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[Barb Creel <barbara_creel AT sfd.org>]

Washington Post
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21153-2002Mar13.html

Monkey Moves Cursor by Thinking

By Alex Dominguez
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, March 13, 2002; 2:00 PM 

A monkey with a fingernail-size brain implant moved a cursor on a computer
screen just by thinking -- the latest in a series of experiments that have
raised hopes that paralyzed people might one day be able to control
complex devices with their minds.

While humans have already been implanted with a similar device that allows
control of a cursor, the set of thin wires used by the Brown University
researchers is less bulky and worked by measuring fewer neurons.

Three rhesus monkeys were given the implants, which were first used to
record signals from their motor cortex -- an area of the brain that
controls movement -- as they manipulated a joystick with their hands. Then
those signals were used to develop a program that enabled one of the
monkeys to continue moving the cursor with its brain.

During dozens of trials over several months, the monkey moved the cursor
just by thinking and used it to touch dots that appeared on the screen,
earning orange juice as a reward, said John Donoghue, chairman of
neuroscience at Brown.

The results are promising enough that the device could one day be used on
humans, the researchers reported in Thursday's issue of the journal
Nature. They would not speculate on how long that might take.

Anything that can be controlled with two- or three-dimensional coordinates
can be controlled by similar implants, Donoghue said.

"Anything you can imagine can be engineered. What can you do with
point-and-click navigation on the Internet?" he said.

In 1998, researchers at Emory University in Atlanta reported that a
paralyzed man was able to control a cursor with a cone-shaped, glass
implant, using it to operate a voice synthesizer that allowed him to
communicate.

The key advance in the Brown study is that the researchers were able to
use fewer neurons -- between seven and 30 -- to control the cursor, said
Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi, a Northwestern University professor and staff member
of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Mussa-Ivaldi said the glass cone implant is bulkier, but its advantage is
that brain cells grow around the glass, holding it in place.

In November, Duke University researchers reported they had wired the
brains of monkeys to control robotic arms. When the monkeys reached for
food or manipulated a joystick, the robotic arms mimicked those motions.

Duke researcher Miguel Nicolelis, who was involved in the robotic arm
research, said similar work has also been done with rodents.

As for transferring the implant technology to humans, "I always estimate
these transfers as somewhere between five and 10 years, but it's very
encouraging," Nicolelis said. "It now shows in rodents and in monkeys that
this is feasible. It gets us very much on the track to potential
applications in humans."

(C) 2002 The Associated Press