The Cyborg in Us All

This New York Times article by Pagan Kennedy talks about a man named Schalk who works at Albany Medical center. His research deals with controlling a computer and issuing commands just by thinking. In order to do this research he has been using epilepsy patients that have had small portions of their skulls removed to implant an ECoG (electrocorticographic) device, which is a patch of electrodes that sit on the brain's cortex. These implants were origionally used to study the brain patterns of patients as they go into seizure and then determine were to cut out the damadged tissue. Yet Schalk would use the patients to transform their brain signals into software commands in between periods of seisures. He was able to get people to move a curser around a screen and play games by thinking, and even move a ball around a screen by thinking the "ooh" or "aah" sound (a step towards recognizing words). In addition, another scientist named Dean Pomerleau is using an fMRI machine that takes detailed maps of the mind in action as people think about words. He has seen that specific patterns of neurons fire with each word patients think of, so that the machine is able to recognize what someone is thinking about. These detailed maps could be used along with other portable machines like the ECoG to allow these devices to read what is on peoples minds and what they are thinking about. In addition, the implatation of this ECoG appears to have no real negative affects on the immune system if worn for long periods of time and tests are being done on a micro ECoG device that is about the size of a quater and could be implanted with a fairly simple procedure.

This ECoG implant would be a possible fix for patients with ALS that over time could determine what parts of the brain lit up for certain words, and allow these patients to speak again just by thinking of the words, since the motor neurons to the lyranx no longer work in these patients. It could also be used in neuroprosthetics, to allow people to think about walking or moving their fingers and analyze their specific brain patterns to get their prosthetic to do exactly what someone is thinking about. Yet this could also be used in normal people who want to type a paper just by thinking of the words, or work their i phone just from what they are thinking about. I thought this technology was extreamly interseting, especially in the field of prostetics, because prostetics have always been controled by other muscles like the trapezius to get a claw (replacement of the hand) to move. Yet with this technology you could get fine motor control and move multiple parts like being able to move multiple fingers instead of just a claw allowing people to do more of what we think of as normal and improve their lives.

Source:

www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/the-cyborg-in-us-all.html