SCIENTISTS who trained monkeys to control a robotic arm using only brain signals have shown for the first time that the same technique will work in people too.
Miguel Nicolelis’s team at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, placed electrodes in the brains of 11 patients with Parkinson’s disease while they were undergoing separate brain surgery. The team could predict hand movements from the brain signals, the first step towards controlling a robotic limb. “We now know that it’s possible in people,” Nicolelis says. “It’s a big step.”
The technique might one day make it possible to bypass…
