Bioengineering revolution leading to human cyborgs

Borg cyborg prosthetics by mharrsch

The EE Times reported interesting findings from last week’s annual international conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, held in Lyon, France. With a market projected to be $2.8 billion, a bioengineering revolution is underway to build sophisticated brain-computer interfaces allowing for real-time mechanical action and diagnosis.

Advances in electronics, electrodes and algorithms are allowing for the creation of worn and implantable sensors that can translate brain signals into mechanical action. For instance, one group was able to capture the signals of 30 motor neurons in the M1 area of the motor cortex using scalp-worn EEG sensors to flex a single prosthetic finger with 99% accuracy.

“A prosthesis revolution is under way, and a lot of the mechanical problems are getting solved,” said Nitish Thakor, a professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), speaking at one of two workshops on neural systems. “Now the challenge is linking [prosthetic devices] to the nervous system to control them in a real-time fashion.”

As brain-computer interfaces become optimized and we become better at distinguishing brain signals between 1Hz-10kHz, it is a matter of time before high performance neural microarray sensors implanted in the brain can allow a prosthetic hand to play the piano. But take note, lazy people out there, this implant will not teach you HOW to play piano, so you’ll still need to take those piano lessons afterall.

Read more: Researchers forging neural links for finer control of artificial limbs