Medical Interfacing the brain with technology?

[completenoob]

Has anyone tried doing it or has done it? Do you think it will be possible to interface the human brain with a computer some day?

 

[CompuChip]

It has been tried, see for example this thread: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=279472

It's not very sophisticated yet though, and I think it will be some time before it gets really applicable... seeing as AFAIK the brain is still one of the least understood things of this world

 

[Cincinnatus]

Has anyone tried doing it or has done it? Do you think it will be possible to interface the human brain with a computer some day?

Yes it has been done. There is a company formerly called cyberkinetics (they recently changed their name and I can't remember the new one) which is running clinical trials for a cortical read-out device called "brain-gate": http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/brain.html?pg=4

You can find some interesting videos from these clinical trials on youtube.

 

[completenoob]

It would be neat if we could attach some external memory device, have a thought, and store it in that device(Like an external hard drive!) Also if information could be loaded into our brains and learned instantly, like the matrix!

 

[Cincinnatus]

It would be neat if we could attach some external memory device, have a thought, and store it in that device(Like an external hard drive!) Also if information could be loaded into our brains and learned instantly, like the matrix!

Indeed, these things would be cool. I wish I had some idea how to do them!

 

[Human Bean]

There are currently studies which enable disabled people to 'speak' through a computer which learns their individual brain activation patterns (usually through EEG, but I think also through fMRI) for intended communication. There's a group in the University in Berlin who are specialising in this. The problem is that brain imaging doesn't really allow sufficient resolution to have anything other than pre-loaded sentences which are sufficiently different in their activation patterns (e.g. highly emotive vs non-emotive). However, I have had the pleasure of controlling a mouse on a computer screen moving left to right and clicking based on me thinking about moving either my right or left arm (without actually moving).

A more successful method which could be considered linking the brain and a computer is eyetracking, good resolution eyetracking can tell exactly where someone is looking and also quite a bit about their levels of attention, see for example the european network of excellence www.cogain.org.