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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2000;284:2987.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Research aimed at literally transforming thought into deed holds out hope that people with paralysis and other severe motor disorders will be able to use neural signals from the brain to control prosthetic limbs, according to a research team led by scientists at Duke University School of Medicine (Nature. 2000;408:361-366).

Neural signals from the brain of an owl monkey can drive the movement of a robotic arm. (Photo credit: Duke University—Jim Wallace)

The researchers, funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies, implanted 32 or 96 tiny electrodes in the premotor, primary motor, and posterior parietal cortical areas of the brains of two owl monkeys, and repeatedly recorded the activity of the neurons when the animals reached for bits of food.

The neural signal data were fed into a computer for analysis, allowing the investigators to identify patterns of neural signals occurring . . . [Full Text of this Article]