Ian Burkhart, a man who is paralzsed from the neck down has become the first such patient to move his hand by the power of thought alone, thanks to a chip implanted in his brain. To accomplish this feat, all he had to do was think intensely about moving his hand and the rest was done by the chip in less than a tenth of a second. Continue reading for the video and more information.
Simply put, a team of Ohio State University and Battelle researchers opened up Burkhart’s skull and inserted the 0.15-inch chip into his brain to ‘read’ his thoughts. The information received from the chip is then transmitted via cable to a computer which decodes it and adds commands that would normally come from the spinal column. Lastly, the computer is connected to a sleeve of electrodes on his arm which stimulates the muscle fibers to move.
