12-04-2006, 08:38 AM
<!--emo&:cool--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/specool.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='specool.gif' /><!--endemo--> Delving into mysteries of the brain
[ 29 Nov, 2006 2057hrs ISTREUTERS ]
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CLEVELAND: A young woman, confined to a wheelchair, is told to think about moving another wheelchair in front of her, first to the left and then forward.
As if by magic, the wheelchair follows her mental commands."She was controlling the chair with her imagination,"said Timothy Surgenor, president and chief executive of Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems.
Surgenor was using the video of the woman, who was paralysed by a brain stem stroke, to demonstrate a technology called BrainGate to some 900 researchers, physicians and investors attending a meeting at the Cleveland Clinic earlier this month.
The woman had a tiny sensor that analyses brain signals implanted on the part of her brain that controls hand movement.
A small plug protruding from just above her ear is connected to a computer that in turn has a wireless connection to the electronic wheelchair she was controlling.
"What we are doing now is just the tip of the iceberg,"Ali Rezai, director of the Brain Neuromodulation Centers at the Cleveland Clinic, said in an interview. "This concept is evolving."
For people living with paralysis, the technology has the potential to be life-changing. Stephen Heywood was one of some 30,000 people in the US suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and a participant in the BrainGate trial.
"After being paralysed for so long, it is almost impossible to describe the magical feeling of imagining a motion and having it occur,"Heywood said in an e-mail to his brother after a session controlling a robotic arm. Heywood's fight with the disease was documented in the movie So Much So Fast.
Surgenor said BrainGate should be commercially available before the end of the decade. "A lot of the technology that supports BrainGate is already out there,"he said.
Cyberkinetics provides the operating system. The goal is to make the components small enough and wireless, thus eliminating the need for a plug on the scalp.
[ 29 Nov, 2006 2057hrs ISTREUTERS ]
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
CLEVELAND: A young woman, confined to a wheelchair, is told to think about moving another wheelchair in front of her, first to the left and then forward.
As if by magic, the wheelchair follows her mental commands."She was controlling the chair with her imagination,"said Timothy Surgenor, president and chief executive of Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems.
Surgenor was using the video of the woman, who was paralysed by a brain stem stroke, to demonstrate a technology called BrainGate to some 900 researchers, physicians and investors attending a meeting at the Cleveland Clinic earlier this month.
The woman had a tiny sensor that analyses brain signals implanted on the part of her brain that controls hand movement.
A small plug protruding from just above her ear is connected to a computer that in turn has a wireless connection to the electronic wheelchair she was controlling.
"What we are doing now is just the tip of the iceberg,"Ali Rezai, director of the Brain Neuromodulation Centers at the Cleveland Clinic, said in an interview. "This concept is evolving."
For people living with paralysis, the technology has the potential to be life-changing. Stephen Heywood was one of some 30,000 people in the US suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and a participant in the BrainGate trial.
"After being paralysed for so long, it is almost impossible to describe the magical feeling of imagining a motion and having it occur,"Heywood said in an e-mail to his brother after a session controlling a robotic arm. Heywood's fight with the disease was documented in the movie So Much So Fast.
Surgenor said BrainGate should be commercially available before the end of the decade. "A lot of the technology that supports BrainGate is already out there,"he said.
Cyberkinetics provides the operating system. The goal is to make the components small enough and wireless, thus eliminating the need for a plug on the scalp.