Thought-Controlled Prosthetics Attract Attention from FDA From: Robotics Trends - 11/26/2014 By: Sarah Reardon The US Food and Drug Administration is wrestling with how to best regulate such brain-computer interfaces to ensure they are safe. For the first time since accidents severed the neural connection between their brains and limbs, a small number of patients are reaching out and feeling the world with prosthetic devices wired directly to their brains. Earlier this month, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena implanted a person’s brain with electrode arrays that read neural activity to control a robotic arm and stimulate the brain to deliver a sensation of what the arm touched. And since 2011, a team at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania has been working with a small number of people who control prostheses through neural implants. "It's moving quick at the moment,” says Christian Klaes, a neuroscientist on the Caltech effort. “The race has started." The advances are also starting to attract serious attention from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is wrestling with how best to regulate such brain–computer interfaces to ensure that they are safe. On 21 November, the agency held a meeting at its White Oak campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, to get the process started. The meeting was well-timed: in May, the FDA approved a robotic arm that can be controlled with brain implants. And the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding the development of prosthetic devices that read brainwaves, as well as implants that electrically stimulate organs to perform functions such as insulin production. Read the entire article at: http://www.roboticstrends.com/service_healthcare/article/thought_controlled_prosthetics_attract_attention_from_fda/