Sunday, April 20, 2008

I just migh get my wish

I've written about how nice it would be to hook a computer up to my brain and be able to download thoughts directly to my blog. It seems that some researchers in Japan are working on a technology that could be adapted to do this. Their idea is to place sensors directly on the brain so that the disabled could control robotic limbs with their thoughts. Recruiting volunteer test subject has been a challenge in this endeavor.

Although brain waves can be measured from outside the scalp, a stronger, more accurate signal can be obtained by placing sensors directly on the brain — but that requires open-skull surgery, making it more difficult to recruit volunteer test subjects.
This research is a long, long way from the intended application, much less what I would want to do with it. But I think that needing to do open skull surgery will remain an obstacle for this phase of the project!

2 comments:

Suzanne said...

As much as I think this is an excellent idea, the fact that scientist are actually working on it frightens me just a tiny bit.

Chip said...

Yeah, don't those scientist watch or read any science fiction? Who knows where this will lead?