Scientists celebrate mind control device
MELBOURNE scientists and surgeons have given patients with disabilities the power to work computers with their mind in a world- first “bionic spine” breakthrough.
The stunning success, revealed for the first time today, raises hopes of giving those paralysed through injury or illness the ability to drive wheelchairs, use robotic hands and arms or even walk by controlling future exoskeletons with their thoughts.
During pioneering non- invasive procedures, three Victorians with conditions such as motor neurone disease were each fitted with a paperclip- sized implant to the centre of their brain, which can translate and transmit their brain signals directly to a computer.
The University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital Stentrode implants are also allowing the patients to use mobile phones, however principal investigator Professor Peter Mitchell said the sky was the limit now they had proved the ability to translate thought into action.
“It has exceeded what we had hoped for and what the aim of the original study was,” Professor Mitchell said.
“The limits of what can be achieved, we just don’t know. Once you get that signal out, and once you start to learn how to modulate that signal, I suspect the way that signal can be used will just expand.
“At the moment it is just interfacing with a standard operating system on a com
puter, but there’s no reason it can’t go well beyond that.”
The first Stentrode implant was fitted into the brain of Graham Felstead, 75, from Victoria in August 2019. He is still using the technology and is doing extremely well.
Professor Mitchell and his RMH team implanted the second into Greendale father Phil O’Keefe in April.
A third patient has since
undergone the procedure as part of an initial five- patient safety trial, however the full results are not yet available.
Rather than requiring invasive brain surgery, a catheter was used to thread the 8mm x 40mm implant up the patient’s jugular vein and into their skull, where it is passed along the main draining vein running from the front to the back of their brain.
While the initial trial was only intended to determine if the device was safe to place in a human brain — rather than whether they actually worked — results published in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery overnight reveal the first procedures have been far more successful than the Melbourne team ever hoped.
Associate Professor Nicholas Opie, head of the university’s Vascular Bionics Laboratory and creator of the device, said the implants were already allowing patients to send emails and complete online banking and shopping.
“It has been a long process, but to now start seeing the fruits of the labour and to see the guys using it to enhance their lives has been really magical,” Professor Opie said.