For Future of Mind Control, Robot-Monkey Trials Are Just a Start

The Force, it appears, may be with us sooner than expected. A study in the journal Nature this spring all but confirmed the latest evolution in the hard-charging, heady field of cybernetics: Monkeys can control machines with their brains. In the experiment, conducted by neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, a pair of macaque monkeys with electrodes implanted in their brains were able to quickly learn how to operate a robot arm as though it were their own, successfully fee ding themselves more than half the time. Aside from building a fleet of potentially potbellied test subjects, however, could this apparent breakthrough bring mind control to human prosthetics anytime soon? Or could it mean even more?... With a physical neural connection, Nicolelis believes that brain plasticity can be achieved quickly and with greater precision than current prosthetic control systems. “When you link the brain to a device, it could allow scaling in force and time—things that, today, your body can’t do,” he says. So the brain would not only respond to data from sensors in the bionic limb, but would account for unfamiliar amounts of speed and force. For sci-fi fans, the implications don’t need spelling out: prosthetics that are faster and stronger than normal limbs, with roughly the same level of control as their flesh-and-blood predecessors. Without a closed neural loop, it would theoretically take much longer to become accustomed to an enhanced arm and fold it into normal brain activity. The key to cybernetic devices that restore function and increase it rests with the humble electrodes currently popping out of monkey skulls—and the loads of data therein.