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Ideas in movement: The next wave of brain-computer interfaces

Nature Medicine volume 22, pages 2–5 (2016)Cite this article

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About three months before her chocolate-eating triumph, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania had implanted into her primary motor cortex two tiny arrays consisting of 100 electrodes, which enabled her to control the robotic arm—or Hector, as she had named it. Before the surgery, Scheuermann, who was 53 at the time, proclaimed that her goal would be to feed herself a sweet treat. In the following weeks, Scheuermann practiced using her brain to control Hector, moving the arm forward and backward, turning the wrist and closing the hand. Finally, she used Hector to feed herself a snack. As she noshed on her first glorious bite of the chocolate candy bar, she said, “One small nibble for a woman; one giant bite for BCI.”

A BCI, or brain-computer interface, sounds like something from science fiction. After someone becomes paralyzed, either through progressive illness such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or because of a sudden accident that severely injures the spinal cord, a BCI offers the possibility of restoring movement and, eventually, some level of independence. The first BCI was used by a paralyzed person to play a computer game, serving as a proof of concept that these devices could translate thought into action; since then, neuroscientists and engineers have developed superior systems1. The most recent models enable a user to move a prosthetic arm with up to ten degrees of freedom, which includes separating individual fingers and moving the thumb on a prosthetic hand2.

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  1. Katherine Ellen Foley is a science writer based in Washington, D.C. and a former news intern with Nature Medicine.,

    Katherine Ellen Foley

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Foley, K. Ideas in movement: The next wave of brain-computer interfaces. Nat Med 22, 2–5 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0116-2

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