Neuroscientists at the Mayo Clinic campus in Jacksonville, Florida, have demonstrated how brain waves can be used to type alphanumerical characters on a computer screen. By merely focusing on the “q” in a matrix of letters, for example, that “q” appears on the monitor.

This is a welcome incremental step towards brain-controlled text input. The other interesting about this experiment is that it was done on people who already had electrodes implanted in their brain to monitor and study their epilepsy. The scientists thought that the electrodes’ output might be able to be controlled with thought, and it turns out it can.

This is very different than the typical brain-computer interface, which uses electroencephalography (EEG). Basically, an EEG is a helmet that oozes tricolor pasta:

But an eletrocorticograph (ECoG, pronounced “eecog”), like the one used for this experiment, sits on the brain itself, like this:

The name of the surgeon is Rand Spencer, M.D., and we need many more like him.

The test patient underwent a complicated, experimental surgical procedure to wire the nerve endings in his stump to an electronic interface. His personal risk will advance science and potentially help millions of people. Thank you, Robin Af Ekenstam.

In the next version I hope they make the Smart Hand’s fingertips get a little bit more sensitive after you clip its fingernails.

(via Engadget)

(via Next Nature)

to affect the compass inside my Tmobile G1.”

Extra points for referring to surgical sensory augmentation like it’s no thing.

Of course, rather than simply explaining the news in as clear a way as possible, ABC proceeds to extremes: “Mitchell has become the first real ‘Bionic Woman’: part human, part computer.” She’s first and she’s real, and you can tell because ABC even awarded her the official capitalized title of “Bionic Woman.” Presumptuous, and also inaccurate. In fact, this technology is exciting because it doesn’t have much to do with computers at all. Rather than relying on predictive software to control the motors in the prosthesis (which was the technique used in this BBC producer’s prosthetic foot), Ms. Mitchell controls her hardware directly, with her brain.

In any case, the success of this procedure has led to some interesting discoveries, such as the fact that Ms. Mitchell retains a 1-to-1 mapping of her reinnervated afferent fibers to locations on her prosthesis.

Paul Marasco, a touch specialist and research scientist with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, was brought in to study the hand sensations that Mitchell feels in her chest. He put together a detailed map, connecting what Mitchell’s missing hand feels with the corresponding locations on her chest.

Depending on where you touch her chest, “she has the distinct sense of her joints being bent back in particular ways, and she has feelings of her skin being stretched,” Marasco said.

If a human’s nervous system can be extended to include a prosthesis, it isn’t a stretch to imagine that it can be interfaced with external signal networks, such as other humans’ nervous systems, or the internet. How will this affect embodied cognition? Societal structure? Consciousness?

Here’s a video of Claudia in action. Seems like she’s got style too—the upper part of her artificial arm is covered in a camoflauge pattern. Seen!

What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the hard drive spin up under the load? Or you could tell if an electrical cord was live before you touched it? For the few people who have rare earth magnets implanted in their fingers, these are among the reported effects — a finger that feels electromagnetic fields along with the normal sense of touch.

The magnet works by moving very slightly, or with a noticeable oscillation, in response to EM fields. This stimulates the somatosensory receptors in the fingertip, the same nerves that are responsible for perceiving pressure, temperature and pain. Huffman and other recipients found they could locate electric stovetops and motors, and pick out live electrical cables. Appliance cords in the United States give off a 60-Hz field, a sensation with which Huffman has become intimately familiar. “It is a light, rapid buzz,” he says.

The author had a magnetic implant put in his own finger:

I would circle my finger with a strong magnet and feel the one in my finger spin. In time, bits of my laptop became familiar as tingles and buzzes. Every so often I would pass near something and get an unexpected vibration. Live phone pairs on the sides of houses sometimes startled me.

New sensory modes using low cost, low tech methods—why not? Show me a few hundred people who like their magnetic implants and I’d probably do it too.