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Power
of the mind
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Here
the arrow points to the focus of epileptic seizure
activity. BCI Technologies could help stop seizures
short.
Credit: Seeck et al (1998) Electroenceph. Clin. Neurophys.
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BCI
technologies are opening up new frontiers in both medical
applications and neuroscience research. While the current
studies have focused on control of movement, there are many
other applications in the near future for current BCI technologies.
One example is blocking epileptic seizures. Chips implanted
in a patient's brain could work to short-circuit a seizure
once the chip begins to receive signals from the brain that
a seizure is coming on.
Schwartz
sees that currently the largest benefit from BCI research
is the technology being developed that makes reading brain
signals possible. "The technology enables us to ask questions
we haven't been able to ask before," says Schwartz. "We will
look at many elements of the brain simultaneously and the
technology will allow us to do what we haven't been able to
do before...It will basically open a new door into looking
at brain function."
Currently,
research has studied signals from one neuron at a time. However,
for a given action, the brain fires millions of neurons to
elicit a signal. Thus studying one neuron at a time out of
the millions that are firing provides a limited understanding
of what is happening in the brain. "It's like taking a poll
and trying to ask a question about a social issue and only
asking one person…." says Schwartz. "You won't get a
very good understanding…. [But] if you asked a whole
bunch of people…a large sample would be much more accurate."
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Our
bodies contain billions of neurons; so far science is
only able to study a few at a time.
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With
these technologies, it appears that our understanding of brain
function is going to advance much faster than before. This
is just the beginning and the prospects of the capabilities
this technology could bring are very exciting. It may still
be a while before we can plug our minds into a computer to
do a Google search, but it no longer seems as far-fetched
as it once did.
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