Kevin -   You can stimulate memories.  That's about as far as we’ve got.  By applying signals at particular parts of the brain, someone will go “Ahh!  I can remember when I was a young kid” and so on.  But actually, finding where they are, recording them [is a challenge].  Some people feel memories are quite spread around in the brain, so I don't know if we yet, fully understand what memories are.  But I share the excitement, the possibilities.  In the long term, one would hope we will be able to do, but I think it’s a long, long way away yet.

Chris -   Andrew, what about the electrode side of this, because this is more where you're working.  The brain machine interface quite literally.  What about the concept of actually getting information in and out like that with an external hard drive?

Andrew -   Well again, as Kevin said, we know very little about how memory really works in the brain.  There is a group that's trying to make, for instance, an artificial hippocampus, but I think at this point, it’s a lot more engineering than it is science.  So, again as Kevin said, there's hope for the future, but right now, I think we’re quite a distance from that.

There's been a lot of good research on pain lately and there are a number of what we call “neuromodulatory devices” out there to try to stimulate different parts of the nervous system, both in the brain and the spinal cord, to try to alleviate some of these symptoms.

I think the next step is linking more directly with the brain.  Even with using tools now, whether we’re moving things or whether we’re taking signals in through our ears and so on; it is the old way of doing it.  There is an interface and if we can short circuit the interface to put signals directly into the brain or take signals from the brain, it’s the next step.  It's an evolutionary step how humans are now technologically speeding up evolution.

Markus -   So far, I'm seeing patients in the eye clinic who are interested in the technology because they are blind and it gives them the possibility to see things again.  So they're highly excited to be part of research and be part of the project, but I would not think that they would consider themselves a cyborg or weird in any way.  It’s just a different form of camera technology which is connected directly to the eye rather than through the retina indirectly.

Chris -   Is this something you've come across Kevin?  With people feeling a bit strange because they are literally now part man, part machine?

Kevin -   No, I think one thing that's interesting is that with an implant, even if it’s an artificial hip, that sort of implant, very quickly, you regard it as being part of you.  It’s not like wearing a pair of glasses and you can put them down.  When you get an implant, it’s you.  It’s technologically different.  I would guess that people with retinal implants, they wouldn’t think of this as an implant.  Very quickly, they'll think “Oh, it is me.  I can do those things now.”  Which is tremendously exciting, how mentally you take these things onboard, just as much as physically.

Helen -   Kevin, you've had a couple of implants yourself.  Is the reason that you volunteered because you couldn’t find anyone else to do it or because you wanted to do it yourself?

Kevin -   Actually, we get quite a few volunteers even now, and I actually have three of my undergraduate students who have implants.  Not the same type, not the neural type, but to be honest, for me it was quite dangerous what we’re doing, particularly the Utah array, the 100 electrodes firing into my nervous system, so there were dangers associated with that but I also wanted to experience for myself what it felt like.

It is a very, very good point, very exciting.  I have students at the moment, three students.  We have ethical approval, they actually have magnets implanted in their fingers and they can feel - literally if they go into a bank they can feel EM [electromagnetic] signals.  They have the magnet in their finger, a little coil of wire around the magnet and then that is attached to different sensory input.  So, these are students doing the course, they can feel ultrasonic signals, feel distance, or feel infra-red which can be a heat signal.  So it’s converting different signals to magnetic signals.  We haven’t actually tested whether they can follow their finger and know which way to go as a compass would.  That's an interesting one.  We’ll have to try that.

I think to go with reading glasses is probably the much easier way than trying to do any complicated implants in that case!