PSYCHOKINESIS 95
a person could produce twenty-six recognizable patterns on the
screen, he might be able to type by simply thinking. Of course, this
would still be a crude method of transmitting one's thoughts. It takes a
considerable amount of time to train people to manipulate their own
brain waves via biofeedback.
"Typing by thinking" has come closer to reality with the work of
Niels Birbaumer of the University of Tubingen in Germany. He has
used biofeedback to help people who have been partially paralyzed
due to nerve damage. By training them to vary their brain waves, he
has been able to teach them to type simple sentences on a computer
screen.
Monkeys have had electrodes implanted into their brains and have
been taught, by biofeedback, to control some of their thoughts. These
monkeys were then able to control a robot arm via the Internet by pure
thought alone.
A more precise set of experiments was performed at Emory University in Atlanta, where a glass bead was embedded directly into the
brain of a stroke victim who was paralyzed. The glass bead was connected to a wire that in turn was connected to a PC. By thinking certain thoughts, the stroke victim was able to send signals down the wire
and move the cursor on a PC screen. With practice, using biofeedback,
the stroke victim was able to consciously control the movement of the
cursor. In principle, the cursor on the screen could be used to write
down thoughts, activate machines, drive virtual cars, play video
games, and so on.
John Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University, has made
perhaps the most significant breakthroughs in the mind-machine interface. He has devised an apparatus called BrainGate that enables a
paralyzed person to perform a remarkable series of physical activities
using only the power of his mind. Donoghue has tested the device on
four patients. Two of them suffered from spinal cord injury, a third had
a stroke, and a fourth was paralyzed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, the same disease that afflicts cosmologist Stephen Hawking).
One of Donoghue's patients, twenty-five-year-old Mathew Nagle, a
a person could produce twenty-six recognizable patterns on the
screen, he might be able to type by simply thinking. Of course, this
would still be a crude method of transmitting one's thoughts. It takes a
considerable amount of time to train people to manipulate their own
brain waves via biofeedback.
"Typing by thinking" has come closer to reality with the work of
Niels Birbaumer of the University of Tubingen in Germany. He has
used biofeedback to help people who have been partially paralyzed
due to nerve damage. By training them to vary their brain waves, he
has been able to teach them to type simple sentences on a computer
screen.
Monkeys have had electrodes implanted into their brains and have
been taught, by biofeedback, to control some of their thoughts. These
monkeys were then able to control a robot arm via the Internet by pure
thought alone.
A more precise set of experiments was performed at Emory University in Atlanta, where a glass bead was embedded directly into the
brain of a stroke victim who was paralyzed. The glass bead was connected to a wire that in turn was connected to a PC. By thinking certain thoughts, the stroke victim was able to send signals down the wire
and move the cursor on a PC screen. With practice, using biofeedback,
the stroke victim was able to consciously control the movement of the
cursor. In principle, the cursor on the screen could be used to write
down thoughts, activate machines, drive virtual cars, play video
games, and so on.
John Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University, has made
perhaps the most significant breakthroughs in the mind-machine interface. He has devised an apparatus called BrainGate that enables a
paralyzed person to perform a remarkable series of physical activities
using only the power of his mind. Donoghue has tested the device on
four patients. Two of them suffered from spinal cord injury, a third had
a stroke, and a fourth was paralyzed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, the same disease that afflicts cosmologist Stephen Hawking).
One of Donoghue's patients, twenty-five-year-old Mathew Nagle, a