New Brain Implant Will Let You Control Machines Using Your Thoughts
Just imagine if you are able to control your machines with nothing but your thoughts.
A team of researchers and engineers at Melbourne University are currently pursuing this goal to lead the path in the hugely important field of developing brain machine interfaces. They are developing a tiny biocompatible implant called a stentrode that gets implanted into a blood vessel next to the brain, which can record electric activity from a specific part of the brain. The information will then be decoded and deduced into thoughts.
Dr. Tom Oxley, research lead, said the study is purely focussed on the life altering benefits the technology can bring to the medical industry, particularly in the treatment of paralysis and epilepsy.
For those suffering from paralysis or severe spinal cord injuries, the technology offers “the capacity to get information out of their brain to modulate movement systems that will basically enable them to interact with their environment again.”
The another goal of the study is to determine what’s happening in the brains of people who have overpowering seizures and can they be able to forecast and address the problem. In order to convert the electric brain activity into useful information, the team has to develop a custom-fitted decoding algorithm.
Until date, the research team says that they had successful results of animal trials, which were published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
The group is looking to carry out human trails in the near future, most likely next year, when the project will actually begin to take shape.
“I think what we’re seeing is the start of a whole new field,” Dr Oxley says.
