Brain-Computer For Manipulating Dreams

A first-generation commercial brain-computer interface (BCI) is being released by Emotiv Systems later this year. What does the future hold for BCI? By 2050, and likely sooner, you will be able to buy a BCI device that records all your dreams in their entirety. This will be done in one of two ways. One method would be to use distributed nanobots less than a micrometer in diameter to spread throughout the brain and monitor the activation patterns of neurons. By this point, cognitive science will have advanced enough to know which neural activation patterns correspond to which sensory experiences. This has already been done with cats (using electrodes, not nanobots), where researchers led by scientist Garrett Stanley were able to extrapolate what a cat was seeing merely by monitoring the neurons of its visual cortex. The next steps will be to increase the resolution, add monitoring of emotions, sounds, and smells, and make it safe for human use. An alternative route, if nanobots are still not ready for commercial deployment by 2050, is to have minimally invasive surgery where tiny holes, no larger than a grain of sand, are drilled in the skull. Electronic nanofibers could be routed through these holes from a port on the outside to neurons throughout the brain. The holes could be protected by a plastic membrane, ensuring that no foreign particles could pass through them into the brain. The access ports on the scalp would be compatible with a BCI headset designed to monitor activity in specific neural groups and selectively stimulate neurons according to a program.