BCI hits Nature

A rather slack-jawed article from CNN Money, over-eager and misleading, points out that the latest implanted electrode array work by Brown-affiliated Cyberkinetics was just published in Nature:

"If you think that's mind-blowing, try to wrap your head around the sensational research that's been done on the brain of one Matthew Nagle by scientists at Brown University and three other institutions, in collaboration with Foxborough, Mass.-based company Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems. The research was published for the first time last week in the British science journal Nature..."

Regrettably, they don't tell us what the basis of the publication is, since everything they mention with Nagle seems to have been done already (remote control of robot arms, learning computer/TV control, etc).  Still, good to see BCI/MMI getting some prestigious and mainstream science press.



To their lack of credit, they also mention a patent by Sony on beaming data directly into the mind using ultrasonic signals.  I seem to remember that the patent was widely derided, pure patent speculation rather than something that had been designed or built.  A DARPA scientist named Stu Wolf also mentions that headband-based interfaces are likely to be popular 20 years in the future.  Doesn't sound farfetched to me, although EEG's got a way to go.

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