Jacked in
From Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts to Move a Cursor in The New York Times:
Mr. Nagle, a former high school football star in Weymouth, Mass., was paralyzed below the shoulders after being stabbed in the neck during a melee at a beach in July 2001. He said he had not been involved in starting the brawl and did not even know what had sparked it. The man who stabbed him is now serving 10 years in prison, he said.
Implants like the one he received had previously worked in monkeys. There have also been some tests of a simpler sensor implant in people, as well as systems using electrodes outside the scalp. And Mr. Nagle has talked before about his experience.
But the paper in Nature is the first peer-reviewed publication of an experiment in people with a more sophisticated implant, able to monitor many more brain neurons than earlier devices. The paper helps “shift the notion of such ‘implantable neuromotor prosthetics’ from science fiction towards reality,” Stephen H. Scott, professor of anatomy and cell biology at Queen’s University in Ontario, wrote in a commentary in the journal.
The sensor measures 4 millimeters by 4 millimeters — less than a fifth of an inch long and wide — and contains 100 tiny electrodes. The device was implanted in the area of Mr. Nagle’s motor cortex responsible for arm movement and was connected to a pedestal that protruded from the top of his skull.
When the device was to be used, technicians plugged a cable connected to a computer into the pedestal. So Mr. Nagle was directly wired to a computer, somewhat like a character in the “Matrix” movies.
