Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

cursor of the computer display by thinking alone. For the first time, a direct contact was made between the human brain and a computer.
    The most sophisticated version of this technology has been developed at Brown University by neuroscientist John Donoghue, who has created adevice called BrainGate to help people who have suffered debilitating brain injuries communicate. He created a media sensation and even made the cover of
Nature
magazine in 2006.
    Donoghue told me that his dream is to have BrainGate revolutionize the way we treat brain injuries by harnessing the full power of the information revolution. It has already had a tremendous impact on the lives of his patients, and he has high hopes of furthering this technology. He has a personal interest in this research because, as a child, he was confined to a wheelchair due to a degenerative disease and hence knows the feeling of helplessness.
    His patients include stroke victims who are completely paralyzed and unable to communicate with their loved ones, but whose brains are active. He has placed a chip, just 4 millimeters wide, on top of a stroke victim’s brain, in the area that controls motor movements. This chip is then connected to a computer that analyzes and processes the brain signals and eventually sends the message to a laptop.
    At first the patient has no control over the location of the cursor, but can see where the cursor is moving. By trial and error, the patient learns to control the cursor, and, after several hours, can position the cursor anywhere on the screen. With practice, the stroke victim is able to read and write e-mails and play video games. In principle a paralyzed person should be able to perform any function that can be controlled by the computer.
    Initially, Donoghue started with four patients, two who had spinal cord injuries, one who’d had a stroke, and a fourth who had ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). One of them, a quadriplegic paralyzed from the neck down, took only a day to master the movement of the cursor with his mind. Today, he can control a TV, move a computer cursor, play a video game, and read e-mail. Patients can also control their mobility by manipulating a motorized wheelchair.
    In the short term, this is nothing less than miraculous for people who are totally paralyzed. One day, they are trapped, helpless, in their bodies; the next day, they are surfing the Web and carrying on conversations with people around the world.
    (I once attended a gala reception at Lincoln Center in New York in honor of the great cosmologist Stephen Hawking. It was heartbreaking to see him strapped into a wheelchair, unable to move anything but a fewfacial muscles and his eyelids, with nurses holding up his limp head and pushing him around. It takes him hours and days of excruciating effort to communicate simple ideas via his voice synthesizer. I wondered if it was not too late for him to take advantage of the technology of BrainGate. Then John Donoghue, who was also in the audience, came up to greet me. So perhaps BrainGate is Hawking’s best option.)
    Another group of scientists at Duke University have achieved similar results in monkeys. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis and his group have placed a chip on the brain of a monkey. The chip is connected to a mechanical arm. At first, the monkey flails about, not understanding how to operate the mechanical arm. But with some practice, these monkeys, using the power of their brains, are able to slowly control the motions of the mechanical arm—for example, moving it so that it grabs a banana. They can instinctively move these arms without thinking, as if the mechanical arm is their own. “ There’s some physiological evidence that during the experiment they feel more connected to the robots than to their own bodies,” says Nicolelis.
    This also means that we will one day be able to control machines using pure thought. People who are paralyzed may be able to control mechanical arms and legs in this way. For example, one might be able to connect a person’s brain directly to mechanical arms and legs, bypassing the spinal cord, so the patient can walk again. Also, this may lay the foundation for controlling our world via the power of the mind.
    MIND READING
    If the brain can control a computer or mechanical arm, can a computer read the thoughts of a person, without placing electrodes inside the brain?
    It’s been known since 1875 that the brain is based on electricity moving through its