Thursday, September 16, 2010

Here's an acronym - BCI

I ran across the acronym "BCI" recently. It stands for "brain-computer interface." It was mentioned in a Scientific American page that discussed "the recent success at Andrew Schwartz’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh where macaque monkeys fed themselves using a robotic arm controlled only by their thoughts."

The apparatus used to implement the BCI was a little more complex than a joystick, however:

In Schwartz’s lab, an electrode placed beneath the skull of the macaque can detect spikes from single neurons. The pattern of neurons firing is then translated into code that a computer can understand.

The applications are endless...although I'm not sure whether the BCI would malfunction if TV Azteca reporter Ines Sainz happened to walk by.
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