Brain-Computer Interface and Mind Controlled Prosthetics

By Xavier Reinders

Jaimie Henderson and Krishna Shenoy of the Stanford research team

The keyboard may be a thing of the past according to a Stanford research effort. Well not really but your brain could be the keyboard of the future. The investigation, detailed here, demonstrated that they could create a brain to computer interface allowing the user to type with their thoughts.

So who cares? Firstly, you do because that is awesome and it is the future people have been talking about in sci-fi novels, movies and comics since the introduction of computers. Secondly, the entire investigation was based on helping those who are paralyzed to better interact with technology. Due to their paralysis it was impossible for these people to interact with technology and very difficult for them to interact with people. With this advancement it becomes easier for them to interact with the outside world through computers. The investigation specifically looked at typing with your mind a much more complex task than the mind controlled prosthetics discussed later. Instead of giving a basic command like "move" or "open" or "close" the researchers were able to give a command like "type s in this field." That is comparable to attempting to bend just one knuckle in a finger. They had to be able to pick out on specific brain pulse out of the millions that are occurring and relay just that one to the computer.

On a less medicinal note this is an amazing break through for computers as a whole. Creating an interface where our brain can instruct a machine is the pathway to advanced cybernetics, awesome video experiences and incredible ease of machinery.  Instead of sending a signal to your fingers and arms to move and hit keys your brain could send a signal to a computer that you want that letter put where ever and skip all the extras. We could develop exo-suits allowing paralyzed people to walk again or create robots controlled by our minds to do work for us. This could even be used to create entirely new body parts for people that do not have them and have them function as they would if they were flesh and muscle instead of fiber and metal.

In fact such a step has already been taken into practice with the existence of mind controlled prosthetics. Before these brain-computer links were developed the revolution in prosthetics was flex sensing, moving a prosthetic based on the measurement of muscles that were still there that would have caused this movement. i.e. if you lost the lower half of your arm, sensors would detect muscle movement in your upper arm and translate it to the prosthetic as if it were actually connected to those muscles normally. Now as computers and our understanding of the human brain improve prosthetics can be created that link to your nerves and brain pathways rather than your muscles. So like I said above a user might think move and the prosthetic would respond, this is an important step for people who lost the whole limb and don't have the remaining muscles to operate a muscle sense prosthetic. In fact these devices are at a point where thoughts can be used to preform the precise movements needed to operate a compute mouse and keyboard.

In the less developed field of feedback researchers and engineers alike are working to transfer information from sensors back into the brain in a way that the brain can interpret as a touch. These combined with the mind controlled prosthetics could lead to full robotic recovery of lost limbs, hands that not only grasp and hold but feel.