Brain Machine Interfaces (BSP 78)

In his book Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines---and How It Will Change Our Lives neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis puts his recent work with brain machine interfaces into historical context and explains why this work should change the way we understand how brains work. Nicolelis challenges several long-standing assumptions including the primacy of the single neuron and strict localization, which is the idea that each area of the brain has a relatively fixed function.

Episode 78 of the Brain Science Podcast is a brief discussion of the key ideas presented in Beyond Boundaries, including a look at the implications of experiments such as the wide publicized work that culminated in demonstrating that a monkey in Nicolelis' lab at Duke (North Carolina, USA) could control a robot arm in Japan using only its brain. 

Listen to Episode 78 

Episode Transcript (FREE PDF)

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References:

•  Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines---and How It Will Change Our Lives by Miguel Nicolelis (2011).
• In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel (2006).
• Nicolelis, Miguel A.L., Rick C. S. Lin, et al. "Peripheral block of ascending cutaneous information induces immediate spatiotemporal changes in thalamic networks.: Nature 361 (1993): 533-536. (Abstract)
• Nicolelis, Miguel A.L, and John K. Chapin. "Controlling robots with the Mind." Scientific American 287, no. 4 (2002) 24-31.

Related Episodes:

• BSP 3: a discussion of In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric Kandel.
• BSP 21: introduction to Body Maps
• BSP 23: interview with Sandra Blakeslee author of The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better.
• BSP 74: interview with Olaf Sporns, author of Networks of the Brain.

Announcements:

• I hope to interview Miguel Nicolelis for a future episode of the Brain Science Podcast. If you would like to ask him a question please post it in the thread I have started on our GoodReads page.
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• The Brain Science Podcast is supported by donations from listeners like you.