BBC:
Sensors placed on the outside of the human skull can pick up
enough information from the brain beneath to direct, say, a
cartoon car around a crude course on a computer screen. But the
skull absorbs high-frequency signals that would allow finer,
faster control. Now, Eric Leuthardt of Washington University in
Saint Louis and his collaborators have shown that sensors
placed directly on the surface of a person's brain can be used
to move a computer cursor with pure thought, as if the person
were using a mouse. The people in the study were epilepsy
patients who'd already had the electrocorticographical sensors
implanted in their heads. Controlling the cursor entailed
asking the patients to think of four vowel sounds. After
recording the signals that corresponded to each imagined vowel,
the researchers ran a control program that translated the
signals into cursor motion.
