from neurons that are then digitally decoded and routed directly into a computer.
"We just tap into the part of the brain that is ordinarily active, say, when you're moving your hand around," said senior researcher John Donoghue, director of the brain science program at Brown University in Providence, R.I. With a spinal cord injury, signals from brain cells can't be transmitted to nerve and muscle cells that would allow someone to use their hand to click a computer mouse, for example.
"What we do is bypass the part that goes from the brain to the spinal cord to the nerves and the muscles to the mouse - and go straight into the computer," said Donoghue, who is also chief scientific officer of Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc., which is developing the BrainGate device. "As far as the computer's concerned, it's getting a kind of mouse input," he said in an interview.
The BrainGate system is made up of a square sensor about the size of a baby-sized tablet of ASA and 100 electrodes each thinner than a human hair. The sensor is surgically implanted on the surface of the brain's motor cortex, where the electrodes pick up electrical signals - known as neural spiking, the language of the brain - from nearby neurons. Those signals are then transmitted through thin gold wires to a titanium connector smaller in diameter than a penny, which protrudes just above the patient's scalp.
An external cable runs from the connector to the computer. Donoghue and collaborators from a number of research facilities, whose research is the cover story in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, report on two of four physically disabled volunteers who have had a BrainGate implant. The first of those is Matthew Nagle of Weymouth, Mass.
, who has been paralyzed from the neck down since his spinal cord was severed five years ago. After receiving his implant two years ago, the 25-year-old spent almost a year learning how to control a computer cursor just by thinking about how he wanted it to move. The device allowed him to open e-mail, draw circles using a paint program and play a simple video game - using only his thoughts.
Other tasks he mastered from his wheelchair included remotely changing TV channels and causing a free-standing robotic hand to grasp and move objects. TORONTO - It's a concept that one would expect to see only in the pages of science fiction or perhaps an episode of Star Trek: the ability to move objects by thought alone.
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