Neuroscientists anticipate neural prosthetics will soon allow paralyzed patients control over their arms and legs.

[Political scientists desperately seek converse technology for politicians' bodies to control their paralyzed brains - "Turning Actions into Thoughts" - a story for another time]

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc. is able to simultaneously sense the electrical activity of many individual neurons using a silicon array of one hundred electrodes, each thinner than a human hair.

"At Cyberkinetics, we have the technology to rebuild him, gentlemen sense, transmit, analyze and apply the language of neurons."

"The human brain is a super computer that instantaneously processes vast amounts of information. Cyberkinetics’ technology allows .. electrical activity to transmit from neurons in the brain to computers for analysis.

" In the current BrainGate™ System, a bundle consisting of one hundred gold wires connects the array to a pedestal which extends through the scalp [then via] an external cable to computers [and] analyzed in real-time [then] translate it into control signals for use in various computer-based applications. [If you consider moving an limb a "computer-based application"!]

Scientific findings from the first participant [using] BrainGate Neural Interface System (BrainGate) were featured on the cover of July 2006 Nature. The Stanford team .. demonstrated .. accurate, high-speed neural recordings that can .. translate into a prediction of intended movement.

Researchers led by John Donoghue of Brown University in Rhode Island describe how they helped a 25-year-old patient whose spinal cord had been severed, while a group led by Krishna Shenoy of Stanford University, working with monkeys that are not paralyzed, has established a technique to speed up the interface of brain and machine.

High-resolution touch sensors developed by chemical engineers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln offer robots touchy-feely sensation.

The ‘membrane’ self-assembles at room temperature and can cover over a square meter enveloping complex shapes.

Ravi F. Saraf and doctoral student Vivek Maheshwari report in June 9 Science their self-assembling nanoparticle device has touch sensitivity comparable to human finger tips.

"The touch resolution of the human finger is 40 microns (40 millionths of a meter)," said Saraf. "Using nanoparticles, we can attain resolution close to human touch."

Saraf explained placing voltage across the thickness and applying pressure to the device varys outputs of current and electroluminescent light from semiconducting particles.

To demonstrate Saraf and Maheshwari pressed a penny against a sample device which deciphered fine features such as wrinkles in Abraham Lincoln’s clothing.

What robots make of this data is the next quest.

‘Touch’ is, after all, a broad word covering many facets of the tactile which, at the very least even in this narrow context, refers to pressure, shape, softness, texture and vibration plus physico-chemical attributes like heat and cold, states of liquid, gas and solid, friction, etc.

Even the complexity of ‘pain - ‘primitively, a surface capable of damaging touch sensors - merges into radiation detection (heat, various emissive) to reach vision. The field becomes more complex when senses must combine to cooperate. All good fun!

Link to Nebraska Uni article

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