“Pop, Pop, Pop.” She Heard Her Brain in Action
In November of 2012, Jan Scheuermann did something she never thought she would do again: She fed herself a piece of chocolate. For the last decade Scheuermann, 54, has been a prisoner in her own body. She suffers from a mysterious degenerative disorder that attacks the nervous system, severing the connections between the brain and muscles. Now a quadriplegic, Scheuermann has no movement below her neck. She can’t move her limbs, let alone grasp, move, or hold anything. Until she’s hooked up to a brain-computer interface (BCI).
BCI is a technology that can plug in to neuronal activity in Scheuermann’s brain, interpret it, and translate the signals into action—specifically, moving a robotic arm that she calls “Hector” to grasp objects and bring them to her—as though it were a functional part of her body. Dr. Andrew Schwartz, one of the field’s pioneers, is testing the system in clinical trials run out of his lab at the University of Pittsburgh.
BCIs have the potential to give people with limited mobility increasing independence. In the future they might restore the power of speech to victims of severe strokes, as well as offer radical remedies for mental illness and Alzheimer’s disease. Yet BCIs can also be used in invasive ways that compromise individual freedom, such as an infallible lie detector and robotic super soldiers. Both technologies are based on the same scientific breakthroughs, and both take scientists one stop
