Brain-machine interface could help paralysed people

For people without the use of their limbs, interacting with technology is vital, but difficult. Voice control can solve some problems, but for some people even that is not possible. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology  now believe they have taken a major step towards the science fiction goal of being able to control machinery and electronics directly just by thinking about it.

Brain-machine interface (BMI) control is already available, to a degree. Neurologists have devised methods for using electroencephalography (EEG) signals to control external devices, but this has required extremely awkward equipment: electrode-studded caps, sheafs of wires, messy adhesives and liquids to ensure skin-to-centre contact. The Georgia team, who describe their research in Nature Machine Intelligence, have devised a replacement for all this in the form of a high-resolution EEG monitoring system within a miniaturised flexible printed sensor.

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Principal researcher Woon-Hong Yeo and his colleagues put together three essential components to form their system: highly flexible, hair-mounted electrodes that make direct contact with the scalp, an ultra-thin nano membrane electrode, and soft, flexible circuitry with a Bluetooth telemetry unit. The recorded EEG signals from the brain are processed within the flexible circuitry, and then wirelessly transmitted via Bluetooth to a tablet computer up to 15 m away.