Doctors have been using electrocorticography, or ECoG, since the 1950s to figure out which area of the brain is causing seizures. But now, by placing the array of sensors directly on the brain and connecting them to a computer, researchers are able to control robotic arms, and even determine which word a person is imagining.
“It really goes pretty close to what people used to call mind reading,” says Gerwin Schalk, a researcher who studies ECoG at the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center in Albany.
(READ – or listen to – the story at NPR News)