SLOW AND STEADY
They haven’t recreated the complete works of Shakespeare just yet, but a pair monkeys at Stanford University are one step closer, thanks to a new brain implant.
As part of a study published today by the journal Proceedings of the IEEE, scientists at Stanford University implanted a multi-electrode array into the brains of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), a species of Old World monkeys.
The array can read the brain signals that are responsible for directing arm and hand movements and interpret those signals into cursor movements, which allowed the monkeys to mentally select individual letters of the alphabet from an on-screen keyboard. The monkeys were able to retype letters shown to them from news articles and works by Shakespeare at a rate of 12 words per minute.
