Neuro-controlled Prosthetic Arm, Leg — or a Whole Body? Sci-fi or reality?

Our view of the world and how we manipulate it is changing rapidly and is about to turn into a revolution. In the past, the body had been held as complete, perfect, and for most, sacred. Those unfortunate to suffer the trauma of amputation, or severe limb disability lived in a world imprisoned by their inability to do things that ‘the perfect’ find easy.

We are currently at a point where we accept that a fully functional prosthetic arm or leg is something that is in the future. But, out of this science fiction, a new reality is approaching rapidly.

The Fiction of Body Augmentation
Well’s book the “War of the Worlds” produced an image that was alien and robotic, unfeeling and mechanical. In 1972, Martin Caidin extended the idea, introducing into the cultural consciousness the idea of the ‘Cyborg’, in his book of the same name. The cyborg was defined earlier in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, both scientists, as a being that augmented its body in places with electromechanical devices to enhance what it was capable of doing.

Prior to that, in 1958, Jack E. Steele, an American medical doctor and retired Air Force colonel, defined the word ‘bionics’ and this alternatively used the natural world to inspire biomechanical engineering and design.

In the series “Six Million Dollar Man”, Steve Austin, horribly disfigured and amputated by an aircraft accident was rebuilt with bionic limbs and a left eye. Now, augmenting the body became an exciting area of adding super-human abilities, to accomplish so much more than the ‘normal’ person would be capable of. These ideas have developed in sci-fi, bringing extra abilities and more beauty into the idea of supplementing and changing the body.

In many films and books, as in the massively popular ‘Iron Man’ films recently, possibilities are introduced to the public who are now finding body augmentation more acceptable, even desirable. More than ever creative solutions and ideas are presented that excite the imagination, that range from tiny nanobots to complete exoskeleton enhancements to the body.

But, from the fiction of having these extra functionality body devices, what are the facts?

The Reality of Body Augmentation
Where science fiction in this area is more to do with the imagination than the actual technology, reality is often constrained — and slower to create. The body, has until recently, been partly restored to its ‘perfection’ by adding prosthetic limbs, often requiring more surgery to an already traumatized patient.

However, the 2010’s have seen an increasingly rapid movement in this idea that is now reaching a revolution.

The constraints in augmenting the body have so far been in the controlling and powering of any biomechanical devices that have been used. Where the battery power and engineering techniques are advancing, together with the production and accessibility of 3D printed prosthetics, these all combine to help it move it forward at an ever-increasing pace, however, the main revolution is taking place in interface and control.

Neurogress, a company focused on ‘thought’ based interface technologies, have produced a means of controlling devices by ‘thinking’. Using artificial intelligence and sensors that monitor bio-signals from the brain’s cortex, it has been successful in achieving significant results in, what can be considered as the ideal, mind-to-machine interface. Without any surgery, for example, a headband essentially picks up, and decodes from the background noise, what movement the subject is thinking about.

So body augmentation devices, from internal devices to external prosthetics, now have a means of being neuro-controlled, and the revolution begins with infinite possibilities opening up.

Manipulation of the world around us is ‘all in the mind’, literally, as we are beginning to think of a reality that goes way beyond the fiction. Machines, not constrained by having a body in close proximity can be far away for example with augmented reality fed back to the user, and a neural connection to control it.

The ideal of the body ‘perfect’ is being supplemented by options that make body augmentation much more desirable, and not just in giving back the complete freedom of movement missed by many. We are reaching a time where, once fiction dominated possibilities, now technological fact allows a revolution to take place that is only constrained by the imagination — and perhaps only by ‘what we think’.

What possibilities do you see for these advances in neural technology? Can you image what part of your body you would want augmented with neural control?

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