Daniel Brunner
Introduction
The following seven films show Matt Nagle control computer programs and electronic devices using thought power alone. Click on the numbers above and to the left to watch each film.
25-year-old Nagle is a tetraplegic and the first human volunteer to reach this advanced stage of testing. 96 electrodes (covering the same area of a small pill) were implanted into his brain's motor cortex - the region that processes information about movements. By prerecording the neural signals of his 'motor intentions' and then playing that information back to computers calibrated to read that signal it was possible to Matt to exert control over a computer cursor and work prosthetic devices, even though his spinal cord was severed more than three years before the trials.
Previous efforts in humans to control cursors on a computer screen have been limited to two dimensions. But advances in a field still in its infancy have shown that in the very first trial of new technologies significant advances have been made that could one day offer aid and a degree of independence and mobility to people who have suffered spinal cord injuries through disease or accident.
2006 © Nature Publishing Group