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"  Neurologists at Washington University in St. Louis play space invaders--with a joystick. Bringing new meaning to the term &amp;quot;hands-free technology,&amp;quot; a 14-year-old from St. Louis has mastered the first two levels of the Atari video game Space Invaders\u2014without using a joystick. The teenager, who suffers from epilepsy, is using only the signals from his brain. His arcade abilities were developed by neurologists at Washington University in St. Louis, who developed a new brain-computer interface (BCI) system to split the monitoring of signals coming from electrode grids implanted directly onto the patient&amp;#039;s brain. While continuing their clinical research to find the epicenter for epileptic seizures, Dr. Eric Leuthardt and his team asked the boy to perform simple tasks like moving his hands and tongue, then to imagine them. The neurobiologists programmed a computer to identify certain electrical features specifying left and right movement from the grid-monitored brain signals, so they used BCI to combine the signals with the Atari software. In just half an hour, the boy learned how to play Space Invaders\u2014which, as any self-respecting student of early Atari knows, involves moving a laser cannon back and forth in order to shoot incoming aliens. &amp;quot;At first he had to imagine moving his hand and his tongue, and then what he described was his intention\u2014he just wanted the cannon go right or left,&amp;quot; Leuthardt says. &amp;quot;The real and the imagined movements are just training wheels. Eventually, it becomes subconscious.&amp;quot; While he says handicapped BCI patients tend to learn quickly, Leuthardt describes this 14-year-old as particularly exciting. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s got very fine-tuned control. He&amp;#039;s able to dodge and weave and move how he wants,&amp;quot; Leuthardt says. The rapidly expanding field of BCI systems, which provide for the movement of an external object using internal thought, has exciting implications, as 2005 PM Breakthrough Award winner John Donoghue well knows. Donaghue and his colleagues devised BrainGate, a silicon chip implanted in the brain&amp;#039;s primary motor cortex that allowed a paralyzed 25-year-old to perform tasks like opening e-mail, channel surfing and switching lights just by thinking about them. This year, Nature reported that BrainGate successfully transferred neural signals to prosthetic hands and robotic arms, opening up a world of possibility for amputees. This function, we admit, may be a little more useful than saving the world from pixilated aliens. But it&amp;#039;s only arguably as cool. \u2014Erin McCarthy "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a955/4199639/>