'Avatar' technology of mind control is no longer fiction - TVI24

A brain implant

inspiration ‘Avatar’ may help restore movement in paralyzed patients. The science fiction scenario of the James Cameron film, in which a man who was paralyzed following an injury recovers the lost physical abilities through another being, has now been achieved for the first time in laboratory rhesus monkeys.

According to the ‘Daily Mail’, the experiment was conducted by researchers at the Center for Nervous System Repair Medical School of Harvard University, in Boston, USA. The results were published in journal ‘Nature Communications’ .

Using the technology of mind control, fictionalized in the 2009 movie ‘Avatar’, scientists have linked to a monkey’s brain Rhesus spinal cord that of another was placed in an artificial state of paralysis. The conscious monkey was then able to control the movements of the second primate using only his own thoughts. This despite being completely disconnected from the arm muscle that he sought to control.

“We have demonstrated that a subject can control a paralyzed limb purely with your thoughts,” says the ‘Dialy Mail »Maryam Shanechi, the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. The co-author of the study adds that the discovery “could have the potential to help paralyzed patients regain control of their own members.”

All laboratory work was to present the first monkey (called ‘master »by scientists) two circular targets on a computer screen to take out, based on the activity of a small number of neurons in the premotor cortex of this monkey, which allowed information to provide, through a ‘software’ in real time , which was the target that monkey most likely intended target with the cursor. This prediction was then transmitted to the second monkey, called ‘avatar’, which had previously been paralyzed by drugs, and whose arm as the expected choice of “master”, then pointed to one of two targets.

Every time the monkey “master” could command the arm monkey ‘avatar’ to the target that he himself had chosen, was duly rewarded with a bit of fruit juice administered through a small tube placed in front.

Through this experience, scientists have shown that they can extract from a primate brain the subtleties of a ‘deliberate act’ unravel this information and forward it to the spinal cord of another primate, ‘injecting’ this information in the way that this second primate perform a movement according to the will of the first system.