Brain Computer Interfaces - II

June 18, 2010

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This innovative technology permits an enthusiast Northeastern University student researcher command and control through a brain-computer interface the movements of the robot using signals produced by his visual cortex.

That is, in an astonishing demonstration people could see a student researcher using his brain to directly control the robot's movements.

Considering the continuous advances in this field, researchers seriously expect this technology can be expanded to new robots that will be able to perform more complex manoeuvres.

By example Professor Erdogmus said: "People with disabilities will soon be able to communicate through the computer to operate wheelchairs or other vehicles or devices"

As a matter of fact the following goal they have is that next year, a new team of electrical and computer engineering students will advance the project a step further by designing a brain-computer interface for a wheelchair.

Technologies are improving rapidly; I should say they are advancing beyond our expectations, and several scientists say they don't know what the limits are yet.

Researchers are already using brain-computer interfaces to aid the disabled, treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and provide therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Melody Moore Jackson, director of Georgia Tech University's BrainLab helped develop an intelligent wheelchair called the Aware Chair, which can be guided by neural activity. She is also working on communication programs for people who have been paralyzed by strokes or spinal-cord injuries.

One of the main goals scientists pursue is to enable completely paralyzed patients (locked-in syndrome) to communicate with their environment. In this field neuroscientist Rajesh Rao of the &#&University of Washington&#& is sharing the same concept to help paralyzed people manipulate robots to do the things they can't do, as going to fetch or move things around the house. With cameras to provide visual feedback, the patients and robots don't even need to be in the same room, or the same city. Rao says the technology "frees the mind from the constraints of the body."

Already cochlear implants help the brain interpret sounds and are sometimes called "bionic ears" for the deaf.

By now nothing of this is cheap, but every breakthrough brings the most advanced Brain Computers Interface technologies closer to the mass market.

If the sole limit is our imagination I choose to imagine they will give vision to the blind, movement to the paralyzed and anything to permit disabled people to live a normal, healthy and happy life.