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How do we fix the brain after it has been injured,
whether it be by any of these diseases? And that really start to get us to the next
stage.
Not only do we need to know know what causes the problem. We need to understand
the brain well enough
so we can essentially get the replacement part once it's been broken.
And so that enters this idea... what's called a brain-computer interface.
Basically,
if we can translate the machinery
of your thoughts - if we understand those signals - we can then access those and use
those for all sorts of things.
To basically allow your thoughts to communicate by a machine
to control anything from a cursor on a screen to your own limbs.
And that, one can imagine, that you can then be able to...
for instance, if somebody has a spinal cord injury, has had a stroke, to allow them to
recover function
by using, essentially, a human-computer interface.
I see; so the brain-computer interface has two parts. It's really decoding your brain's
signal
and then using machines to transmit that signal to a a machine that can move.
That's exactly right - or do a number of things - whatever suits your intentions.
So here's an example of one of our subjects who had electrodes placed on the
surface of his brain to treat epilepsy.
And hopefully you can see that cursor. He's using imagined movements,
as if he was to move a cursor, to to basically get to those different targets
using thoughts alone. Now he actually,
he was really fun to work with, because he got bored, and he said "can I play some video games?"
So here you can see he's moving his hand
and we're decoding those motor movements from the electrodes in his brain. And he's controlling
this cannon.
And you're going to see that the Space Invaders are coming over, and pretty
soon he's going to start moving it around.
And he actually does are really, really, really good job
of controlling that cannon to shoot all of those Space Invaders.
As it turns out, he's got - and there's not a lot of people in this pool - so I'll just
qualify that - he's in the Guinness Book of World Records for
having the highest score in a video game,
using his brain to control the video game. Amazing...
Now, this is a an electrode placed over Broca's area.
You folks all learned about that tonight. Here we're decoding whether the person is
imagining saying "ooo" or "ahh."
And they can control the cursor going to the left and to the right.
And again, you know, we're starting to get access to the things
that, you know, in my opinion make us very human, or imagined thoughts
of speaking to ourselves. So,
you know, this is all great, but people skulls are open. Do I need to
cracked my skull open, have wires coming out to do this? Well, actually, you don't.
We've actually designed... We can we can use this, and we can
try to do this non-invasively these days.
Now we're going to put Albert to the test
and see if he can fly a helicopter with his brain.
What it's actually doing is it's measuring a
kinda of brain wave called theta waves associated with attention.
And basically when you are
paying attention to very certain things, such as counting backwards
or doing what's called serial linguistics, meaning...
Uh oh -- Get it up! Get it up! [Laughter from audience]
So when he concentrates on that,
he can basically move this brain up to the top of the screen.
And if he starts to relax, then he can start to let it drop down.
Now he better not relax too much, or else he's going to get hit by a plane
Ohhh!!
Give Albert a big round of applause.
So that makes me think about what might come in the future
and what if people like Eric here have really cracked
or decoded the neural code. What kinda of future might that bring?
Well, imagine a world were the world around you
is as accessible as an iPad. We can imagine things we could modulate
your environment with your thoughts alone.
You can communicate with your thoughts alone. Or, if you've got some type of
deficit
or injury that you can basically have a a device that can restore that function.
One thing we've got going on right now
a is we actually have a a clinical trial for stroke rehabilitation that basically
somebody
with a paralyzed hand can put on a headset
and not too long after, they can have an orthotic that opens
and closes their hand,
soon after training. And as we get get really good with this,
one can even imagine truly replacement parts.
This is one of the first implants
for spinal cord injury patients controlling a robotic arm.
And you're going to see that this is the first time he gets to touch his wife in nearly
three years after sustaining his injury.