Now one can safely pinch a girl's bottom and blame it on a
faulty chip

Brain chip reads man's thoughts  

The 'chip' reads brain signals
A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from
a brain chip that reads his mind.
Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined
to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001.

The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts,
last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought
alone.

The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to
decipher.

Mind over matter

He can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume
thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home.

Scientists have been working for some time to devise a way to enable
paralysed people to control devices with the brain.

Studies have shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes
implanted into their brain.

 It's quite remarkable

Dr Richard Apps, neurophysiologist from Bristol University

Recently four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users,
were able to move a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64
electrodes that pick up brain waves.

Mr Nagle's device, called BrainGate, consists of nearly 100 hair-thin
electrodes implanted a millimetre deep into part of the motor cortex
of his brain that controls movement.

Wires feed the information from the electrodes into a computer which
analyses the brain signals.

The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements,
offering the user an alternative way to control devices such as a
computer with thought.

Motor control

Professor John Donoghue, an expert on neuroscience at Brown
University, Rhode Island, is the scientist behind the device produced
by Cyberkinetics.

He said: "The computer screen is basically a TV remote control panel,
and in order to indicate a selection he merely has to pass the cursor
over an icon, and that's equivalent to a click when he goes over that
icon."

Mr Nagle has also been able to use thought to move a prosthetic hand
and robotic arm to grab sweets from one person's hand and place them
into another.

Professor Donoghue hopes that ultimately implants such as this will
allow people with paralysis to regain the use of their limbs.

The long term aim is to design a package the size of a mobile phone
that will run on batteries, and to electrically stimulate the
patient's own muscles.

This will be difficult.

The simple movements we take for granted in fact involve complex
electrical signals which will be hard to replicate, Dr Richard Apps, a
neurophysiologist from Bristol University, the UK, told the BBC News
website.

He said there were millions of neurones in the brain involved with
movement. The brain chip taps into only a very small number of these.

But he said the work was extremely exciting.

"It's quite remarkable. They have taken research to the next stage to
have a clear benefit for a patient that otherwise would not be able to
move.

"It seems that they have cracked the crucial step and arguably the
most challenging step to get hand movements.

"Just to be able to grasp an object is a major step forward."

He said it might be possible to hone this further to achieve finer
movements of the hand.

Matthew Nagel's story is featured in a Frontiers programme on BBC
Radio Four on Wednesday 13 April, 2005, at 2100 BST.