EH Revisited: Mind Machine (12/11/05)

"Recently, Carmena was part of a team at Duke University that famously demonstrated how rhesus monkeys could learn to operate a robot arm with brain signals. The commands came via an array of electrodes implanted in the frontal and parietal lobes of the animal's brain. In 2003, the researchers made headlines by showing that the monkey wasn't treating the robot as an external device. Instead, its brain's structure had adapted to control the appendage as if it were its own arm.

The implant consists of an array of several hundred hair-thin electrodes surgically placed in the frontal and parietal lobes, regions of the brain involved in motor abilities. Each microwire can detect the signals from as many as four neurons. Last year, Carmena and his colleagues recorded electrical signals from a human patient's brain. The array was temporarily implanted during deep-brain stimulation surgical procedures conducted to alleviate tremors symptomatic of Parkinson's and other diseases." read article in its entirety

Update:The mainstream media is finally starting to cover this amazing story.