(March 4, 2012) Opening the door to the development of
thought-controlled prosthetic devices to help people with spinal cord injuries,
amputations and other impairments, neuroscientists at the University of
California, Berkeley, and the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Portugal
have demonstrated that the brain is more flexible and trainable than previously
thought.
Their new study, to be published
Sunday, March 4, in the advanced online publication of the journal Nature,
shows that through a process called plasticity, parts of the brain can be
trained to do something they normally do not do. The same brain circuits
employed in the learning of motor skills, such as riding a bike or driving a
car, can be used to master purely mental tasks, even arbitrary ones.
Over the past decade, tapping
into brain waves to control disembodied objects has moved out of the realm of
parlor tricks and parapsychology and into the emerging field of
neuroprosthetics. This new study advances work by researchers who have been
studying the brain circuits used in natural movement in order to mimic them for
the development of prosthetic devices.