Fully Implantable Wireless Neural Prosthetics for Bionic Limbs

As presented Sunday 2009.10.18 at the Society for Neuroscience conference in Chicago and reported by Technology Review:<blockquote>Scientists at Brown University have developed an entirely implantable version of a neural prosthesis used to translate neural signals from the brain. The ultimate goal is to use this kind of device to allow severely paralyzed people to control a computer or a robot limb with their thoughts.

The array of electrodes that is implanted on the cortex is connected via a single wire to a data transfer chip, which is implanted onto the skull. The chip has a tiny laser, the size of a grain of sand, that transmits rapid pulses of light across the skin to a photodiode receiver placed on the scalp. The receiver converts the light signals back to electrical ones, and sends the information to a computer.</blockquote>