11th November 2003, 2:51 PM
Quote:Here's another amazing thing I saw on the Science Channel, but sadly don't have a link for. One fully paralized old man was, as you can imagine, sadly completely unable to communicate, but was visibly concious of his surroundings. The family made a rather risky choice in allowing yet another group of scientists to implant a small device into this fellow's brain (MAYBE implanted deep with the lack of movement to shift the brain, not sure, they never went into that detail). This device was designed to pick up signals from the brain, at the motor cortex. Essentially, they were rough coordinates, Y and X. They were hooked up to a computer and it was programmed to use the data picked up to control a mouse cursor. The man soon learned that the mouse cursor would move at his thoughts, and after a few days of learning how to control it, he could finally communicate via a program with many pictures and words to click on. Actually, I'm not sure if the device also picked up bits of signal to determine a "click" or if the program was just designed to detect hovering for selecting, but in any case the man is now happily communicating with his loved ones.
Stephen Hawking?
Sometimes you get the scorpion.