The BrainGate Neural Interface System was implanted into the brain of Matthew Nagle, a 25-year old Massachusetts man who suffered a spinal injury in 2001 that left him paralysed from the neck down. The implant allowed him to manipulate a computer to play a video game, operate a robotic limb to grasp and move objects, and to perform other basic tasks by thought alone.
BrainGate was developed by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc., of Foxborough, Massachusetts. The implant chip is 4 x 4 mm, and has 100 tiny electrodes, each thinner than a human hair. It is implanted above the motor cortex, the region of the brain responsible for movement. The electrodes penetrate 1mm into the brain to receive electrical signals from neurons, and transmit the signals to the outside of the patient’s skull via a system of gold wires and a protruding titanium pedestal. From there the signals can be captured and analysed by computers.
The current BrainGate system is still a prototype that, after promising research with monkeys, has just begun human trials. Nagle has been the most successful patient so far.
“We believe these advances could ultimately enable a paralyzed person to control communication devices, medical devices, computer-controlled robotics, wheel chairs – and even their own limbs,” said Cyberkinetics’s Surgenor.
More adventurous technology pundits believe that this technology is the first small step to non-therapeutic cybernetic enhancements in the near future:
Cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University predicted there would be a rapidly growing market for a range of cybernetic improvements such as memory enhancement, an increased range of senses, dieting control and thought communication.
To that end, researchers in Glasgow and Berlin have developed a mind-controlled typewriter that relies on slight electrical impulses read from the scalp using non-intrusive sensors. Their system learns to interpret brain signals much more quickly than the implant system by Cyberkinetics, but it is currently not nearly as sensitive.
While these sorts of technologies will have enormous benefit to humanity, ethical concerns have been raised around its potential for abuse. A greater understanding of brain physiology has enabled scientists at the State University of New York to remotely control rats. “Roborats” may soon be used to find survivors in buildings destroyed by earthquakes or munitions. How long will it be before humans can be remote controlled as well? 
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. of Japan has been developing non-intrusive technology that can manipulate human balance to cause left or right turns. As journalist Yuri Kagayama puts it:
Prepare to be remotely controlled. I was… I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right.
The prospect of remote-controlled assassins is not very comforting, but the vast potential for enhancement of human life, especially for those who have lost natural function of their bodies, is exciting. The next 20 to 50 years will bring very interesting developments in cybernetics!
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