Australia Develops Mind Control Device That Sits Near Your Brain

The device is the size of a paper clip, and it sits inside a blood vessel next to the brain. Researchers say the tiny device may help people with paralysis to walk again, amongst other things.

ABC.net.au reports:

The stentrode, described as a “bionic spinal cord”, records brain activity and converts the signals into electrical commands.

In trials, the device has been shown to control bionic limbs, and doctors say it could also let a person move a wheelchair with their thoughts.

A team of researchers is intending to implant the stentrode in a small group of spinal cord patients next year at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Professor Clive May, a neurophysiologist at the Florey Institute, said the device offered users the ability to become mobile again.

“What has been shown in other instances is that patients can learn over time to use their brain to move devices in a particular way that they choose to do,” he said.

“What we have done is taken a stent, which is normally put into an artery to expand the artery.

“We’ve used that same technology and we’ve put micro-electrodes around it and we worked out a way of inserting this up through blood vessels into a blood vessel in the brain that’s just above the motor cortex, which is the part of the brain that controls movement.”

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