FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, OCTOBER 2015This summer, Duke University researchers announced with much fanfare that they had successfully created a monkey “brainet,” a new frontier in brain-machine interfaces whereby scientists used computers to link the brains of multiple animals. Pooling their combined mental activity, the monkeys cooperated to gain control of a virtual arm, moving it to various targets on a computer screen.
The invasive study, led by Miguel Nicolelis, was undoubtedly a breakthrough: a collaborative cyborg network. But such accomplishments are par for the course in a field where, for more than 15 years, researchers have routinely announced advances using electrodes and computers to “read” the intentions of behaving research subjects. Translating the neural code thus deduced, scientists in this relatively narrow field have granted animals and humans neural control over everything from computer cursors and wheelchairs to video games and flying drones. In the case of Jan Scheuermann, one of the brave paraplegics I feature in my new book, The Brain Electric, researchers successfully connected her brain to a flight simulator for an F-35 fighter jet.
Resplendent with sci-fi sizzle, brain-machine interfaces, or BMIs, are indisputably ...
