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The computer in your mind
Strolling across the University of Minnesota campus, banners suspended from posts proclaim the motto, "Driven to Discover." Here, there are unimaginable paths to greater brain power. One of the students on that path can be found in the gym this February afternoon. When he?s not building arm muscle by lifting weights, Cameron Sheikholeslami, is building brain power while studying both biomedical and electrical engineering. Regardless how powerful his mind gets, when he?s seated at the laptop studying, his fingers must still do the walking across the keyboard. Cameron notes, "You've got to use your hands to touch it. And move your cursor around using your hands." But in a University of Minnesota lab, Cameron helps test the boundaries of brain power. Here, he sits down in a chair, and a researcher places a special cap on his head. A "thinking cap," quips Cameron. Officially it?s called an electrode cap, and with good reason. With 64 electrodes dotting its surface, it looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. The cap and its electrodes are hard-wired to a computer. "You ready?" asks Dr. Bin He. Under Dr. He?s watchful eye, Cameron and the cap seek another, new frontier. "This kind of research, we call brain-computer interface," says Dr. He. Simply put, brain-computer interface is hands-free, mind control of a computer. And Dr. He admits, "Several years ago, I did not believe it myself." But to watch Cameron this day - is to believe. Decked out in his "thinking cap" Cameron stares at a wall, where at first it looks like he?s playing the old video game "Pong." What?s really happening is this, a projector shines, two parallel, vertical bars, a couple of feet apart on the wall directly in front of where Cameron is sitting. Sometimes the green bar is on the left and the blue is on the right, and sometimes vice-versa. It is random. But once the bars have taken their position, a green cursor appears in the middle. Just sitting there, with his hands on his knees, Cameron faces the challenge of moving, or "thinking" the cursor to the right or left, wherever the green vertical bar appears. He?s trying to tap his brainpower. Cameron reflects, "It's very advanced research, and kind of science fiction related." But the non-fiction is in the 64 electrodes, that really amount to catcher mitts for brain waves, full of imagination. Remember Cameron?s work-out at the gym? Cameron does. And he says, "I think about doing a bicep curl where you move your arms up and down using the bicep curls." He adds, "and so I just concentrate heavily on how I would accomplish that movement, and that's kind of how I move it left or right." This day, despite the distracting presence of our camera, Cameron averages nearly 90 percent success. Normally he does better. "I've gotten pretty close, but never to one hundred percent," he says. Dr. He puts it this way. "The research partly is based on this discovery that imagining is equivalent to actual movement. So we pick up that signal, turn it into control signal," Dr. He said. Dr. He imagines the technology will one day be wireless, like the mouse or computer keyboard that sit on his office desk. And he imagines applications from videogames to everyday laptops. "I would think if you want to control the laptop, yea it'll be ten years away," he said. Across town at the VA Medical Center?s Brain Sciences Center, they hope to tap the brain?s circuitry for another purpose. "Right now we're putting on the electrode cap," says research assistant Alex Merkle. But while the cap still has that same look, as in Dr. He?s lab, this time Merkle uses his hands, moving a joystick in a repeated direction. "I'm actually just drawing a pentagon," he says. As Merkle draws, the electrode cap gathers brain signals, or commands associated with the repeated hand movement. It?s technical data, but it?s also science with a heart. As Merkle puts it, "I love knowing that I might be able to help people." The heart and application can be found in the artificial limbs that veterans often need here at the VA. "So if these devices are so progressed that say mimic a human arm, then I don't see any limit for using the brain signals," according to Dr. Apostolos Georgopoulos. Georgopoulos is the director of the Brain Sciences Center at the VA. He has studied how the brain controls movement since the 1980s. Back then, he first connected specific brain signals with specific action in monkeys. With the right equipment, Dr. Georgopoulos believes the human brain signal patterns his lab is charting will soon allow people to control artificial limbs with their minds. "Our assessment is, that it is very doable say, within the next year and a half or so," he said. Back at the U of M lab, they take off Cameron?s cap. Another brainpower workout is over. Today, the test was to move the cursor side to side. Tomorrow, perhaps any direction. Dr. He says, "That's part of our research goal is what you are asking. Can we do it arbitrarily? Say, I could go arbitrary direction or do some more complicated action." And as Cameron's helping prove, it's no longer heavy lifting to believe in brainpower.
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