[engrByDayPianstByNight (OP)]

An interesting article on today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/science/29brain.html?hp

It's about a monkey using its (his) thought to control a robotic arms. The article also has a short video clip accompanying it. The experiment is published in the latest issue of Nature. I thought it was pretty cool monkey business.

[MOD - subject re-formatted as a question, in line with forum style - CS]

[DoctorBeaver]

I saw that. It's quite impressive.

[RD]

balls
http://www.vivifeye.com/mindball.html

[chris]

Hmm; this above example is a bit different because it's (presumably) responding to changes in the EEG (electroencephalogram), which is the current detectable on the skin secondary to brain activity inside the skull. The EEG therefore represents the summed or average activity of millions of nerve cells in the vicinity of the pickup electrode and it is therefore a much rougher indication of brain activity than the system being used to control the robot.

In this latter example a tiny electrode array, comprising a hundred or so pickups, is implanted into the brain's motor area where it can eavesdrop on the neurological chatter going on amongst a fairly discrete population of nerve cells. This means that the information being recorded is quite specific to the function of that part of the brain, and in fact specific to the part of the body controlled by that part of the brain. This means that the system is fairly immune to interference from other ongoing brain activity. For instance the monkey can still blink or move its head around (which are controlled by a different brain territory) without affecting the movements it's generating with the electrodes.

This would not be the case with the EEG, where other activity including frowing (which activates the scalp muscles) would definitely affect the information being recorded.

Chris

[RD]

This would not be the case with the EEG, where other activity including frowning (which activates the scalp muscles) would definitely affect the information being recorded.

Chris

Thanks for the tip on how to cheat at "Mindball" [],
[although it would be necessary to frown at about 5-10Hz to emulate Theta and Alpha brainwaves].

[qazibasit]

its possible only in two ways, first either u implant a transmitter in ur brain that functions with ur brain and second is that u have so much control on ur brain waves and u can program ur robot with the brain frequencies.