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Monkeys may not have got Shakespeare's canon under their belts yet, but they can control wheelchairs with their minds.
In a study by researchers at Duke University, published in the journal Scientific Reports, two monkeys were fitted with brain machine interfaces, placed into wheelchairs and manoeuvred around. While more invasive than EEG, the technique used was faster and provided more accurate measurements, the researchers said.
The monkeys then began manually moving the wheelchairs, with researchers turning their brain signals into an algorithm that translated cortical activity into physical movements. This allowed the monkeys to move the wheelchairs with their minds.
Tempted by a reward of a grape, the monkeys improved their ability to navigate the chairs over time, with brain imaging showing that they were also able to calculate distances between themselves and the grapes.
"This was not a signal that was present in the beginning of the training, but something that emerged as an effect of the monkeys becoming proficient in this task," said Miguel Nicolelis, who worked on the study. "This was a surprise. It demonstrates the brain's enormous flexibility to assimilate a device, in this case a wheelchair, and that device's spatial relationships to the surrounding world."
The team hope that the research will be used to "restore whole-body mobility" to severely paralysed patients, some of whom can't even blink. "In some severely disabled people, even blinking is not possible,' said Nicolelis. "For them, using a wheelchair or device controlled by noninvasive measures like an EEG may not be sufficient. We show clearly that if you have intracranial implants, you get better control of a wheelchair than with noninvasive devices."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
