How temporal lobe can control computer screen
November 1st 2010 19:54
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MAN and machine are a step closer after scientists hooked up the part of the brain responsible for memory to a computer.
Computers that can be rudimentarily controlled by the mind are nothing new, but most to date have relied on signals from the brain's motor cortex.
Now scientists have tested whether people can control a computer with their medial temporal lobe, a region important for memory and facial recognition.
Doctors inserted tiny wires into the brains of 12 epilepsy patients who required surgery to discover which parts were responsible for their seizures.
While they had the wires in there, the patients also took part in a test to see if they could control an image on a computer screen.
First of all, the doctors had to make a list of people and places that were fresh in the minds of the patients.
Then they picked out a few of the subjects that caused spikes in brain activity and linked them to specific neurons.
So for one patient, Marilyon Monroe was linked to one neuron and actor Josh Brolin to another.
Then the patient was shown a picture of Monroe and Brolin laid on top of each other and asked to decide which image should come out on top.
By suppressing the Brolin neuron and boosting the activity of the Monroe one, as many as 70 per cent of the subjects tested were able to change the image.
"This is a novel and elegant use of a brain-computer interface to explore how the brain directs attention and makes choices," Dr Debra Babcock of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke said.
"The remarkable aspects of this study are that we can concentrate our attention to make a choice by modulating so few brain cells and that we can learn to control those cells very quickly."
Just last month, scientists in Japan claimed they had hardwired a rat's brain to enable it to move a car with neural activity alone.
However, this is the first time anyone has been able to tap into signals based on individual thoughts or desires.
IEEE's Spectrum blog took the concept and ran with it to Inception-style hypothetical levels, claiming that "if technology someday advances to enable reading the electrical activity of many thousands or millions of individual neurons ... scientists might begin to access snippets of real daydreams or actual dreams".
The results of the experiment were published in Nature and can be viewed online with a subscription here.
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