They are trained by listening to a buzzer which becomes
faster and louder when they are thinking along the right
lines.  Dr Bakay says that controlling the cursor soon
becomes second nature.

The first two patients, New Scientist reports, were a woman
with motor neuron disease, who was given the implants 18
months ago and has since died, and a 57-year-old man
paralysed by a stroke.

They were taught very simple commands, with one cone being
used to move the cursor up and down and the other from left
to right. If they could give more complex commands, disabled
people could use them to make the computer speak for them. Dr
Bakay warns that this could still be years off. But he has
secured funding from the US National Institutes of Health to
continue the research with three more patients.

The British Telecom laboratories near Ipswich have also done
research into implantable chips, including a possible memory
chip which would take data from the eye and store it for a
computer. "There is a raft of wonderful benefits to bringing
chips and circuits inside human beings," said Dr Peter
Cochrane, head of research.

............................................................
Communicating with 'thought power'

"Bionic brain implants allowing a computer to be operated
by the power of thought, have been developed by American
scientists," reports BBC News. Read all about it here:

http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/
  sci/tech/newsid_193000/193946.stm

The BBC report states that "the [brain] implant becomes
naturally 'wired' into the patient's brain as neurones grow
into the cones and attach themselves to the electrodes
mounted inside," and that "An FM transmitter under the scalp
transmits the signal without wires, and...no batteries," to
operate the cursor on a computer...  hard to believe!

Up to Contents

                             -111-