This technology seems from the future, but it is already here and there are many people who need it today.
A year ago, Gabe Newell I was talking about the fact that in the future video games would read our emotions and send images directly to our brains thanks to implants, and today we have to talk about something similar, but it is not a method to make your favorite form of entertainment a religious experience , but to allow those people who need it can access and interact with technology.
We are still in the field of so-called “brain-computer interfaces,” that is, BCIs, or brain-computer interface in English; and the one that concerns us, Stentrode, is made by a company called Synchron (which beat Elon Musk to the right). It is not very invasive an endovascular application implant. His goal is for paralyzed patients to be able to control electronic devices using only their brains.
Tom Oxleythe company’s founder, told The Wired that “the first endovascular brain-computer interface implant in a human being in the US is a major clinical achievement that opens new doors for paralysis patients,” adding: “Our technology is for the millions of people who have lost the ability to use digital devices with their hands.”
Human interaction with almost all of today’s electronic devices requires a significant degree of motor skills (like when we use our hands or arms to type or use the mouse, or like when we use our fingers to use the mobile), but this kind of solutions guarantee that people with difficulties to carry out these interactions can continue to use and enjoy the same technologies.
It is the case of Graham Felstead, an ALS patient who was the first to try the device a year ago. Now, after taking 12 months testing the viability of the implant, Synchron wants to continue studying it with 15 more patients. It is not cheap, because according to the company it costs what a car could costbut equally medicine will never cease to surprise us with its progress, especially when applications appeared as frivolous as those proposed by Newell they end up having other aspects like the one that has made Graham’s life a little more comfortable.
More about: PC, Medicine and Gabe Newell.
