Rise of the Cyborgs Melding humans and machines to help the paralyzed walk, the mute speak, and ultimately merge humans with machines From: Discover Magazine - October 2008 - page 51 By: Sherry Baker By any name, the devices created by Philip Kennedy, the chief scientist of Neural Signals, a company he founded in 1987 to develop a brain-computer interface, and a handful of others can decode the conscious intentions conveyed by neural signals. For those who are missing a leg or who have a broken spine, the signals can control computers, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs. For those suffering from "locked-in syndrome," their bodies so immobilized by catastrophic disorders like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or brain stem stroke that they are unable to speak or communicate their needs, the devices can translate neural signals to spell out words on a computer screen. Spoken language through a voice synthesizer is coming soon. Although his current work is aimed at the severely disabled and locked-in, Kennedy believes neural prosthetics will have applications for the well-bodied, too. In fact, he awaits a new, technologically driven stage of evolution that will qualify cyborgs for a branch on the human family tree. Read the entire article at: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/oct/26-rise-of-the-cyborgs Links: Philip Kennedy http://www.healthgrades.com/directory_search/physician/profiles/dr-md-reports/Dr-Philip-Kennedy-MD-307BA33E.cfm The cyborg evolution http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/21/1047749931869.html The Bionic Connection http://discovermagazine.com/2002/nov/featbionic/?searchterm=cyborg Neural Interfaces Program http://www.ninds.nih.gov/funding/research/npp/ When Computers Meld with Our Minds http://discovermagazine.com/2008/aug/25-when-computers-meld-with-our-minds How To Excuse Yourself from Your Body http://discovermagazine.com/2007/dec/how-to-excuse-yourself-from-your-body Roy Bakay http://www.spineuniverse.com/mdpage.php?doctorID=1462 Laboratory for Human and Machine Haptics http://touchlab.mit.edu/ Idoya turns robotics into monkey business http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/idoya-turns-robotics-into-monkey-business/2008/01/15/1200159447285.html Monkeys Master Mind Control of Mechanical Arm http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/05/28/monkey-cyborgs-master-mind-control-of-mechanical-arm/ Lee Miller http://www.physiology.northwestern.edu/Secondlevel/Miller/hp.html John Donoghue http://donoghue.neuro.brown.edu/ Richard Andersen http://www.vis.caltech.edu/ My brain stem stroke http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/312/7035/917 Frank Guenther http://cns-web.bu.edu/~guenther/ Miguel Nicolelis http://www.nicolelislab.net/ Walk Again Project http://www.innf.net/walk_again.php Ray Kurzweil http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html Defense Exoskeleton for bionic supersoldier http://www.tacticalwarfightergear.com/tacticalgear/catalog/soldier_exoskeleton.php Klaus-Robert Müller http://ml.cs.tu-berlin.de/en/klaus/index.html Jonathan R. Wolpaw http://www.wadsworth.org/resnres/bios/wolpaw.htm