The most recent issue of Nature has a paper by the Donoghue lab at Brown about their project implanting an ensemble of electrodes into the motor cortex of a paraplegic. Signals from the electrodes were decoded and used to run a computer program so the patient can literally move the cursor with their mind. This is really incredible stuff. The day is rapidly approaching when we can really help these people.
You can read the article, but the most interesting part is the videos available (without a subscription) here. My favorite is a game of Pong.
Hat-tip: Mind Hacks (by one of the authors incidentally).
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I think is one of those rare Nature papers that has the right to use the word "spectacular" (and disappointingly doesn't...).
I think I heard somewhere that they (neurosurgeons in general, don't know if it was the Donoghue lab) have done it the other way around as well. I mean, used an eletrode array to input information into the brain, but I may have dreamt it up. I am pretty certain there was something along the lines of electrical stimulation of the visual cortex of a blind subject producing "flashes of light". Does anyone know of a particular paper this could have come from?
In any case, I think making "prosthetic eyes" is going be a much bigger challange that arms etc. The question here is exactly how much plasticity the adult visual cortex has. In the worst case scenario, implanted electrodes would have to mirror the fields of the cortex exactly.