Toward a Brain-Internet Link
Technology Review - 11/2003) Vol. 106, No. 9, P. 30
By: Rodney Brooks

MIT scientist Rodney Brooks speculates that brain implants which connect
people wirelessly to the Internet could be a reality by 2020, thanks to
technological advances as well as military and medical research initiatives.
Brooks cites State University of New York (SUNY) researchers' successful
implantation last year of devices in rat cortexes that stimulate certain
areas of the rodents' brains so that they turn in specific directions in
response to commands from a laptop. Three years earlier, SUNY researcher John
Chapin and Duke University's Miguel Nicolelis recorded neural signals in rats
when they pressed a lever to induce a robot arm to release water, training a
computer to recognize the signals so that the animals could eventually
trigger the arm by thought alone; a similar experiment using primates soon
followed. Machine-neuron link technology for humans is already in use:
Hearing-disabled people are now using cochlear implants, and human trials are
underway involving neural implants that give blind people a rudimentary
perception of the surrounding environment, and quadriplegics crude mental
control of computers. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has also
established a wireless brain-machine interface program with the initial goal
of developing thought-controlled biomedical equipment. Brooks concludes that
the technology must meet additional challenges before it can reach its full
potential. "We need algorithms that can track the behavior of brain cells as
they adapt to the interface, and we'll need better understanding of brain
regions that serve as centers of meaning," he explains. 

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/brooks1103.asp
http://www.rybak-et-al.net/chapin.html
http://cognews.com/1064991285/index_html
http://www.neuro.duke.edu/Faculty/Nicolelis.htm
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/09/30/3f797251720bf